Re: Is there a way to use Linux on the E450 ?

According to B. Wright <bmwright@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
Josh McKee <jtmckee@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

The problem is that OBP is a Sun technology. Therefore when referring to
OBP you're referring to a single vendor. The PC market place has many
more manufacturers all with their way of doing things. This is not a
BIOS issue.

Josh

I guess you don't understand the "Open" part of "Open Boot PROM"
or "Open Firmware". Apple used it in the Motorola based Macs, it's an
open documented standard, you can go make your own machine with Open
Firmware if you wish, it does not limit you to Sun machines.

Further more, the cards with Open Firmware are able to instantly
extend OBP with things like hardware tests specific to that card, boot
methods, etc... Sure the PC cards try to do this, but as others have
pointed out it's a complete hack and nowhere close to being integrated
(i.e. special config screens you have to break out into on POST for each
card). Once you stick a new card in a Sun it becomes part of the device
tree in OBP and the tests/methods to deal with the hardware are all
instantly available at the "ok>" prompt.

*And* BIOS extensions on cards are built with Intel
machine-language instruction sets, and thus are useless on other
processors. OpenBoot extensions are implemented in FORTH, and thus will
work on *any* system with OpenBoot, as the FORTH kernel is part of the
OpenBoot system

I have dealt with some of the newer (a couple years back)
"remote management solutions" for both Dell and Compaq, they were both
heaps of ***. One of them (Dell I believe) required you to be running
a specific web browser (IE) running proprietary software (ActiveX) only
available under that web browser to even work!

Arrgggh!

So -- they assume that you are running Windows -- even if you
want the machines to be running one of the many unix variants which are
available.

Absolutely no uniformity
in how either of them worked either, unreliable (from my experience),
klunky, slow, and just a complete headache to deal with.

Good things to avoid -- to my mind.

Enjoy,
DoN.
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