I am currently working on firmware for a Stellaris ARM microcontroller board, and I am running the SYS/BIOS RTOS.
I was wondering if the bootloader is required on the board when I upload my firmware onto it. Can I overwrite the bootloader on the flash with my .bin file, or am I required to offset my start address to preserve the bootloader?
In the general case (i.e., not specific to Stellaris), software is software, the bootloader is software, your application is software, the processor cannot tell the difference so quite evidently a bootloader is not required, the software that runs at reset could as easily be your software.
However, the obvious benefit of a bootloader is the ability to apply in-field updates without connecting special equipment; you might regret losing that capability.
Some chips (again generally, check your data sheet for Stellaris specifics) have a bootloader in mask ROM rather than Flash and you cannot delete or overwrite that, but usually configuration pins can be set to select the boot behaviour in order to by-pass the bootloader for example.