On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 07:19:20PM +0100, Thierry Laronde wrote:
> Are the "problems" encountered on i386 more
> easily solved on other platforms

Most non-i386 platforms have far more consistent firmware. On a sparc,
for example, the "detect available hardware" part would be a very simple
forth script (or fcode program). This machines also usualy know how to
drive most of their hardware from the firmware - like ethernet interfaces
etc.

PCs moved into this direction with PXE and ACPI recently, but looking at
ACPI complexity there is still some difference, IMHO.

Martin