Open BIOSes

BIOS: Basic Input/Output System. We rarely give it a thought as we boot up a machine. But it turns out that there's a lot of clutter in your common or garden BIOS that GNU/Linux in particular could do with out. As this excellent article explains:

On many systems, a large portion of boot time goes into providing legacy support for MS-DOS. Various projects, including LinuxBIOS and Open Firmware, are trying to replace the proprietary BIOS systems with streamlined pieces of code able to do only what is necessary to get a Linux kernel loaded and running.

Of course: if you've got an open operating system, it makes sense to use an open BIOS. I don't think I'll hold my breath waiting for PC manufacturers to offer that particular option, though. (Via OSNews.)