On 24-12-2012, at 8:54 AM, Hans-Martin Mosner <hmm at heeg.de> wrote:
> 
> I will have some time during the next days so hopefully I'll be able to explorr the possibilities. One that should certainly work is to create a very minimal Linux system that immediately starts up Squeak. Another would be to look at the non-Linux alternatives such as RISC OS and see how they are doing it.

I was looking at Tiny Core Linux a while back. They have apparently done some work on the Pi and it looks like a really minimal linux setup that leaves out all that nasty X stuff. 
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=20487

Jecel is right about the binary blob-booting stuff and it has been fairly easy (apparently) to adapt for other systems. AIUI there is enough code onboard to be able to start up and find the SD card, open up a FAT32 filing system, find a config file and do what it says. 

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.