Coreboot 24.08 has been released, as announced on the project's blog. coreboot is a fast, flexible, and secure extended firmware platform to help boot modern computers and embedded systems. Some hardware comes with coreboot these days as vendors increasingly offer it as an option. In other cases, if you have a supported chip set, it can be used to replace the slower, less secure, proprietary UEFI ("BIOS") firmware which came with the hardware.
We are pleased to announce the release of coreboot 24.08, another significant milestone in our ongoing commitment to delivering open-source firmware solutions. This release includes over 900 commits, contributed by more than 130 dedicated individuals from our global community. The updates in 24.08 bring various enhancements, optimizations, and new features that further improve the reliability and performance of coreboot across supported platforms.
The next release is planned for mid-November. It has been a while since SN has addressed firmware. Libreboot is a variant of Coreboot but with more of the proprietary blobs removed.
Previously:
(2021) Libreboot Sees First New Release In Nearly 5 Years, Supports More Old Motherboards
(2020) "Project X" - Pure Open-Source Coreboot Support On AMD Zen
(2019) NSA Contributing Low-Level Code to Coreboot UEFI BIOS Alternative
(2014) Replace your Proprietary BIOS with Libreboot
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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) would like you to replace your proprietary BIOS with Libreboot:
With the launch of the Libreboot project, users now have an easy-to-install, 100% free software replacement for proprietary BIOS/boot programs. This project is important; currently, many computer-makers notoriously deny free software developers the information they need to develop free replacements for the proprietary software they ship with their products. In some cases, manufacturers do not even share enough information for it to be possible to install a free operating system.
In order to make it possible to run Libreboot on as many hardware platforms as possible, the project needs your help. Fortunately, there are a lot of simple and easy ways you can start supporting the project today, including buying a computer with Libreboot preinstalled, helping to test Libreboot by installing it on new systems, and directly contributing code and documentation to the project or to its upstream parent, Coreboot.
NSA Starts Contributing Low-Level Code to UEFI BIOS Alternative
The NSA has started assigning developers to the Coreboot project, which is an open source alternative to Windows BIOS/UEFI firmware. The NSA's Eugene Myers has begun contributing SMI Transfer Monitor (STM) implementation code for the x86 processor. Myers works for NSA’s Trusted Systems Research Group, which according to the agency’s website, is meant to “conduct and sponsor research in the technologies and techniques which will secure America's information systems of tomorrow.”
Myers published a paper about STM last year on how NSA’s STM implementation could work. All Coreboot code, including all the STM contributions from the NSA, are open source, so anyone could verify that there is no backdoor in there -- in theory.
In practice, the NSA could have also written the code in a less-than-secure way with vulnerabilities that are hard to detect without more experienced security researchers. Alternatively, the NSA could also update this implementation years later, when there are less eyes on the STM implementation and the update would no longer make headlines.
Better to avoid coreboot and feel secure that the hardware could never subvert my expectations of security and privacy. /s
"Project X" - Pure Open-Source Coreboot Support On AMD Zen
Not only are AMD Ryzen 5000 series completely dominating in performance but they could soon see open-source Coreboot support as an alternative to the proprietary firmware/BIOS. Project X is an interesting effort around blob-free Coreboot/Oreboot support on AMD Zen.
Ron Minnich of Google who has been one of the original developers to Coreboot/LinuxBIOS has been engaged in "Project X" for providing "pure open-source" support on AMD Zen platforms.
Project X is about "eXcising binary blobs from the x86 part of Zen CPUs." This open-source AMD Zen support is being worked on both for Coreboot and the Oreboot downstream that is written in Rust.
Minnich will be talking about Project X in more detail next month during the Open-Source Firmware Conference (OSFC 2020) taking place at the start of the month.
Libreboot Sees First New Release In Nearly 5 Years, Supports More Old Motherboards
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.
Libreboot 20210522 allows more Intel GM45 / X3X era hardware to work with this fully open-source alternative to proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware. New boards supported by this Libreboot release include the Acer G43T-AM3, Lenovo ThinkPad R500, Lenovo ThinkPad X301, and Intel G43T-AM3. Yeah, it's quite hard in 2021 to get excited about Socket 775 motherboards or 45nm Penryn laptops. Libreboot is largely limited to supporting these outdated platforms due to its focus on being fully open-source and not using any Intel FSP binaries, etc.
Previously: Replace your Proprietary BIOS with Libreboot
AMD to Consider Coreboot/Libreboot Support
Libreboot Applies to Rejoin GNU
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday September 13 2024, @06:26PM
Of course the big question is one of choice. If your computer has UEFI built in, as most do, with possibly a BIOS option of emulating a so-called "legacy boot", what are your chances of replacing that with coreboot?