
Ask HN: Can Linux terminal reside under BIOS? - FahadUddin92
To install any Operating System you need to get that OS in USB or hard disk. That seems like a very old school way. I am wondering if BIOS program can be rewritten to add basic Linux terminal feature in it so it can be used to pull Ubuntu or any other free resource from the internet without needing to install any other OS. Issue I am looking into,<p>I have read ROM is 4-8MB in size. Linux CLI is around 11MB. So need to chop down Linux CLI to make it under 2-6 MB since BIOS itself would be around 2 MB.<p>Do you guys think its a practical thing to make such a solution? Thanks
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coretx
Ok, ignoring your false assumptions here, and posing one of my own. You're a
student with a old PC, and can probably get your hands on a NIC.

Flash iPXE on the NIC. : [https://ipxe.org/start](https://ipxe.org/start) It
allows you to;

boot from a web server via HTTP

boot from an iSCSI SAN

boot from a Fibre Channel SAN via FCoE

boot from an AoE SAN

boot from a wireless network

boot from a wide-area network

boot from an Infiniband network

and control the boot process with a script.

It's open source & very educational.

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wahern
The firmware on my PCEngine, Soekris, and SuperMicro boards support tftp
network booting. So this is already fairly common, and has been for decades.
See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment)

