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Libreboot gives you freedoms that you otherwise can't get with most other boot firmware, plus faster boot speeds and better security. It's extremely powerful and configurable for many use cases.
You have rights. The right to privacy, freedom of thought, freedom of speech and the right to read. In this context, Libreboot gives you these rights. Your freedom matters. Right to repair matters. Many people use proprietary (non-libre) boot firmware, even if they use a libre OS. Proprietary firmware often contains backdoors, and can be buggy. The Libreboot project was founded in December 2013, with the express purpose of making coreboot firmware accessible for non-technical users.
The Libreboot project uses coreboot for hardware initialisation. Coreboot is notoriously difficult to install for most non-technical users; it handles only basic initialization and jumps to a separate payload program (e.g. GRUB, Tianocore), which must also be configured. Libreboot solves this problem; it is a coreboot distribution with an automated build system that builds complete ROM images, for more robust installation. Documentation is provided.
Libreboot is not a fork of coreboot
In fact, Libreboot tries to stay as close to stock coreboot as possible, for each board, but with many different types of configuration provided automatically by the Libreboot build system.
In the same way that Alpine Linux is a Linux distribution, Libreboot is
a coreboot distribution. If you want to build a ROM image from scratch, you
otherwise have to perform expert-level configuration of coreboot, GRUB and
whatever other software you need, to prepare the ROM image. With Libreboot,
you can literally download from Git or a source archive, and run make
, and it
will build entire ROM images. An automated build system, named lbmk
(Libreboot MaKe), builds these ROM images automatically, without any user input
or intervention required. Configuration has already been performed in advance.
If you were to build regular coreboot, without using Libreboot's automated build system, it would require a lot more intervention and decent technical knowledge to produce a working configuration.
Regular binary releases of Libreboot provide these ROM images pre-compiled, and you can simply install them, with no special knowledge or skill except the ability to follow simplified instructions, written for non-technical users.