Coreboot News Archives

For those still running a 1st Generation Xeon Scalable "Skylake" era server, support for it within the open-source Coreboot firmware may continue to improve all these years later thanks to firmware consulting firm 9elements.

Following the rather bizarre blog post two weeks ago of laptop vendor MALIBAL suggesting not supporting Coreboot due to their frustrating experiences dealing with Coreboot consulting firms, the Coreboot project itself has now issued a response.

In a rather surprising post this morning, laptop vendor MALIBAL that offers both Linux and Windows systems is suggesting to not support the Coreboot project for open-source system firmware.

Coreboot 24.08 debuted on Monday night as the newest feature release for this open-source system firmware project that allows replacing the proprietary BIOS/firmware on many different platforms. With Coreboot 24.08 comes more than 900 patches from 130+ developers in continuing to support new motherboards and making other improvements.

The Open-Source Firmware Foundation is out with an interesting blog post by Google firmware engineer Subrata Banik around adapting the Coreboot-based Chrome AP Firmware for 64-bit booting. The transition to 64-bit booting is happening for the system firmware powering Chromebooks and other Chrome devices and is driven in part for Intel Panther Lake generation hardware.

Going back to 2022 we've seen work by Intel engineers on adding Meteor Lake SoC support to Coreboot while to date there hasn't been much in the way of actual Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" laptops with Coreboot as a replacement to the proprietary BIOS/firmware. But to be shown later today is one of the first laptop designs using these latest Intel mobile processors and running the Dasharo downstream of Coreboot.

Coreboot 24.05 is available today as the newest stable release of this open-source system firmware solution. With Coreboot 24.05 there is support for 25 more motherboards/platforms and an assortment of other improvements.

The Netherlands-based PC vendor NovaCustom that specializes in privacy/security minded hardware and user freedoms has announced their V54 and V56 laptops. These new laptops powered by Intel Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" SoCs are self-proclaimed as the fastest Coreboot laptops in the world.

Succeeding last year's Coreboot 4.22 release is now a new release... Coreboot 24.02. This open-source system firmware project is now the latest to shift to a year-month versioning system. The newly-christened Coreboot 24.02 brings support for three new motherboards, a number of ACPI updates, and also pulls in the new GRUB 2.12 and other changes.

For those wanting to use an open-source Coreboot-based firmware on your desktop with modern hardware, a rare and leading option is 3mdeb's Coreboot-based "Dasharo" firmware on select MSI Z690/Z790 motherboards.

A new release of Coreboot is available today as the increasingly popular open-source system firmware solution that's used by Chromebooks, increasing hyperscaler / data center industry interest due to increased code transparency and security, System76 laptops, and more. Coreboot 4.22 is the new release and brings initial AMD OpenSIL code integration, 17 new motherboard ports, and more. Coreboot 4.22 will be succeeded next year by Coreboot 24.02.

Leah Rowe has announced the inaugural release of Canoeboot, what is another fork of Leah's own Libreboot that continues to serve as a free software minded fork of Coreboot.

Libreboot 20231021 was published for testing today as the newest Coreboot downstream focused on providing only fully free software support for system firmware with more stringent open-source requirements than Coreboot itself.

The firmware folks at 3mdeb have released Dasharo 1.1.2 for the MSI PRO Z690-A motherboard. In case you missed it, last year 3mdeb ported Coreboot/Dasharo to select MSI desktop motherboards that are readily available in retail channels and supporting the latest Intel processors. This started with the MSI PRO Z690-A and since extended to the Z790 series. 3mdeb has released an updated Dasharo build with some new features for replacing the proprietary BIOS on these motherboards.

Going along with AMD's work on AMD openSIL for open-sourcing the CPU silicon initialization code to ultimately replace AGESA in future hardware platforms, the initial EPYC "Genoa" code for Coreboot has been upstreamed along with the Onyx motherboard target.

Coreboot 4.21 is available this week as the newest tagged release for this open-source system BIOS/firmware solution. Coreboot 4.21 brings a number of new motherboard ports as well as various core improvements.

Upstreamed into the Coreboot Git repository this week is the ability to run on the MSI PRO Z790-P DDR4 and DDR5 motherboards for enjoying a latest-generation Intel desktop motherboard that is readily available as an alternative to using the proprietary BIOS implementations.

