title: Libreboot ...
FAQ -- Download -- Install -- Docs -- News -- Chat -- Bugs -- Send patches -- Buy
Libreboot is a free (as in freedom) BIOS or UEFI replacement, initialising the hardware and booting your operating system. It is also available preinstalled from these suppliers.
We provide user support via #libreboot IRC on Freenode. Development discussion also occurs on IRC. Instructions for sending patches are here.
Many people use non-free proprietary boot firmware, even if they use GNU+Linux. Non-free BIOS/UEFI firmware often contains backdoors, can be slow and have severe bugs, and you are left helpless at the mercy of the developers. By contrast, libreboot is fully free software, where anyone can contribute or inspect its code.
Libreboot is faster, more secure and more reliable than most non-free firmware, and can provide many advanced feature, like encrypted /boot/, GPG signature checking before booting your kernel, ability to load an OS from the flash chip, and more.
Libreboot's main upstream provider is coreboot, which we deblob. We upstream our custom patches to projects like coreboot, depthcharge, GRUB, and flashrom where possible. Together, we provide an automated build and installation system with nontechnical documentation, allowing Libreboot to be widely used.