Re: [MLUG] True Dual Boot

["Christian M. Cepel" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Neat.   Thanks.

I haven't been keeping up on things tech as things 'life' have been 
spreading me pretty thin. :)

Rick Buford wrote:
> Christian M. Cepel wrote:
>
> > Looking at the Nokia 770, and even more appropriately the blackdog, 
> > I'm led to wonder... Has anyone out there ever developed a _true_ dual 
> > boot system.
> >
> > I don't mean boot to windows or boot to Linux.  I mean when the 
> > computer boots, it either brings up a firmware bootloader/controller 
> > or one that's stored on disk.
> >
> > That bootloader would establish two (or more?) side by side sandboxes 
> > and manage hardware access, and in one of those sandboxes Linux would 
> > be loaded and in another, winxp...  One would be 'focused' and it 
> > would have 'access' to the soundcard, vidcard and display, keyboard 
> > and mouse input, etc.  Special keys could allow you to access other 
> > operating systems in their own 'sandboxes' and perhaps view all of 
> > them split screen like Mac's Expose, or similar.
> >
> > They would of course be sharing memory, either allocated, or truly 
> > dynamically shared.  Same for processor.  The controller program would 
> > allow you to specify thread priority and cpu usage and memory allocation.
> >
> > Networking would be shared.  When an OS is not focused, the controller 
> > would suspend device access in such a way as to not screw up the OS.
> >
> > Frankly, I think my 1.xghz desktop/laptop is pretty much plenty for a 
> > normal machine (I don't game, and it meets my needs when I render 
> > video), so let's all that baseline for 1 computer.  1.5ghz 2gb ram. 
> > Well, the computers that are being sold today, I consider to be two 
> > computers worth of computer.  I could split a 3+ghz machine with 4gb 
> > of ram between two concurrent operating systems and still be 
> > completely content with the performance of both.
> >
> > Added to this thread priority and load management for foreground & 
> > background OSs, if you wanted you could idle the background OS if you 
> > wanted and give priority to the foreground OS.
> >
> > So...has this been done?  Is anybody working on it?  Is there any 
> > reason it wouldn't work if the hardware and controller were 
> > sophisticated enough to keep both OS's happy?
> >
> > This seems that it would work FAR and away better than emulators where 
> > hardware access is funneled through the booted OS.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > I like the BlackDog, but I'd much prefer to have things this way.
> Isn't this effectively what Xen is doing?
>
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