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{.imgleft}- Recommend and distribute only free software. Coreboot distributes certain pieces of proprietary software which is needed on some systems. Examples can include things like CPU microcode updates, memory initialization blobs and so on. The coreboot project sometimes recommends adding more blobs which it does not distribute, such as the Video BIOS or Intel's Management Engine. However, a lot of dedicated and talented individuals in coreboot work hard to replace these blobs whenever possible.
- Support as much hardware as possible! Libreboot supports less hardware than coreboot, because most systems from coreboot still require certain proprietary software to work properly. Libreboot is an attempt to support as much hardware as possible, without any proprietary software.
- Make coreboot easy to use. Coreboot is notoriously difficult to install, due to an overall lack of user-focused documentation and support. Most people will simply give up before attempting to install coreboot.
Libreboot attempts to bridge this divide by providing a build system automating much of the coreboot image creation and customization. Secondly, the project produces documentation aimed at non-technical users. Thirdly, the project attempts to provide excellent user support via mailing lists and IRC.
Libreboot already comes with a payload (GRUB), flashrom and other needed parts. Everything is fully integrated, in a way where most of the complicated steps that are otherwise required, are instead done for the user in advance.
You can download ROM images for your libreboot system and install them without having to build anything from source. If, however, you are interested in building your own image, the build system makes it relatively easy to do so.
Not a coreboot fork!
{.imgright}Libreboot is not a fork of coreboot. Every so often, the project re-bases on the latest version of coreboot, with the number of custom patches in use minimized. Tested, stable (static) releases are then provided in Libreboot, based on specific coreboot revisions.
Coreboot is not entirely free software. It has binary blobs in it for some platforms. What Libreboot does is download several revisions of coreboot, for different boards, and de-blob those coreboot revisions. This is done using the linux-libre deblob scripts, to find binary blobs in coreboot.
All new coreboot development should be done in coreboot (upstream), not libreboot! Libreboot is about deblobbing and packaging coreboot in a user-friendly way, where most work is already done for the user.
For example, if you wanted to add a new board to libreboot, you should add it to coreboot first. Libreboot will automatically receive your code at a later date, when it updates itself.
The deblobbed coreboot tree used in libreboot is referred to as coreboot-libre, to distinguish it as a component of libreboot.
A coreboot fork is planned for the future. Nowadays, coreboot drops support for boards that are "unmaintained", which in some cases just means that nobody submitted a new status update (to the board-status repository), so nowadays Libreboot must maintain multiple versions of coreboot. This is unsustainable, so a fork is planned, re-adding all of the deleted boards, backporting newer coreboot features and, possibly, having support for those boards re-merged upstream, where coreboot and the fork will share code back and forth. As of 27 April 2021, work on this fork has not yet begun.