GNU Boot 20230717 Released For Freeing The Firmware On Some Old Hardware

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNU Boot 20230717 Released For Freeing The Firmware On Some Old Hardware

GNU Boot 20230717 has been released as the fork of Libreboot that in turn is a downstream of Coreboot focused on providing system firmware support only where they are fully free software. With GNU Boot the game is upped further by removing select motherboard ports and documentation where they do not comply with the GNU System Distribution Guidelines...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNU-Boot-20230717

[vancha]

Why would they fork an already free fork of coreboot? this seems like a lot of wasted effort, what's wrong with libreboot? :S

[justinkb]

Extremism is a hell of a drug

[stiiixy]

Can all these 'open' firmwares function to a level of regular usage with non-essential elements like overclocking disabled?

Essentially a BIOS stripped of *Option XYZ* back to bare essentials so a device works, with 'features' added later?

Or is it more monolithic? An all or nothing scenario.

[OneTimeShot]

Why would they fork an already free fork of coreboot? this seems like a lot of wasted effort, what's wrong with libreboot? :S

There is no *technical* reason to fork libreboot... but feel free to Google why I am quite glad someone has...

[andyprough]

Yes, boards from the old AMD Opteron days continue to be worked on by Libreboot / GNU Boot.

Some of those boards are dual CPU and provide up to 32 threads at 2.8ghz (I'm doing this from memory) and 256gb of ram, and can handle many modern workloads with ease. Nothing to sneeze at.

[chocolate]

Article published by: Leah Rowe in GNU Leah Mode™

Leah's new Libreboot has an interesting approach (that perhaps most users here will find more "pragmatic" and useful) for exploring new targets. It's good to know that, despite ideological differences, she still has the energy and commitment to donate her work to GNU Boot as a stripped version of Libreboot so that the upstream stays the same and there isn't too much latency between releases of each. I think it shows great maturity, and should (?) also avoid confusing forks such as Libreboot-dot-at (assuming they aren't too displeased about the name containing the word "libre" and so on, which from their homepage they somewhat seem to be).

I'm most probably reading too much into it, but I can't help but think that this ellipsis at the end:

Happy... hacking.

is a bittersweet allusion to being somewhat punished for exploring a new tiered approach, so to speak, where targets that can be freed at least partially, while still demanding blobs for some functionality, should have their place in Libreboot. As if to say, this is useful hacking, the project is transparent about it, don't demonize it. Can one truly argue with that? Did GNU suddenly materialize out of thin air as a parallel Unix-like OS or did it start forming a collection of userspace programs that could incrementally replace those found in commercial Unix-like systems, first?
What's important is to educate people about what they're getting.
So, why not? Let GNU Boot be what it is and let Libreboot function as a vanguard in search of new machines to liberate. Happy hacking indeed. Well done, and good luck.

[blackiwid]

I don't get the critique here, what is the point of even coreboot, but even more some sort of libreboot to have a fully free boot experience, how GNU defines that.

So for me the existence of libreboot makes no sense except the author maybe can't work well together with the coreboot team, they are both non-free.

While the idea behind libre / gnu boot is to have it fully free, so the technical goal is to have it free, I don't know if I would call that only ideology. It's a technical goal based on ideology, it's a implementation based on that idea.

So we have now a real free Gnu boot and a only some parts free coreboot. I still am puzzled what the point is of libreboot some strange attempts to fork the GPL I guess.

Is any of this ports very usable, neither libre nor gnu boot is very usability for 99,99% of users... there is some still very limited usefulness in coreboot, but that don't have to stay that way forever.

Is there a big community of people that are not happy with opensource coreboot but prefer the strange definition of libreboot over GNUs definition? And then go out of their way to not install coreboot but this strange fork or is it just a personal opinion of 1 person that makes this software for herself?

[blackiwid]

If I see a hardware I am interested is supported by "libreboot" I don't want to go into the wiki and look if it's really supported by free, heck even a platinum label would been better. That's great on Gnu Boot, if it's supported its free done... not 1 hour deep dive into wiki.

[skeevy420]

There is no *technical* reason to fork libreboot... but feel free to Google why I am quite glad someone has...

There are two technical reasons and you don't even have to use Google to find them. You can read the the 2nd sentence for a brief summary of the 2nd paragraph of the article for the first technical reason followed by clicking on the link at the end of the article, maybe scrolling your mouse a click or three, for the 2nd technical reason.

Changes, relative to Libreboot 20220710

GNU Boot is a fork of Libreboot. This release is based on Libreboot 20230625, with certain boards/documentation removed so as to comply with the GNU System Distribution Guidelines (GNU FSDG).

Libreboot 20220710 was the last regular Libreboot release to comply with the old Binary Blob Extermination Policy adhering to GNU FSDG ideology. Read the Libreboot 20220710 release announcement.

For the purpose of continuity, this release will list changes relative to that version. Future releases of GNU Boot will reference past releases of itself.

Did you really not make it past the first sentence?