r/coreboot

To the firmware engineering teams at American Megatrends (AMI) and other major UEFI developers:Millions of computers worldwide rely on AMI**'s Aptio firmware to boot and manage hardware. Yet, entering the pre-OS environment remains a complete blackout for blind and visually impaired users who rely on screen readers like NVDA.We are fully capable of managing our devices, configuring systems, and performing maintenance. What we lack is not technical skill, but basic accessibility engineering in the BIOS. Relying exclusively on graphical, visual-only interfaces creates an unnecessary barrier and locks blind users out of fundamental hardware controlWith modern UEFI frameworks, it is entirely feasible to integrate lightweight text-to-speech or basic audio/screen-reader hooks into the pre-boot environment. We urge AMI engineers and firmware developers to prioritize accessibility in future Aptio releases. Technology should empower everyone equally, starting from the moment the power button is pressed."**

So I have an HP ProBook 6460b and I can already run Linux perfectly with coreboot. I originally installed coreboot because I wanted to be able to run an i7-3840qm, along with circumventing the WiFi card whitelist (currently I have a BE200 installed too).

To use coreboot, which has no preset for the 6460b, I selected the EliteBook 8460p under the assumption that the two systems are close enough.

Obviously, I know it's frowned upon to run Windows with coreboot, and I already have got it almost totally working with SeaBIOS. I used the option rom v2170 instead of libgfxinit, and even ripped an ME 8 blob from a ProBook 6470b BIOS, which surprisingly still POSTed.

Anyway, the main issue I'm having currently is that in Windows 10, the battery icon reports that there are no batteries physically installed. This is not the case in Linux; it has no trouble reading the battery meter. I want to at least have the ability to run Windows 7, hence my choice of SeaBIOS, and currently the installer does not boot (it gets stuck on the glowy logo). In Windows 10, I have yet to get power management working correctly either; the system gets stuck when attempting to shutdown, sleep, or reboot, and nothing happens.

What do I need to do to fix my install to finally get it working fully?

I'm kinda curious because I'm gonna get for daily use

I am looking to build a new PC and want Coreboot installed. However, all I can find online are vendors selling prebuilt machines with Coreboot, such as System76, in which case I am paying for components I don't need. From what I read online, it sounds like building Coreboot for a modern motherboard is unreasonably hard and not practical. I am looking specifically for a mobo that supports ECC memory, and also not Intel, which further narrows my options. Are there any options out there that fit the bill?

Hey there!

I've been trying to build coreboot on my Gentoo installation, but have been running into various issues.

I made sure that my gcc compile has ada support (for gnat), and that I have (roughly) the dependencies listed as requirements for Fedora.

I believe that I have gnat through my gcc install, but I don't have any packages/dependencies for gnat. gnat does, however, seem to be a viable command in CLI.

Despite this, I've still been hitting into some issues and can't seem to compile any final images.

Things like ifdtool and deguard work, though, even when compiled on my system. I compared sha256 sums from progress made on my current system with identical work done on a Debian system, and the sums match, so it seems that it can build most tools properly, and it just can't install.

I'm currently recloning coreboot's repo and building every possible cpu arch/toolchain (I only build i386 as instructed beforehand) just to be thorough on my end. If it works, I'll update the post.

Asides that, is there any known issues with Gentoo that would force me to use a VM to build in, or are there any necessary workarounds needed to build with Gentoo?

Running stable branch, excluding packages that only have an ~amd64 release.

I have libreboot pre-installed on this Thinkpad T420, but I am unsure of how to update the installation since the T420 has the BUP and ROMP blobs. Are these distributed in the release ROM?

Is it possible to boot from a USB 3.0 port on my Acer C740 running coreboot?

Is it possible to triple boot Chrome OS, then two Linux distros? I couldn’t find anything online on if and how you can do it. Let me know if you need any more information from me.

Edit: Sorry about posting here, wasn’t sure where to post