Originally Posted by corbintechboy (Post 3560552)

I just feel that if it is to complex for you (anyone) just stay out of it! Very few reasons to even worry about it these days as most stuff just works! Leave the inner setting to the inner geek!

Originally Posted by H_TeXMeX_H (Post 3560678)

And because most stuff supposedly "just works" we can forget about the other stuff that "just doesn't work", right?

Originally Posted by H_TeXMeX_H (Post 3560740)

Well, I've had problems with a number of boards, and with a laptop for sure. And, of course, any requests to fix things fell upon uncaring, deaf ears. I probably could have fixed it myself if I had the source code even with my mediocre coding abilities.

I personally think that in general FLOSS is far superior to any proprietary attempt. The software can evolve much more quickly, will have a larger developer base that can find bugs (not only 1337 haxxors who can disassemble and reassemble it at will), and will be free from possible backdoors and kill switches and rootkits that might be hidden in there.

But, whatever, I can see already from your reply that there's not much use in arguing with you, so don't take this as an argument with you ... it's just purely informational.

Originally Posted by Dralnu (Post 3562544)

Another proplem with proprietary drivers, either general hardware or BIOS, is that you really have no clue what is going on within them. They could have installed a rootkit for all you know, and sending anything and everything back to their servers for whatever purpose they wish. They also have few reasons to consider efficency. There is a benchmark someone on the net (youtube, I believe) where an old Mac and a brand new Mac are started up side-by-side. The older system boots up faster, even though the new system is probably a hundred times faster than the older system. I havn't found a reason for this that made sense yet.

Originally Posted by corbintechboy (Post 3559352)

You may be correct, but my theory is that it is not broke why fix it?

Originally Posted by kalleanka (Post 3564132)

But they are broken.

Originally Posted by browny_amiga (Post 3559427)

It might change, but not in a loooooong time. Ever seen how the OEMs work? They shun and avoid Linux whereever they can, sometimes I wonder if they think open source is some contagious disease. You know, it would be so open to use Linux as a BIOS, sooooo easy! They would not even have to do it themselves. The community would help. But heck, these decision makes must be old men and women, conservative and stuck on the old old old thing of recooking and recooking BIOS. Change as little as possible, over more than 20 years.

If we would all think like this, we would now have powerful cars, very modern, with a STEAM plant and looking like a locomotive, because if it ain't broken, don't fix it and just improve on the original design, slightly, as little as possible, because that costs money and ingeniuity.

To me it seems that the industry lost the guy that had the inventive spark and is now just cooking up the old stuff. Much like when Jobs left Apple, no new Macs came out.. but wait, Performas were there. Looking, exactly like.... PCs I am sure that was not because he liked them so much, but because he really did not know how to create something new.

A BIOS would require a diagnostic section, where Hardware diagnostics can be run, and maybe a place where you can install an OS (if you get the board new), directly from the internet with Netboot and to satisfy everybody, a browser (yes, all BIOSes need s TCP/IP stack and a basic browser, ever noticed how you cannot connect to the internet for BIOS upgrades within the BIOS? They just can make it with that old garbage so far) and so an internetshop where so inclined people can shell out the cash for their Windows license and then start downloading and automatically installing their Windows Vista or 7 or whatever.
Or as I know MS, first have a trial, then get the open hand for the license fee or lights out ;-) *grin*

Markus

Originally Posted by corbintechboy (Post 3563241)

I have a 90mhz machine here that will stomp my main system (dual core with fast sata drives) on bootup. It runs windows 3.1 and is really fast.

Reason for this is just the fact that programs have become more resource heavy. On a 90mhz machine there is not much room for cpu intensive tasks, MS knew this and made a really light system for its DOS products as well as windows 3.*. Wasn't until windows 95 things got bloat.

Don't know about Apple computers (never owned one) would venture to say they are the same.