BIOS
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
BIOS 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 or canoeboot exist, but ...
There are currently only a few computers that gnuboot can run on. You can check if you can install gnuboot on your machine here.
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!
