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Terminology: Define term *bootloader* #33

Open paulmenzel opened 2 years ago

paulmenzel commented 2 years ago

The term bootloader is used, but not defined. It seems to be used differently, from what I am used to. (The program originally in the MBR. For example, GRUB is a bootloader.)

gdong1 commented 2 years ago

Yes, Bootloader could be OS bootloader (Grub, LILO, etc.) for OS folks, or firmware bootloader for firmware developers. The bootloader mentioned in the USF means the boot firmware except payload part. We could define "Bootloader" as "First program executed after power on, typically stored in read-only memory (ROM) along with some needed data to initialize random-access memory (RAM), silicon and platform specific configuration. ", but confusion might still exist since traditional firmware bootloader include payload. Do you have any suggestion to have a new name to replace "Bootloader"? maybe we could use "Pre-Payload firmware" or "Platform Initialization firmware" instead.

paulmenzel commented 2 years ago

The Wikipedia Bootloader article uses “first-stage bootloaders”. Maybe use that?

gdong1 commented 2 years ago

In that article “first-stage bootloader” means traditional firmware bootloader (the whole boot firmware including payload). And the "second-stage bootloader" means OS bootloader. For the boot firmware except payload part, if we don't want to use a long name "Pre-Payload firmware" or "Platform Initialization firmware", maybe we could define a new name (e.g. "loaderboot") to differentiate with "bootloader"?