RedHat presented an idea at DevCon 2024 to replace Bootstrap Loaders with Direct Boot to the Linux kernel. They call this idea nmbl or (No More BootLoader) for short. What they envision is a way to shorten the time it takes to boot. They asked for participants to comment on their idea, and these are my comments.
Direct Boot to an operating system isn't a new idea, in fact this is the way we booted our operating systems back in the day. So why did we insert bootstrap loaders into the bootstrap process?
One of the reasons for Bootstrap Loaders not covered here is dual-booting another Linux distribution or Windows. I left it out because its obvious (at least to me)
AI Generated Thumbnail: "nimble without burning your backside"
Contents
00:00 - Intro
01:52 - In the Beginning...
02:38 - Hardware Design
03:54 - Budget and Justification to CEO & stakeholders
04:35 - Software Development Begins
05:32 - Software: Step 1
06:57 - Software: Step 2 Build Dev Environment
07:31 - So...Why Bootloaders? Who Needs them? Why?
08:14 - Pre-Run Diagnostics (more than a Bios Post)
08:55 - Sun's Bootloader had full hardware tests
09:29 - Ok, so I don't do development...
10:19 - Immutable OS
11:36 - Bootstrap Abstraction
14:00 - Wrapup
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