corna/libreboot: Libreboot is a free boot fimware implementation, to replace the non-free BIOS/UEFI firmware found on most systems. It initializes the hardware and starts a bootloader for your operating system. @ hcl/t400-t500-cpu-compatibility

title: Tasks for the next stable version release of Libreboot ...

Libreboot now has an issue tracker, at https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot/issues. The purpose of this page is to list current high priority tasks, which are desirable and/or required for the next release.

Libreboot releases happen whenever Libreboot is in a state that the maintainers agree is suitable to be considered for making a new stable release. This is to be determined by overall consensus, per release.

This page is updated periodically, to reflect the issues currently open on the bug tracker.

Port x86 to the Paper build system

libreboot/libreboot#108

Paper is the new build system in Libreboot, feature-complete for ARM and with many improvements, but the old build system is still used for x86 Intel and AMD systems in Libreboot.

Paper has more features, is more modular, is better designed and superior in terms of maintainability.

Dump coreboot as firmware upstream. Adopt librecore instead

libreboot/libreboot#44

It may be necessary to keep coreboot, for the ARM chromebooks (rk3288 chipset).

Libreboot is a coreboot distribution, which integrates payloads, utilities, documentation, additional patches/fixes and integrates everything together. You can think of it like a GNU+Linux distribution, but it's a distribution of the boot firmware, not the operating system. Libreboot incorporates coreboot, deblobbing it with deblob scripts.

Librecore is a whole new fork of coreboot, and it is its own upstream, with many coreboot developers working on it. It deblobs coreboot in-tree, without deblob scripts. The only blobs that Librecore distributes is CPU microcode updates, and we can simply exclude those in Libreboot, just as the current build system deletes them after it downloads coreboot.

Librecore generally has a much more focused team, and their priority is libre hardware. It is a very suitable upstream for Libreboot, much more so than the coreboot project. Librecore is a very new project (formed in December 2016).

See: http://librecore.info/ IRC channel (on freenode): #librecore

Its main developers are damo22, avph, funfunctor and others from the #coreboot IRC channel. Of interest: damo22 and avph used to work for Libreboot, before forming the Librecore project.

Current board fixes in Libreboot's git repository, not in the current stable release of Libreboot:

gm45: use correct vbt string (needed for external monitors)
i945: add fake vbt (needed for external screens)
ga-g41m-es2l: enable use of PCIe x16 port
i945: add support for external monitors in grub
add vesafb mode to ga-g41m-es2l
gm45: add support for external monitors in grub
Fix low-res screens on T60
add hda verb to t60 (fixes mic)
gm45: fix IOMMU

There may be others. The above patches are most likely already merged in Librecore's main Git repository. This should be investigated. If so, then they can be deleted from Libreboot since they would already be merged upstream.