Coreboot News Archives

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!

Coreboot 4.16 is out this weekend as the newest quarterly release for this project striving for open-source system firmware / BIOS replacements.

Thanks to Google engineers there is Resizable BAR "ReBAR" support being worked on for the open-source Coreboot.

As of yesterday Intel's contributed Programmable Services Engine "PSE" support has been merged into mainline Coreboot for supporting this Arm-based dedicated offload engine found within select Intel processors.

Another aging Intel motherboard is now supported by Coreboot for those wanting to free your system down to the BIOS.

Taking place this week was the annual Open-Source Firmware Conference "OSFC" devoted to open-source firmware from Coreboot to open-source BMC solutions and other low-level booting/initialization efforts.

Libreboot 20211122 has been released as the downstream fork of Coreboot on providing fully free software boot firmware support.

British Linux PC vendor Star Labs now has support for their StarBook Mk V laptop upstreamed into Coreboot, which marks their second product having this achievement.

Coreboot 4.15 was tagged today as the latest advertised version of this open-source firmware implementation for systems. With this new version are 21 additional laptops and motherboards supported.

A number of System76 laptops saw their Coreboot open-source firmware ports merged to the mainline code-base today.

Recently in Coreboot Git has been more work on expanding its (experimental) 64-bit mode for execution.

For those wanting to get into open-source firmware development or even just to have a small SOHO x86_64 low-cost Intel server platform that is as open as possible, ASRock Rack happens to now boast one of the best solutions.

Coreboot making progress on its temporary RAM initialization code (cache as RAM) means that its usage of the FSP-T binary blob is increasingly unnecessary.

While Intel engineers have been working on Alder Lake support for Coreboot as with other recent CPU generations that open-source firmware/BIOS support remains focused on their reference boards with a particular focus on meeting necessary requirements for Google Chromebook devices. Sadly, there is not much or any in the way of consumer retail motherboard support at this point. For those looking for retail desktop motherboard support for Coreboot, aside from the open-source POWER9 systems out of Raptor Computing, on the x86_64 front it largely means using aging Intel and AMD platforms.

In addition to getting Intel's Alder Lake hybrid processors ready for the Linux kernel and other areas of the operating system stack, Intel's open-source engineers have continued their trend in recent weeks of upstreaming more Alder Lake work into Coreboot.

Libreboot as the Coreboot downstream focused on providing a fully open-source BIOS/firmware replacement without any black boxes / binary blobs is out with a new release. The prior tagged release of Libreboot was all the way back in 2016 while has now been succeeded by a new release albeit in testing form.

It's been a half-year already since Coreboot 4.13 was released so out now is Coreboot 4.14 that is represented by over thirty six hundred new commits adding dozens of new motherboards now supported.

The LinuxBoot project that works to replace some portions of modern Linux server firmware with the Linux kernel and other open-source components has now integrated support for the convenient netboot.xyz project.

Consulting firm 3mdeb that specializes in embedded systems with an emphasis on open-source firmware solutions like Coreboot is hosting an interesting virtual event later today.

Given all the headaches and concerns from the early days of UEFI SecureBoot, for longtime Linux users hearing Microsoft is working on another firmware-level standard in the name of security may raise concerns... Microsoft in conjunction with Intel has been spearheading the Platform Runtime Mechanism (PRM) that is about moving more code out of the System Management Mode (SMM) and executing it within the OS/VMM context. PRM remains a work-in-progress but the Windows support is already ready within Windows Insiders builds while the Linux support will come after the ACPI specification around it has been finalized.

Coreboot 4.13 is out today as the latest tagged version of this open-source firmware platform supporting a wide range of hardware.

With System76 working towards offering more AMD Linux laptop options as well as continuing to expand their line-up of AMD desktop offerings, it appears their next hurdle is on bringing Coreboot to these current-generation AMD platforms.

The German-based 9elements Cyber Security has ported Coreboot to another newer Intel server motherboard.