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What is a BIOS?
BIOS is an acronym for Basic Input/Output System.
"The fundamental purposes of the BIOS are to initialize and test the system hardware components, and to load a bootloader or an operating system from a mass memory device."
Read more on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS
BIOSes are software in certain circumstances. The FSF says:
"Today the BIOS sits square on the edge of the line. It comes pre-written in our computers, and normally we never install another. So far, that is just barely enough to excuse treating it as hardware. But once in a while the manufacturer suggests installing another BIOS, which is available only as an executable. This, clearly, is installing a non-free program [...]"
Read more on https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html
White-lists
Whoever controls a proprietary BIOS can implement a hardware white-list. A white list is a pre-approved list of hardware components.
A vendor might implement a white-list to ensure that customers must go to him for parts (e.g.. a replacement Wi-Fi card). The approved parts may all require proprietary software -- or maybe not. The vendor controls which hardware parts you may use with his BIOS.
What's the problem?
Free BIOSes like gnuboot exist, but ...
They are currently only a few computers that gnuboot can run on you can check if you can install gnuboot on your machine here: https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuboot/web/docs/hardware/
If your machine doesn’t support gnuboot or you don’t want the task of installing it yourself you can buy pre-configured gnuboot systems from https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/laptops for example. Follow the documentation Complete Systems for more information about complete systems and vendors.
Further Reading
- Comparison of Boot Software (LIBREPLANET.org)
- A lot of discussions about Boot Software are going on in the Forum. Read and join them, too!
