On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 5:17 PM, Pierre Chapuis
<catwell@archlinux.us> wrote:
On Wed, 3 Aug 2011 09:39:14 -0300, Elias Barrionovo wrote:
eLua ( http://www.eluaproject.net/ [2] ) was reported to run on a
pentium with no OS underneath it:
http://wiki.eluaproject.net/Booting%20eLua%20on%20a%20PC [3]
This is the kind of thing I was looking for, thanks.
Sounds like I should take a look at eLua.
Sorry to disappoint you, but eLua booting directly on a PC was merely a demo which was meant to show eLua's high portability (also something I wrote because I didn't have any eLua-capable micros back then). I didn't try this specific port in a while and I'm not ever sure if it boots on the PC anymore (it should); even if it does, you're going to have a really hard time writing drivers for it. This is one of the main reasons that makes implementing a new functional OS on a PC nowadays a quick and painful failure. One simply can't keep up with all the hardware without a developer base comparable with the one behind Linux. You could choose a limited number of peripherals that you support (this is the approach taken by MenuetOS for example), but then you'll end up configuring a PC for the sole purpose of running your OS. Not many people are willing to do that. In the end such a project is interesting, a lot of fun to work on, it has an extremely high educational value, but don't expect it to be practical. For a PC, running Lua on top of a Linux kernel sounds like a much better idea.
Best,
Bogdan
