Technology

59311 readers

5302 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

2585

Firmware. (seemel.ink)

submitted 1 year ago by b4dm4rk@seemel.ink to c/technology@lemmy.world

216 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] just_browsing@reddthat.com 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Firmware doesn't run on an OS, you're probably thinking of drivers which are different. Drivers are software that tell the OS how to interact with specific hardware.

Firmware is software that's baked into specific hardware components and it exists outside of the OS. A visible example most people are familiar with would be the BIOS which is firmware for the motherboard. Hard drives, graphics cards, RAM, etc all also have their own firmware.

Other devices such as microwaves, washing machines, cars, or anything using microprocessors (so pretty much everything these days) also have components with their own firmware. It is true that device firmware can drive a UI on some devices such a as a microwave, but most people today wouldn't consider that to be an OS (semantics, I know).