- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Libreboot, the free and open-source boot firmware project that replaces proprietary BIOS and UEFI firmware on supported hardware, has released version 26.11, transitioning to full UEFI support through the MrChromebox EDK2 payload, which also makes it compatible with Microsoft Windows.
With this release, nearly all supported boards now ship exclusively with EDK2 firmware. The project removed GRUB as a coreboot payload, along with the previously included MemTest86plus and CSMWrap payloads, simplifying firmware configuration and reducing maintenance.
However, this change comes with an important warning for existing users. Systems configured to boot in legacy BIOS mode must be migrated to UEFI, including setting up a proper EFI System Partition, before installing the new firmware. Otherwise, existing operating system installations may no longer boot.
Legacy booting is still possible, but users must add the required components themselves when compiling Libreboot. The build system now supports inserting GRUB EFI, MemTest86plus, and ReBIOS through its efi/ directory.
On the hardware side, Libreboot 26.11 enables TPM 2.0 by default on several systems, including the ThinkPad X270, X280, T480, T480s, and T580, along with the Supermicro X11SSH-F and Topton X2E N150. TPM support was previously disabled due to problems with SeaBIOS, which no longer occur with EDK2.
Dell Latitude laptops also receive fixes for fan control, battery status reporting, and lid-switch handling during suspend. These improvements use an updated ACPI implementation replacing older SMM-based patches. Furthermore, SD card reader functionality has been restored on the ThinkPad W541 and Dell Latitude E7240 through an EDK2 patch.
For Chromebook users, the release restores configurations matching upstream MrChromebox after changes in Libreboot 26.10 caused boot failures on some systems. The Dell OptiPlex 780 also switches to EDK2, while the OptiPlex 5050 SFF gains SATA hotplug support and a fix for PCIe error reporting related to certain wireless cards.
A security-related EDK2 fix addresses an ICMP packet bounds-checking vulnerability in its PXE implementation. According to the developers, Libreboot was not affected because its configurations use iPXE instead, but the patch has been incorporated into the distributed source code.
Finally, the release simplifies several aspects of Libreboot’s build system, including firmware payload configuration, source handling, and ROM naming. Custom firmware images now use clearer BIOS and UEFI prefixes. Improvements to the lbmk build utility make it easier to insert additional EFI payloads and work with older firmware images.
For more information, see the release announcement.
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This is so cool.
Also, I find the Windows compatibility funny, like modifying a compact car to add a flat bed just for hauling chicken droppings.
It is so technically impressive, but would make me question all of my life choices.
Windows is a huge market share, so it kinda make sense to try and support it. It still fullfill the project’s mission to open up the bootloader.
plus, it gives an excellent benchmark so you don’t have to compare apples to oranges when comparing battery life between windows and linux.
I always found it neat that Libreboot came bundled with GRUB but it was also an odd decicion now that I think about it
Why? I think Grub is awesome.
Can boot fully encrypted drives, RAIDs and has password functionality. And can load Memtest from flash, which is not the most critical thing nowadays, but still neat to have.
What features does EDK2 have?
edk2 isn’t replacing grub, it is the payload, I have for example edk2 and grub. It is a Uefi which executes the Grub Efi or any other bootloader. E.g systemd-boot or UKI. Btw edk2 is great
Well, as a matter of fact, EDK2 is replacing GRUB in Libreboot, it says so in the Changelog.
You can build an alternative version with other payloads, but the default one now is EDK2.
After all, CBFS is pretty modular, so everybody can run what they want. I just don’t get why EDK2 is supposedly so awesome, GRUB is way more awesome to me for the aforementioned reasons.
The only benefit I can think of is that EDK2 can run PCI Optionroms for external graphics, but coreboot itself can do that too now and still load GRUB in text mode.
My point was that it’s not EDK2 instead of GRUB at the same layer: EDK2 is the UEFI layer, and GRUB still runs fine on top of it as an EFI binary from your ESP. All the things you listed keep working that way: LUKS, RAID, password protection, even memtest via the efi/ insert mechanism. What you lose is only having GRUB directly in CBFS without an ESP.
What you gain with EDK2: Windows boots at all, TPM 2.0 works (the SeaBIOS issues that got it disabled are gone), and option ROMs for external GPUs.
Hmm.
Having EDK2 in flash defeats the purpose of having a customized secure GRUB config, because you can just escape EDK2 to boot whatever you want.
Do you happen to know if EDK2 can be configured to only load a specific executable and prevent or password protect external boot sources?
Loading Windows… sigh. What target group that is interested in custom BIOS firmware seriously wants to ever boot Windows? I guess there are very few legitimate usecases, but FreeDOS exists.
Loading OpROMs is a capability of coreboot, no need for SeaBIOS/vgabios or EDK2 just for that.
TPM2 support is also part of coreboot? Here I am unsure.
