CF to boot Linux

[Brian Kelsay]

Consider the job done!  Well, a really good start at least. :-)
http://www.splashtop.com/index.php

DeviceVM's SplashTop: more info about the five second Linux system
http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/09/devicevms-splashtop-more-info-about-the-five-second-linux-syst/
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/09/asus-eeepc-spotted-running-splashtop-instant-on-os/
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/motherboards/asustek-p5e3-motherboard-features-embedded-splashtop-linux-variant-309986.php


On Jan 12, 2008 9:57 AM, Monty J. Harder <> wrote:

> One of the really attractive features of flash is that it doesn't have to
> spin up like a HD.  As motherboard flashable BIOS chips get larger
> capacities, the potential is there for a LinuxBIOS to have grub in the BIOS,
> several kernels and some filesystems that can be mounted ro on (a) flash
> drive(s), so that the system can be booted before the HD even gets up to
> full speed.
>
> That's where a break from classic init "runlevels" to the event-based
> system of Upstart really starts to make sense.  Since there's really no seek
> penalty in flash like there is on a HD, Upstart can spawn a process to deal
> with the HD.  Once it's functional, that process can generate an event that
> handles optionally fsck-ing the filesystems on the drive and mounting them.
> It is a complete inversion from the normal idea that the "permanent" HD is
> the boot drive, and inserting a flash drive into USB generates the event.
>
> With a halfway decent amount of RAM, you'd have logging to ramdrive until
> the normal HD log filesystem goes online, at which point that event would
> trigger dumping of the ram log to the HD.  In the case of portable devices,
> it may wait and collect enough to be worth spinning the drive up.  A NVRAM
> storage subsystem to act as disk buffer would be really nice for such
> applications.
>
>
> On Jan 11, 2008 7:07 PM, Jon Pruente <jdpruente at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The difference is that the raw speed from a HDD is faster than flash,
> > esp. since it is being filtered through USB.  The seek times on decent
> > flash are pretty dang good compared to HDD.  That's where the speed
> > comes in as it's an order of magnitude faster in some cases.  I
> > wouldn't use flash for streaming A/V but it should be fine for an OS.
> >
>
>
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