Re: The BSDs

[Yoshinori K. Okuji]

On Tuesday 21 October 2003 22:43, Dan Kegel wrote:
> Sigh.  Here's why I suggested it, in case you blinked.
> Let's say somebody wants to use Grub to boot all their
> operating systems.  To achieve this, it helps if the operating
> systems support the multiboot spec.  Adding multiboot support
> to BSD will probably be easier for various reasons if
> there is an all-BSD way of testing it (without any
> strange non-BSD bootloader stuff like Grub).

That's a good point. Even if they don't follow the Multiboot Specification, it 
would be great to unify bootstrap protocols of *BSD into one way. I don't see 
why they should differ in this part. Don't you think it would be nice if you 
could boot OpenBSD by NetBSD's boot loader, and vice versa?

Maybe I'm just dreaming. But I still wonder why they don't define their boot 
protocols explicitly. Historically, Linux was not documented well, while *BSD 
had good documentation. However, as for boot protocols, Linux is much better. 
If you want to write a boot loader for *BSD, only the source code provides 
information. Even worse, their protocols change sometimes. Therefore, even if 
it is impossible to use one protocol for all *BSD, it would be a good thing 
to describe their protocols in manuals precisely. IMHO, this should be useful 
for *BSD developers as well.

Okuji