Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756895AbYGXXsN (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:48:13 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753382AbYGXXr5 (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:47:57 -0400 Received: from vms042pub.verizon.net ([206.46.252.42]:63412 "EHLO vms042pub.verizon.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751268AbYGXXr5 (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:47:57 -0400 Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:47:04 -0400 (EDT) From: Len Brown Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCE] ACPI BIOS Guideline for Linux In-reply-to: <200807241732.23412.trenn@suse.de> X-X-Sender: lenb@localhost.localdomain To: Thomas Renninger Cc: linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org, Andi Kleen , Linux Kernel Mailing List Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII References: <200807241732.23412.trenn@suse.de> User-Agent: Alpine 1.10 (LFD 962 2008-03-14) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1433 Lines: 37 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 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/