GNU Boot 0.1 RC1 Released For This Coreboot/Libreboot Fork

The first release candidate of the inaugural GNU Boot has been released with users sought to try out this fork of Libreboot that in turn is derived from Coreboot.

GNU Boot aims to be a "freedom respecting boot firmware" based on Coreboot/Libreboot but aims to be easier to compile and restricting the scope of supported motherboards/systems to those that do not depend upon any closed-source/proprietary components.

GNU Boot reportedly decided to fork from Libreboot over Libreboot's Binary Blob Reduction policy. There was then drama over the summer with the Libreboot project trying to issue a GNU Boot release that weren't official/authorized.

In any event this weekend was marked by the release of GNU Boot 0.1 RC1.

"GNU Boot has published its first release candidate, and we need help for testing, at first from people who are able to recover from computers that don't boot anymore.

This is because, while we have very minimal changes on top of the code used by the last Libreboot release that didn't contain nonfree software, we didn't test all the images ourselves yet, so there is still risks of ending up with computers that don't boot anymore.

If the code works fine, we will most likely be able to release it as-is but we (the current maintainers) still have a lot of work to do before the release.

For instance we still need to integrate the code from the website, find good ways to deploy it, make sure that the installation documentation works (for instance by asking for help from testers and fixing it), etc.

As for accepting patches, we're not ready yet to do that yet, but we plan to have that done for the first release, or before that depending on how things work.

For reporting what images work, you can reply to this mail (or open a bug report).

The GNU Boot maintainers."

While they aim to be easier to use than Coreboot, for now with the limited infrastructure it's not so straight-forward. Their website repository is currently empty and not much documentation published, particularly around what motherboards they are supporting or their support plans. In any event, it will be interesting to see what comes out of GNU Boot.