linux-kernel - Re: [ANNOUNCE] ACPI BIOS Guideline for Linux

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Date:	Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:47:04 -0400 (EDT)
From:	Len Brown <lenb@...nel.org>
To:	Thomas Renninger <trenn@...e.de>
Cc:	linux-acpi@...r.kernel.org, Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] ACPI BIOS Guideline for Linux

It is not an ACPI specification violation that Linux
(and ACPICA) claim compatibility with the interfaces
advertised by one or multiple versions of Windows.

Yes, there are be cases where BIOS vendors will want
to know if the running version of Linux supports,
or does not support, an interface/feature.

We (the Linux community that maintain Linux/ACPI) are
eager to support them in this.  However, the interface
needs to be sufficiently defined so that we know when
to _not_ advertise that feature.

eg. There are proposals for

_OSI("Linux-Needs ATI S3 video re-POST")
_OSI("Linux-Needs NVIDIA S3 video re-POST")
_OSI("Linux-Native IPMI Support")

and we'd compile these into Linux based on the capabilities
of the build.  I'm sure that these would not be perfect --
as the BIOS would probably query these at _INI time before
the (likely loadable module) drivers that influence these
features would be loaded.  So we'd probably have to build
them into the core based on the assumption that the driver
built with the core will actually get loaded.

But this is the kind of Linux-specific OSI string we can advertise,
and choose not to advertise -- depending on the build.

thanks,
-Len
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