The LinuxBoot project has been around for almost two years and has made significant progress in that time. This project is positioned as an open analogue of proprietary UEFI firmware. However, until recently, the system was rather limited. However, now Chris Koch of Google new version as part of the Security Summit 2019.
The new LinuxBoot build is reported to support booting Windows 10. VMware and Xen booting also works. Below is a video from the summit, and presentation available.
Note that the first motherboard with LinuxBoot firmware was the Intel S2600wf. It was also used in Dell R630 servers. The project involves specialists from Google, Facebook, Horizon Computing Solutions and Two Sigma.
Within the framework of LinuxBoot, all components related to the Linux kernel are developed, while they will not be tied to a specific stuffing of the runtime environment. Coreboot, Uboot SPL and UEFI PEI are used for hardware initialization. This will block UEFI, SMM and Intel ME background activity, as well as increase protection, because proprietary firmware is often full of “holes” and security vulnerabilities.
In addition, according to some reports, LinuxBoot allows you to speed up server loading by dozens of times by removing unused code and various optimizations. At the same time, manufacturers are still reluctant to switch to LinuxBoot. However, in the future, this attitude towards open source may change, because the use of open firmware increases the likelihood of finding a vulnerability and speeds up the process of fixing.
Source: 3dnews.ru