Multiboot Specification - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Multiboot Specification is an open standard

Open standard

An open standard is a standard that is publicly available and has various rights to use associated with it, and may also have various properties of how it was designed . There is no single definition and interpretations vary with usage....

originally created in 1995 and developed by the Free Software Foundation

Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...

. The specification describes a method of loading various multiboot kernels using a single compliant boot loader. GNU Hurd

GNU Hurd

GNU Hurd is a free software Unix-like replacement for the Unix kernel, released under the GNU General Public License. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation...

, VMware

VMware

VMware, Inc. is a company providing virtualization software founded in 1998 and based in Palo Alto, California, USA. The company was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2004, and operates as a separate software subsidiary ....

ESXi, Xen

Xen

Xen is a virtual-machine monitor providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently....

, and L4 microkernels

L4 microkernel family

L4 is a family of second-generation microkernels, generally used to implement Unix-like operating systems, but also used in a variety of other systems.L4 was a response to the poor performance of earlier microkernel-base operating systems...

all need to be booted

Booting

In computing, booting is a process that begins when a user turns on a computer system and prepares the computer to perform its normal operations. On modern computers, this typically involves loading and starting an operating system. The boot sequence is the initial set of operations that the...

using this method. GNU GRUB

GNU GRUB

GNU GRUB is a boot loader package from the GNU Project. GRUB is the reference implementation of the Multiboot Specification, which provides a user the choice to boot one of multiple operating systems installed on a computer or select a specific kernel configuration available on a particular...

is the reference implementation

Reference implementation

In the software development process, a reference implementation is the standard from which all other implementations, with their attendant customizations, are measured, and to which all improvements are added...

used in the GNU operating system.

The latest version is 0.7.

External links

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