The release of free bootable Libreboot firmware 20221214 is presented. The project develops a completely free fork from the CoreBoot project, providing a binary-free replacement for proprietary UEFI and BIOS firmware responsible for initializing the CPU, memory, peripherals and other hardware components.
Libreboot aims to create a system environment that completely dispenses with proprietary software, not only at the level of the operating system, but also the firmware that provides booting. Libreboot not only cleans CoreBoot of non-free components, but also adds tools to make it easier for end users to use, creating a distribution that can be used by any user with no special skills.
Among the supported hardware in Libreboot:
- Desktop systems Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L, Intel D510MO, Intel D410PT, Intel D945GCLF and Apple iMac 5,2.
- Notebooks: ThinkPad X60 / X60S / X60 Tablet, ThinkPad T60, Lenovo ThinkPad X200 / X200S / X200 Tablet/ X220 / X230, Lenovo ThinkPad R400, Lenovo ThinkPad T400 / T400S/ T420 / T440, Lenovo ThinkPad T500, Lenovo ThinkPad W500, Lenovo ThinkPad R500, Apple MacBook1 and MacBook2, and various Chromebooks from ASUS, Samsung, Acer, and HP.
In the new release:
- Added support for ASUS P2B_LS and P3B_F boards for testing with PCBox emulator. The ROM images for these boards already successfully initialize the memory and load the payload in the emulator, but are not yet able to initialize the VGA ROM.
- Added images for QEMU (arm64 and x86_64) that can be used for testing.
- Added support for laptops:
- Lenovo ThinkPad t430,
- Lenovo ThinkPad x230 / x230edp / x230 tablet,
- Lenovo ThinkPad t440p,
- Lenovo ThinkPad w541,
- Lenovo ThinkPad x220,
- Lenovo ThinkPad t420.
- Returned ROM images for Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2L boards that currently support only SeaBIOS payload components. The operation of the board is not yet stabilized, for example, there are problems with video, memory initialization and slow loading, only ATA emulation (without AHCI) can be used in the SATA controller at this stage of development.
- Added support for ARM devices, for which u-boot from CoreBoot is used as payload instead of depthcharge:
- Samsung Chromebook 2 13β³,
- Samsung Chromebook 2 11β³,
- HP Chromebook 11 G1,
- Samsung Chromebook XE303,
- HP Chromebook 14 G3,
- Acer Chromebook 13 (CB5-311, C810),
- ASUS Chromebit CS10,
- ASUS Chromebook Flip C100PA,
- ASUS Chromebook C201PA,
- ASUS Chromebook Flip C101,
- Samsung Chromebook Plus (v1),
- Support for ASUS KCMA-D8, ASUS KGPE-D16 and ASUS KFSN4-DRE boards has been discontinued, as they failed to achieve stable memory initialization (raminit) and their support was abandoned.
Source: opennet.ru