[ncolug] Re: annual distro marathon
- From: Chuck <cstickelman@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ncolug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 28 May 2013 14:39:02 -0400
Decades ago, Sun Microsystems started doing something that was, and in
my opinion still is, very revolutionary: they wrote all device drivers
in Lisp and stored the code in a chip that was on the device.
They chose Lisp because that was the language their boot-loader was
written in, so all devices were available to the boot-loader and ALL
OS's that were written to take advantage of the feature. There were no
diskettes or CDs to loate, no driver to install or reinstall, and no
"now you see it, now you don't" moments.
Too bad no one else took up the cause...
On Thu, 2013-05-23 at 06:02 -0400, Larry DiGioia wrote:
> Whoa. This is great stuff... I am still reeling from this statement:
>
> Historically, firmware were built-into the device's ROM or Flash
> memory, but more and more often, the firmware has to be loaded into
> the device by the driver during the device initialization.
>
> So now part of the driver runs on the device, and not the host CPU. I
> had no idea.
>
> On 5/22/2013 4:09 PM, Mike wrote:
>
> > On 05/22/2013 03:35 PM, Larry DiGioia wrote:
> > > I think it was the Broadcom network that it missed, but I am going
> > > to do as you said anyway, it will be fun and I am rooting for
> > > Debian. I also like the unspoiled Gnome3...
> > >
> > I just recalled coming back home that you can do this from the
> > initial install.
> >
> > http://wiki.debian.org/Firmware
> >
> > There is a link on that page to download a gziped tarball of
> > firmware. Just save it to a usb stick and have in plugged in before
> > the install starts. The installer will then find the needed
> > firmware and load it, then build the initrd image to include it. I
> > just had to do this on a laptop a couple of weeks ago. The intel
> > wireless wouldn't work without the firmware blob.
> >
> > Still end up with a non DFSG system...
> >
> > Mike
> >
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> >
>
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