Re: What's sadly still missing is a common plattform
The ARM industry never saw much point in something like a BIOS, since ARMs were used in embedded applications where the user traditionally didn't load an OS anyway, it came with one already. The Linux kernel developers were pushing for some sort of standardization, but the embedded industry wasn't interested ("we're special, because we're embedded"). The result is a huge tangle of configuration options for each SOC version. The Linux kernel development managers, most of whom come from the server industry, are massively unhappy about that. However, in the embedded world the approach is pitch the design over the wall and walk away from it and Linux kernel development is driven by the vendors who have a business interest in their particular field.
The new 64 bit ARM will be different, with an EFI firmware more or less lifted from x86. This was pushed by server vendors who wanted to be able to be able to ship both ARM and x86 systems based on similar designs. Given the massive, bloated, bug-ridden monstrosity that UEFI has turned out to be, I'm not sure that's an improvement over the previous situation.
The third possibility that some parties (including some PC motherboard vendors) were pushing for is called "Coreboot", which has basic functionality which is extended by loadable modules ("payloads") as needed for the application. ARM based Chromebooks use something else again, called UBoot.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
