[Novalug] Accessing BIOS

[Maxwell Spangler]

On Thu, 2009-12-17 at 02:00 -0500, Alan Grimes wrote:
> Aaron Porter wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 12:38 AM, Mark Smith <mark at winksmith.com> wrote:>
> >> a /proc entry that would show me something as simple as the boot order
> >> or a particular setting in the bios would be fantastic.
> > 
> > You can find some (but not most) of what you're talking about with dmidecode.
> 
> GODDAMN!!!! I had no inkling of a clue that such a useful utility even
> existed.

> Linux would be a hundred times more useful if its utilities weren't
> named with codewords relating to things that most people have never
> heard of. =(

The one thing that has made Linux grow and be successful thus far
(beyond having a kernel that boots and runs reliably) is the large
amount of applications that are available for it.

The more applications you have, the higher the chance that some
applications will be lost in the haystack and obscured by more well
known and general purpose applications.

In this regard, you have to accept that sometimes something so useful
won't be known to you... until you need it.

I'd suggest that dmidecode is not so useful that you needed in the past
to the point where you asked about it, searched for it and couldn't find
it.  Here's a case where someone asked about it, the group responded and
we all learn about it.  That's a success.

I would actually guess that finding things on Windows might be more
difficult.  With more applications, instead of one utility like
dmidecode you might have ten and all are competing for attention with
each other.  Also, Linux has its not-secret weapon: a passionate user
community that works for free to answer questions, solve problems and
teach its fellow users.

On the other hand, I'm currently working with Pluggable Authentication
Modules (PAM) on Linux right now and believe me there is stuff I don't
feel like knowing :)

-- 
Maxwell Spangler