"From scratch" resource allocation

[Dmitri Nikulin]

On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 6:55 AM, Matthew Dillon
<dillon at apollo.backplane.com> wrote:
>
> :I'd like to ask, does DragonflyBSD have any plans for introducing
> :hardware resource allocation to the kernel, instead of relying
> :entirely on the BIOS for that? If not, can I suggest it as a
> :potentially useful thing to add? I realize it would be a rather
> :radical departure from standard BSDisms, but it would make laptop
> :support a lot better... Also, it just strikes me as rather wise in
> :this age of buggy proprietary BIOSes to rely on the BIOS as little as
> :reasonably possible.
>
>    It's not easy to do.  John is right.  If the device is behind a
>    bridge (and many are), then allocating resources from scratch requires
>    complete knowledge of the bridge chipsets.  That information is not
>    easy to come by.

If Linux has some working solutions, it can be instrumented and
reverse engineered in a clean room, staying clear of the GPL. As far
as I know this has been done for much more complicated drivers
already.

Basically at this stage it's either "reverse engineer Linux" or "lose
most laptop users to Linux", and the lesser of two evils must be
chosen.

-- 
Dmitri Nikulin

Centre for Synchrotron Science
Monash University
Victoria 3800, Australia