41–50 of 96 posts
I honestly had a very good exchange about this exact topic with ChatGPT not too long ago. It was able to draw connections between the different stages that blog posts/wikis about each often do not. Specifically I was asking about the Linux boot process and it was able to go into enough detail for me to Google for the rest. Hope that helps.
The text is not edited yet, but as I had the benefit of learning about it with fresh eyes, it should be very approachable (and hopefully accurate enough)
https://osdev.org has a lot of resources about this. Your computer and all of its hardware are built on standards. For the most part, they are adhered to by hardware and BIOS manufacturers. GRUB et al are just abstracting those away because they're obtuse and not very ergonomic to work with from day to day.
I honestly had a very good exchange about this exact topic with ChatGPT not too long ago. It was able to draw connections between the different stages that blog posts/wikis about each often do not. Specifically I was asking about the Linux boot process and it was able to go into enough detail for me to Google for the rest. Hope that helps.
I wondered about an adjacent topic recently ("what IS the kernel actually") and found out that a great way to understand it, would be to start with the boot process. Once I felt less lost, I tried to capture my learnings [1] The text is not edited yet, but as I had the benefit of learning about it with fresh eyes, it should be very approachable (and hopefully accurate enough) [1] https://vsupalov.com/demystifying-ker…
I wonder if it's worth it to call out the "processor microcode" firmware? Any cool startup things happen at that low level as well?
Ignore all these replies and just use ChatGPT-4. Super helpful at explaining things.
Most of the links here help with your immediate questions, but if starting with base concepts and first principles is appealing to you, I have to recommend: - the MIT Operating Systems Engineering OCW course [^1] - specifically, Lecture #2 [^2] which describes the bootloader for 'xv6', a reimplementation of Unix v6, which does a great job showing what a solid OS with all the basics look like [^1]: https://ocw.mit.edu…
Most of the links here help with your immediate questions, but if starting with base concepts and first principles is appealing to you, I have to recommend: - the MIT Operating Systems Engineering OCW course [^1] - specifically, Lecture #2 [^2] which describes the bootloader for 'xv6', a reimplementation of Unix v6, which does a great job showing what a solid OS with all the basics look like [^1]: https://ocw.mit.edu…