The amdfwtool utility living within the Coreboot repository for dealing with AMD platform firmware files has now added support for EPYC 9004 "Genoa" processors.

The newest motherboard port to land in mainline Coreboot Git is for enabling the HP EliteBook 820 G2 laptop.

Just days after System76 upstreamed Intel Raptor Lake HX and their new Adder WS 3 laptop into Coreboot, three more of their laptops have now made their way to upstream Coreboot.

Libreboot as the downstream of Coreboot focused on providing fully open-source system firmware without binary blobs has been quite active recently. There have been several new systems added recently, introducing support for shipping ROMs without CPU microcode included, and other changes. This latest wor has culminated into the Libreboot 20230625 release.

CPU microcode updates are commonly done in the name of security fixes and resolving functionality issues.. In recent years, CPU microcode updates have been a much more common -- and important -- occurrence. While all modern CPUs rely on microcode it's just a matter of whether the version used is baked into the hardware or an updated version loaded by the BIOS or OS at boot time, a "vocal minority" of users are unhappy with CPU microcode being included in Libreboot ROMs. Thus moving forward there will be alternative builds of Libreboot for different motherboards with the CPU microcode stripped out in the name of software freedom.

Linux laptop/desktop vendor System76 has made some improvements to their Coreboot open firmware offerings to benefit their latest Intel Core 13th Gen "Raptor Lake" wares as well as prior generation devices.

Coreboot 4.20 has been released as the newest feature release for this project continuing to provide open-source system firmware/BIOS for Chromebooks, servers, and a range of laptops and desktops.

Libreboot as the downstream of Coreboot focused on ensuring 100% open-source system firmware support without any lurking binary blobs is out this Sunday with a new feature release.

The Flashrom project that serves as an open-source firmware/ROM flashing utility not only for system BIOS/UEFI on motherboards but also capable of flashing firmware for various network / GPU / storage controller cards and other programmable devices has decided to effectively split into two.

Libreboot as the downstream of Coreboot focused on providing fully open-source system firmware support has added support for the Dell Latitute E6400, a laptop from the Intel Core 2 Duo days that was popular with many businesses and can be found via various used channels for around $100.

The HP Elite 8200 was once popular and very common among workplaces and can still be found used/refurbished for a little more than $100 for this small form factor PC. Libreboot has now added support for the HP Elite 8200 as its newest desktop port for this Intel Sandy Bridge era system.

Libreboot is the downstream of Coreboot focused on having fully open-source / free software replacements to proprietary BIOS/firmware on x86 and ARM systems. Out today is Libreboot 20230413 as the latest step forward for the project.

AMD and their partners continue working on bringing up Coreboot for the Ryzen Mobile 7040 Series "Phoenix" support for those very interesting forthcoming mobile processors with Zen 4 CPU cores and RDNA3 graphics.

More Intel 4th Gen Xeon Scalable "Sapphire Rapids" code was merged this weekend into Coreboot as part of enabling this latest generation Intel server platform to enjoy this open-source system firmware solution when paired with the necessary Intel FSP binaries.

Libreboot 20230319 has been released as the downstream of Coreboot focused on providing only pure open-source firmware replacements to proprietary BIOS/UEFI platforms compared to all the blobs permitted in upstream Coreboot.

This week TikTok-owner ByteDance hosted the CloudFW Open System Firmware Symposium to talk up their open-source firmware work, showcase their industry partnerships, and more. One interesting takeaway is that thanks to the weight of ByteDance, Lenovo is now supporting LinuxBoot in some capacity.

TikTok owner Bytedance this week hosted their CloudFW Open System Firmware Symposium in Beijing where they celebrated the launch of CloudFW 2.0 as they implement Coreboot to replace UEFI.

For those that happen to have an ASRock B75M-ITX in their collection or have just been looking for an old Intel Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge era system that can run the open-source Coreboot firmware, this mini-ITX desktop motherboard can run upstream Coreboot with the latest changes made this week.

Merged on Saturday to upstream Coreboot was support for some of the latest Intel Alderlake (and signs of Raptor Lake) powered laptops from Linux vendor System76.

