Hi
I am newbie on Uboot or other boot loaders context.we intend to install our Linux based OS on Portwell (is not Embedded ) appliances and want to choose one boot loader with some features.Of course our appliances have BIOS. before any argue, one question arises:
Is it possible to install Uboot on system that has BIOS? if so, Is it reasonable ?
Some features we have need :
1- show detail information about hardware before loading kernel,such as storage system,ram capacity,CPU family and so on.
2- boot over net.
3-load kernel from storage.

I have had some search on LILO, but before any decision, I want to make sure about other boot loaders.

Thanks for any help or guidance

question? is the system a hard drive or firmware based system

boot loaders have nothing to do with BIOS, they are usually stored in the boot sector of the hard drive (at least the stage 1 part of the boot loader), though part of them (as with grub and lilo) may reside on the hard drive in /boot (those parts include but are not limited to: a stage 2 boot loader, the config file, kernel image and initramfs)

in answer to your query if it's a standard hard drive or solid state disk(flash) based distribution then it should be rather easy to replace the current boot loader with a different one by first un-installing the current one then (without rebooting) install the other one, or preferably uninstall/reinstall from a live cd/thumb drive if the machines support such, if it is firmware based however your options are more limited and you would have to compile a firmware image with the new boot loader and flash it down onto the machine, though you said it was not an embedded system so my educated guess is that this is not the case and i would try the hard drive/flash drive based method first

as for boot over net and load kernel from storage, that is usually a function of the network card itself and you would need to look into configuring a PXE server if your machine supports PXE