Wave Fronts

Intelligent Multiboot Support for Windows, Linux and Unix

Multiboot selection should be possible with a single command line or GUI, trivial to accomplish locally or remotely, and generally available.

There ought to be a way to trivially utter to my computer:
Reboot with a boot menu choice like "3:5" where "3" means "first menu choice three" and "5" means "first menu choice three's fifth menu choice."

Why? I'm sitting here in the living room with a Powerbook, and my Sun Ultra-20 is sitting nine feet below me running Solaris 10. Should I have to get up, hike to the basement, do an init 6, and step through the above choices manually just so I can run a command that is only available to me through another operating environment choice?

Surely the keepers of Grub and its Windows multiboot equivalent can agree to about three bits of shared state to support this feature? Guys: how about lunch in Portland for a nice chat and agreement that a command like "init -- 3:5 6" will just do the right thing? Of course a remote desktop would need an icon/dialog set that you click a few times (no keyboarding, please). Do this and the world will thank you. And you can spend the lunch just getting to know each other!

This would serve well until virtualization becomes so easy and available that something like the following can be uttered:
as

for example:

javac | `as ddeal/FC4 tac` | less

Posted at 03:47AM Jun 18, 2006 by microwaves in Operating Environments  |  Comments[0]