For modern Intel platforms supporting Coreboot whether it be for Chromebooks or on server platforms, they are still beholden to the Intel Firmware Support Package (FSP) binary blobs. But Google and Intel engineers have been working to enable more flexibility around the FSP binaries by being able to optionally reduce the amount of proprietary firmware executed on the CPU, optionally weeding out some of the optional FSP components, and optimizing the status quo to achieve greater boot speeds.

Coreboot 4.19 is now available as the latest tagged release for this prominent open-source project allowing various motherboards with their proprietary firmware/BIOS to be replaced by this free software solution.

One of the exciting Coreboot / open-source firmware milestones of 2022 was a Coreboot/Dasharo port to a readily available Intel Alder Lake motherboard from MSI with the port being carried out by consulting firm 3mdeb. That port started with the MSI PRO Z690-A WiFi DDR4 and then more recently focused on the DDR5 variant. That MSI PRO Z690-A WiFi DDR5 support has now been upstreamed into mainline Coreboot.

After a half-year of development, Libreboot 20221214 is now available for this downstream of Coreboot that is focused on software freedom and providing fully open-source firmware support. Libreboot also enhances the experience with an automated build system and other changes in the name of software freedom and being user-friendly.

Earlier this year the Open-Source Firmware Foundation was created to help advance open firmware development. Today the Coreboot project has officially joined the Open-Source Firmware Foundation.

One of the exciting open-source milestones this year was Dasharo/Coreboot being ported to a modern Intel Alder Lake Z690 motherboard that is readily available and at a decent price. That work by the open-source firmware engineers at 3mdeb was focused on the MSI PRO Z690-A WiFi DDR4 motherboard while with today's v1.1 release there is also support now for the MSI PRO Z690-A WiFi DDR5.

Earlier this year Coreboot and the Dasharo downstream were ported to the MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4 motherboard. This was very exciting in that a current-generation Intel desktop motherboard could run Coreboot and readily available through various Internet retailers. But many inquired about whether the MSI PRO Z690-A DDR5 variant would see similar support and now that too is being worked on.

Coreboot 4.18 had been planned for release in August but after that slipped, this newest Coreboot feature release is now shipping and comes with many hardware support improvements and other changes for this open-source system firmware implementation.

Leah Rowe has announced the release of Libreboot 20220710, the downstream of Coreboot that takes a firm approach to ensure boot firmware freedom with avoiding proprietary blobs even when it means reduced hardware coverage/support. As such with avoiding the likes of the Intel FSP, the supported list of motherboards is quite limited.

The past few months we have been closely covering the Coreboot port to an MSI retail motherboard for Intel Alder Lake. This port carried out by the 3mdeb consulting firm has been with their downstream "Dasharo" firmware based on Coreboot while as of yesterday the motherboard port has begun landing in upstream Coreboot.

Earlier this year the folks at firmware consulting firm 3mdeb announced a open-source Coreboot port to a retail Intel Alder Lake motherboard. It's very exciting since outside of Chromebooks, IHV reference boards, and custom server platforms at hyperscalers, it's still rare to find Coreboot support on modern, retail boards. That "Dasharo" open-source firmware effort for the MSI Z690-A WiFi DDR4 has come together nicely over a matter of weeks and the developers are now celebrating their v1.0 release.

Coreboot developers are releasing Coreboot 4.17 today with various new motherboards supported, support for GRUB2 atop SeaBIOS as a payload, and various low-level code improvements too. Plus Coreboot 4.17 brings the "coreDOOM" payload -- yes, it's possible to get the game Doom running atop this system firmware. There is also AMD Platform Secure Boot (PSB) support introduced to Coreboot too.

The folks from the Polish open-source firmware consulting firmware 3mdeb are hosting another "OSF vPub" where they discuss open-source firmware efforts over beers in this currently-virtual event.

When it comes to running open-source Coreboot on retail motherboards it's sadly mostly a matter of generations-old platforms like various AMD Opteron server motherboards, old ThinkPads, many generation old motherboards for out-of-date Intel CPUs, and other dated hardware. To much excitement, 3mdeb has been porting Coreboot and the Dasharo open-source firmware to the MSI PRO Z690-A (DDR4) motherboards... Yes, finally Coreboot on a retail and broadly available motherboard that's latest-generation!