this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Libreboot
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A Lemmy community for Libreboot, the essential firmware for fully liberating your laptop!
Libreboot is a free (libre) BIOS/UEFI replacement. Based on coreboot, the aim is to distribute low-level boot firmware that is 100% free software, and easy to use.
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I got a question. How likely am I to brick my laptop by flashing libreboot if it's not on the supported hardware list?
I'm a software guy, so I don't fully know the dangers of messing with firmware lol
My understanding is that you simply won't be able to flash libreboot on a non-supported laptop. Bear in mind, 'supported' here actually means 'a machine that happens not to have Intel Management Engine'.
To put it differently, Libreboot's maintainer hasn't consciously chosen supported hardware. It's just that newer generations of Intel and AMD chips make it impossible to flash libreboot on them. For these machines, the closest you can get is flashing coreboot, which disables/ringfences the problematic, privacy-threatening firmware (Intel ME, in the case of Intel) but doesn't eliminate it. Also, coreboot isn't free software -- libreboot was created as an alternative that's truly free (as in freedom, not beer, as the saying goes).
This is also why libreboot-compatible laptops tend to be really old Thinkpads and Chromebooks from between 2008-2012ish. If you want a more modern laptop, then I'd suggest coreboot, with the main caveat that strictly speaking, coreboot doesn't comprehensively eliminate the privacy problem the way libreboot does, and that it's also not free software.
Hey, thanks for the great response!
I was wondering why all the supported hardware were thinkpads from yesteryear. That makes sense about IME too. My laptop is definitely too modern then, unfortunately.
No problems! I feel like you could look into coreboot, but I really don't know much about it. FWIW, I'm personally optimistic that RISC-V, being both open-source and a real competitor to the chip cartels, might lead us to a world where we can yet again have modern hardware that's truly privacy-respecting.
Until then, it's libreboot. Still, FWIW, I personally use a linux laptop with coreboot on it, running an 11th Gen Intel i7. Hoping to libreboot an old ThinkPad I got my hands on soon, just as an experiment. The goal is to fully move to that one as a daily driver -- we'll see.
I think my next laptop will be one preloaded with coreboot or libreboot, been eyeing something from the system76 lineup. Until then I'm stuck with this MSI gaming laptop lol