Which would be a better replacement for BIOS/uefi ? Coreboot or Libreboot ?

submitted 4 weeks ago by

TheViking@nord.pub

Which would be a better replacement for BIOS/uefi ? Coreboot or Libreboot ?

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Comments in Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world

printf("%s", name);@piefed.blahaj.zone

they/them edited 4 weeks ago

That greatly depends on whether your system is compatible, and even then there is a chance that it will not work. I, for instance, tried flashing a Lenovo T480 with Libreboot, following the instructions on their official website, to no avail. Only after extensive digging did I come across some obscure forum post that said, “there is no such thing as Libreboot for a T480”. I didn’t argue since my knowledge of such low-level programming is extremely limited. I gave up. 🤣

TheViking@nord.pub

OP 4 weeks ago

So that means it depends upon the model of your machine ??

printf("%s", name);@piefed.blahaj.zone

they/them 4 weeks ago

https://libreboot.org/docs/install/#which-systems-are-supported-by-libreboot

Sí.

NaibofTabr@infosec.pub

4 weeks ago

It depends on the specific chipset of the motherboard.

Frankly, you shouldn’t attempt to replace BIOS/UEFI until you understand what it does and why it’s such a complicated problem to solve.

There’s a specification document: https://uefi.org/specs/UEFI/2.11/

You don’t need to understand the whole thing (I doubt any single person alive understands all of it), but you should read the Introduction chapter, especially the Organization*, *Goals*, and *UEFI Design Overview sections to get a handle on the broad concepts, and then skim some of the rest of it such as 2.1 Boot Manager and whichever hardware platform section is relevant for you under 2.3 Calling Conventions. This will help you understand some of the relevant terminology and details about how your hardware communicates which may be helpful for troubleshooting.

https://uefi.org/specifications

UEFI was first released in 2006, replacing BIOS which was implemented as a standard in 1981 but grew out of older projects. Understand that you’re talking about replacing a complex system with 50+ years of development behind it, which has been rigorously tested, with a substitute that has a far shorter development lifespan and far less field testing.

It’s great to want to try something like this as a learning experience. This layer of computing is often overlooked, though basically everything depends on it. It’s worth exploring. But, you should assume that any system you do this with is unstable, and probably sacrificial.