
Coreboot 4.11 - gautamcgoel
https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2019/11/19/announcing-coreboot-4-11/
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1-6
"Ron Minnich is a Software Engineer at Google. He has been writing firmware
for 40 years, starting with the z80 and 6800. He's also a long time
contributor in the Unix, BSD, Plan 9, and Linux communities. He started the
LinuxBIOS project in 1999, which was renamed to coreboot in 2008 and is now
used in tens of millions of Chromebooks. His most recent effort, LinuxBoot, is
now part of the Linux Foundation and aims to bring the benefits of a full
Linux kernel to several firmware environments, including coreboot, u-boot, and
UEFI." [https://www.opencompute.org/blog/ronald-minnich-google-
and-g...](https://www.opencompute.org/blog/ronald-minnich-google-and-gundrala-
goud-microsoft-named-project-leads-for-the-ocp-open-system-firmware-project)

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dpcx
As someone who doesn't know what Coreboot does, not having this information in
the first paragraph of this post isn't super useful. Add to the problem that
clicking on the Coreboot logo only takes me to the front page of the blog -
and there are no links to the actual homepage...

~~~
brian_herman__
"coreboot is an extended firmware platform that delivers a lightning fast and
secure boot experience on modern computers and embedded systems. As an Open
Source project it provides auditability and maximum control over technology."
[https://coreboot.org/](https://coreboot.org/)

~~~
StillBored
Which means nothing other than its open source and doesn't follow any
standards.

If google put 1/2 the effort into edk2 the world would be a lot closer to a
general purpose opensource firmware that actually works with things like
option roms, and booting on random boards instead of some tiny subset of
boards that google has beaten people into porting it onto.

~~~
floatboth
Coreboot is laser focused on early initialization and leaves everything like
option roms and disks and OS launching to the payload… which can be EDK2.

Coreboot is actually the easiest way to get pure EDK2 (without anything from
vendor UEFI builds) running on any random Intel mainboard :)

~~~
StillBored
Yes I know it can "chainload" edk, people have done similar things with uboot
in the past. The point being that the low level init code could conform to the
PE spec, which would be a lot cleaner implementation.

~~~
pgeorgi
> The point being that the low level init code could conform to the PE spec

The spec that is available under "read only, but don't implement" terms[0]
unless you manage to join a club that may or may not let you in[1] and can
kick you out at any time with 30 days notice[2]? Not sure that's a good base
for an open source project.

[0] [https://uefi.org/specifications](https://uefi.org/specifications) "By
downloading any of the UEFI Specifications, you acknowledge that no license,
express or implied, is granted to you to distribute, additionally reproduce,
implement or otherwise use for any purpose (other than to read only) the UEFI
Specifications"

[1] Section 2.1 in the "UEFI Adopter's Agreement"
([https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Adopters...](https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Adopters_Agreement_100907.pdf)):
"This Agreement shall become effective only: (a) if executed by the Secretary
(or another authorized representative of the Forum) and the Adopter"

[2] Section 2.2 of the same agreement: "shall continue until [...] terminated
by either the Forum or the Adopter on 30 days’ written notice."

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IntelMiner
I was always interested in using Coreboot for "retro" machines that have buggy
old vendor BIOSes, and may not even have updates available anymore (or easily
found)

Is there anywhere I can find out about the actual status of things like
Coreboot on Pentium III (Slot 1 or Socket 370) motherboards? I know they
maintain a "compatibility list" but I'm not sure if these boards have been
tested or if they'd have been lost to code churn

~~~
segfaultbuserr
The lifeblood of FOSS drivers, or coreboot in this case, is developers who are
using/interested in the machine. Unfortunately, I don't see many Pentium-III
fans in the coreboot community. And there was a major refactor in the coreboot
codebase since 4.0, the support of many old platforms have been killed.

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gautamcgoel
I wish they had more support for consumer desktop motherboards, so I could
flash my Asus board. Somehow coreboot seems to focus on laptops and server
boards.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
For a successful port: the hardware must attract the interest of a team of
developers, so this hardware platform...

(1) must be available globally.

(2) must be valued by developers as worthwhile, i.e. for a specific propose.

(3) must be relatively easy to reverse engineer, e.g. platform is not too new.

Thinkpad laptops are already popular among developers and hackers, and used
machines and motherboards can be obtained cheaply for a low price, each
generation often uses a pretty standard design, only with a newer chipset. As
a result, it became the "reference machine" for a lot of developers, including
developers working on security and privacy projects. The server motherboard is
a thing because there are hardware hackers who are interested in FOSS-friendly
and secure server platforms.

On the other hand, there are huge numbers of consumer desktop motherboards
with a lot of variations, every single one needs to be reverse-engineered
independently. We don't see a platform to gain the critical mass yet.

