% Retroboot 20210106 beta release, 6 January 2021
% Leah Rowe
% 6 January 2021

*Release date: January 6th, 2021.*

Retroboot is a *coreboot distribution* that provides automated building of
coreboot ROM images. Retroboot has its own build system named `rbmk` (short for
Retroboot Make) which:

* Downloads and patches all of the required software components (coreboot, GRUB,
  SeaBIOS, Tianocore, etc) and patches them as required.
* Builds required software
* Builds various coreboot ROM images, using included config files
* Pre-built ROM images are provided.
* User support provided
* Installation instructions provided

In a nutshell, Retroboot aims to make coreboot *easy to use*, thus making Free
Software at a low level more accessible to non-technical people. It provides
many advantages such as faster boot speeds and better security (because it's
Free Software, the code can be audited). Retroboot provides many unique features
that you can't get elsewhere; refer to the documentation.

Changes in this release, versus the 20201228 release:

* Tianocore payload now provided, on most targets (except ThinkPad X200 and X60).
  This provides UEFI support, but for now it does not include SeaBIOS CSM so it
  is a pure UEFI solution (SeaBIOS is provided separately, as a coreboot
  payload)
* Vast improvements to the build system; the build system now checks itself,
  and automatically performs various tasks that used to be done manually.
* Makefile now included, which simply runs `rbmk` commands. With this Makefile,
  Retroboot ROM images can be built more easily (just type `make`)
* ThinkPad X200 support added (with up to date coreboot) - one of many Libreboot
  targets that will soon be assimilated in Retroboot!
* ThinkPad X60 support added (with up to date coreboot) - yet another Libreboot
  target assimilated. More to follow in the near future!
* ThinkPad T420 support added
* ThinkPad T420S support added
* Large improvements have been made to the documentation, making them easier to
  read and understand.
* Improved `grub.cfg` included, in ROM images that use the GNU GRUB payload.
  This improved payload (provided by swiftgeek from the Libreboot project)
  un-hardcodes a lot of functionality and improves the usability of it, especially
  on i945 targets such as X60/T60
* Bug fixed in GNU GRUB build scripts; `gnulib` submodule in GRUB is now set
  to an exact revision, by `rbmk`. Previously, it was uncertain what revision
  would be used when downloading GRUB.
* Option ROMs now in a central location (`resources/blobs/`) rather than copying
  them to each board directory in `resources/coreboot/`

This is a *beta* release, so you should *not* expect it to be stable or to
work on your machine. Extensive testing is required!

NOTE: The build of Tianocore works on X230/X230/T420 but stalls on X200 so it
is not supported there for now. Rbmk currently does not support compiling 32 bit
Tianocore builds either, only 64-bit, so Tianocore support is excluded on
X60/T60 targets.
