Libreboot aims to create a system environment that completely dispenses with proprietary software
Released Libreboot boot firmware version 20230625, version in which a lot of bug fixes have been made, as well as that support for new boards and various devices has been added despite being a corrective version.
For those who are not familiar with Libreboot, they should know that this is a project that develops a completely free fork of the CoreBoot project, which provides a binary-free replacement for the proprietary UEFI and BIOS firmware responsible for initializing the CPU, memory, peripherals, and other hardware components.
libreboot provides bootable firmware for compatible x86/ARM machines, starting a bootloader which then loads your operating system. Replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware on x86 machines and provides configuration improved on supported ARM-based Chromebooks (U-Boot bootloader, instead of Google's deep-load bootloader).
On x86 machines, the GRUB and SeaBIOS coreboot payloads are officially supported and are provided in different configurations per machine. You can find the list of compatible hardware in the Libreboot documentation.
Main news of Libreboot 20230625
In this new version of Libreboot 20230625 that is presented, it is highlighted that Work has been done to improve stability and fix bugs when working with previously compatible boards.
Another change that stands out in this new version is that unified all scripts in lbmk main directory (build system). All core logic is now a single script, which eliminates unnecessary code repetition, plus help text has been removed from certain scripts.
In addition to this, it is also highlighted that now coreboot utilities are more robust, plus fixed a bug where utilities were unnecessarily recompiled, slowing down the creation of multiple images.
The new utility "spkmodem_recvim" coreboot front page, which in turn originally forked it from GNU GRUB. This is a receive client for spkmodem, a type of serial console delivered via pulses through the PC speaker. The Libreboot version greatly improves error handling, and has been redesigned for the OpenBSD coding style, to replace the GNU coding style.
On the other hand, it is highlighted that boot logo size reduced to ~3KB, down to ~12KB, which was done, with no loss of image quality.
As for the bug fixes bugs within subshells are highlighted, as well as increasing the size of the EFI variable buffer in order to fix a bug where the Debian signed shim allocates too many EFI variables to fit in the space provided, breaking the build process. boot into Debian.
In addition to the default images that include firmware for the x86 CPU, there are alternative images that come without firmware.
For the part of support improvements, The following devices are highlighted and are now supported in this new release:
- Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L motherboard
- Acer G43T-AM3
- Intel D510MO and D410PT motherboards
- Apple iMac 5,2
- HP Elite 8200 SFF/MT (HP 6200 Pro Business will probably work too)
- HP Elite 8300 USDT
Laptops (Intel, x86)
- Dell Latitude E6400 (easy to flash, no teardown, hardware similar to X200/T400)
- ThinkPad X60 / X60S / X60 Tablet
- ThinkPad T60 (with Intel GPU)
- Lenovo ThinkPad X200 / X200S / X200 Tablet
- Lenovo ThinkPad X301
- Lenovo ThinkPad R400
- Lenovo ThinkPad T400 / T400S
- Lenovo ThinkPad T500
- Lenovo ThinkPad T530 / W530
- Lenovo ThinkPad W500
- Lenovo ThinkPad R500
- Apple MacBook1,1 and MacBook2,1
- Lenovo ThinkPad T440p
- Lenovo ThinkPad X220
- Lenovo Thinkpad X220t
- Lenovo ThinkPad T420
- Lenovo ThinkPad T420S
- Lenovo ThinkPad T430
- Lenovo ThinkPad X230
- Lenovo Thinkpad X230t
- Lenovo ThinkPad W541
- HP EliteBook 2560p
- HP EliteBook 2570p
- HP EliteBook Folio 9470m
Laptops (ARM, with U-Boot payload)
- ASUS Chromebook Flip C101 (gru-bob)
- Samsung Chromebook Plus (v1) (gru-kevin)
Finally, if you are interested in learning more about this new release, you can check the details at the following link.