AMI Is The Latest Vendor Joining The Linux Vendor Firmware Service

[michaelb1]

I'm pretty sure it's more popular only for the lazy, people that actually care use GRUB2 payload.

GRUB2 is significantly larger than SeaBIOS, both in terms of source code and compiled binary size, and SeaBIOS provides a clean boot menu interface that the majority of users need. There are plenty of good reasons why SeaBIOS is the default coreboot payload, and not just in this "default config" but in a lot of custom builds as well - e.g. John Lewis popular builds for Chromebooks. I'm a coreboot developer and I prefer SeaBIOS, but of course it is good that there are alternatives: " let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend " ...

[starshipeleven]

GRUB2 is significantly larger than SeaBIOS, both in terms of source code and compiled binary size,

No shit, but that's not the whole story. SeBIOS needs GRUB2 to boot into anything, GRUB2 can be loaded alone directly. Unless math changed, using GRUB2 as a payload is still smaller overall than SeaBIOS + GRUB2.

SeaBIOS is just there to emulate a BIOS API, aka redundant legacy crap that is actually needed only by Windows. Its job is just loading and executing whatever is in the MBR of a drive, which is unsafe and also means that for Linux it's basically dead weight as 99% of the logic required to read from a filesystem, a RAID or LVM, read from encrypted partitions or whatever else to go fetch a kernel, and check the signatures if you want (GRUB2 can do it), has to go in the "significantly larger" GRUB2 boot loader.

That's not "elegant", BIOS spec is obsolete crap, the code in SeaBIOS might be amazing but it's job is just to replicate dumb shit API that is long obsolete and required others to write and maintain the code to work around it.

There are plenty of good reasons why SeaBIOS is the default coreboot payload,

Yeah, like that most people don't give a shit as long as the machine boots to the OS. Does not make SeaBIOS a good payload choice.

and not just in this "default config" but in a lot of custom builds as well

Mr Chromebook's builds support more (and newer) chromebook models and he offers full UEFI (i.e. Tianocore payload) too in his builds https://mrchromebox.tech/#devices

[michaelb1]

No shit

Why is it so hard for you to believe that SeaBIOS is the most popular, being the default choice at coreboot?

SeaBIOS needs GRUB2 to boot into anything, GRUB2 can be loaded alone directly. Unless math changed, using GRUB2 as a payload is still smaller overall than SeaBIOS + GRUB2.

You don't have to use GRUB2, you can use any other bootloader stored on your hard drive - not occupying that valuable space inside your BIOS chip which could be used for something else. Once I tried compiling GRUB2 with the modules that I want, it turned out being much larger than expected, and I don't want to throw away all my cool stuff just to accommodate the GRUB2

SeaBIOS is just there to emulate a BIOS API, aka redundant legacy crap that is actually needed only by Windows

Nope, the main purpose of SeaBIOS nowadays is providing the convenient boot menu, and it does this job well while occupying just about 70 KB

Mr Chromebook's builds support more (and newer) chromebook models and he offers full UEFI (i.e. Tianocore payload) too in his builds

haven't heard about him until now; but it doesn't matter. According to my observations - as a coreboot developer and as an active participant at coreboot mailing lists, there are significantly more coreboot/SeaBIOS users than coreboot/Tianocore, and by that I mean the "conscious" users who compile their coreboot by themselves and not using someone else's builds. And if you don't believe me, I could only suggest for you to sit on the coreboot mailing lists, read the e-mails with technical info and their coreboot configs, and see for yourself that there are a lot of coreboot people doing just fine with SeaBIOS and without UEFI crap

[michaelb1]

No shit

To end this pointless argument, lets clone the board_status repository with the reports containing the coreboot configs submitted by the coreboot users :

git clone http://review.coreboot.org/board-status
cd ./board-status
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep "CONFIG_PAYLOAD_SEABIOS=y" | wc -l
7750
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep "# CONFIG_PAYLOAD_SEABIOS is not set" | wc -l
718

More than 10x times difference in favor of SeaBIOS . "# CONFIG_PAYLOAD_SEABIOS is not set" = something else than SeaBIOS has been selected, e.g. "CONFIG_PAYLOAD_GRUB2" or "CONFIG_PAYLOAD_NONE" used by the people who would like to add an unknown payload later - maybe Tianocore, maybe not.

[starshipeleven]

Why is it so hard for you to believe that SeaBIOS is the most popular, being the default choice at coreboot?

I believe that, people is lazy. I'm not the other guy.

My point is that choosing what most people chooses is not a good reason in and of itself to follow them. I would be using Windows if I was using the "most popular" thing.

You don't have to use GRUB2, you can use any other bootloader stored on your hard drive

Sure, but most distros ship GRUB2 though. Also because other bootloaders are much more limited even under BIOS, (as with UEFI most other bootloaders were basically discontinued alltogether).

not occupying that valuable space inside your BIOS chip which could be used for something else. Once I tried compiling GRUB2 with the modules that I want, it turned out being much larger than expected, and I don't want to throw away all my cool stuff just to accommodate the GRUB2

I'd like to give some context to this claim. Grub2 will fit fine in 200k of flash as long as you dump most of the useless crap like unused commands for its "scripting environment" that I doubt anyone has ever really used, and filesystem drivers you will never use.

And even if you want a full-fat GRUB2 you don't need more than 1MB.

This is an issue only for ancient hardware, anything remotely new has 1MB or bigger flash and you can fit GRUB in there.

Nope, the main purpose of SeaBIOS nowadays is providing the convenient boot menu,

yeah, because people don't give a damn and just want to boot an OS, does not matter if it's still using dumb unsafe obsolete shit, as long as it works.

You're not better than people using stock firmware. Tinkering for the sake of tinkering.

I could only suggest for you to sit on the coreboot mailing lists, read the e-mails with technical info and their coreboot configs, and see for yourself that there are a lot of coreboot people doing just fine with SeaBIOS and without UEFI crap

There is a good minority of enlightened ones that use GRUB2 too.

[Grogan]

Gnome front end? It couldn't be worse than flashing a BIOS from Windows.

I have a Gigabyte board, that has "QFlash" that you can use from within Setup. You just load a file from a floppy or USB stick. That's how I was doing it, until they put out a BIOS revision whose image was too large for the utility. As a matter of semantics, they kept those permanently labeled as "beta" though they are the latest for the board.

I was troubleshooting driver issues and the first thing devs will ask you is "have you got the latest BIOS?" so I wanted to do it. I prepared a DOS disk, but the BIOS image was too large for that flashing utility too.

The only way to do it was from within Windows, using their winflash utility. Let me tell you, that did not sit well with me. It went without issue, but I practically had to extricate my seat cushion from my arse while it was flashing. I was thinking "any time now, a Stop Error BSOD is going to brick this"

[starshipeleven]

Gnome front end? It couldn't be worse than flashing a BIOS from Windows.

It's much much safer than that as it's not flashing anything, it's just sending the firmware to UEFI and asking it to flash it on reboot. The actual flashing is done by the UEFI's own flashing tool with no OS loaded, just like the QFlash utility.

This is what all modern HP, Dell and Lenovo hardware's "windows UEFI updater" also does, I strongly suspect that they are using the same UEFI "upgrade capsule" feature which is used here.