Libreboot, Canoeboot and GNU Boot, Oh my!
Today I've been looking for a fix for my unknown BIOS password problem. One blog I found suggested a BIOS update. Which got me wondering if this 15-ish year old laptop is supported by coreboot, or even Libreboot.
In trying to find out, I found the Libreboot homepage, operated by Leah Rowe. My searches also turned up the homepage of GNU Boot, which doesn't seem to be active, with no new releases since March 2025. But the homepage claims;
> In November 2022, Libreboot began to include non-libre code. We have made repeated efforts to continue collaboration with those developers to help their version of Libreboot remain libre, but that was not successful.
I vaguely remembered that at one point there were 2 competing projects claiming the right to the Libreboot name, one run by Leah, the other - according to Leah - run by rogue contributors who had locked her out of the project she started. So ... to which "Libreboot" was this text referring?
I looked to the FSD for guidance. The Libreboot page is marked as under review, and despite what the boilerplate says, there's no clarification on the discussion page. But by clicking on "View the most recent revision", I got this page;
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki?title=Libreboot&oldid=89166
... which includes a link to libreboot.at. This now redirects to the homepage of Canoeboot, also run by Leah Rowe, which appears to be a clone of the Libreboot homepage. I skimmed through the FAQ to see if any of this weirdness was explained, but couldn't see anything.
All this left has me *very* confused. Can anyone clarify what has happened here, or tell me which of these projects are actually libre variants of coreboot, and currently being maintained?
There are news from two weeks ago about GNU Boot on the FSF website:
https://www.fsf.org/news/2026-gnu-boot-joins-fsf-fiscal-sponsorship-program
[edit]...and a list of supported hardware on the project pages:
https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuboot/docs/hardware
>"tell me which of these projects are actually libre variants of coreboot, and currently being maintained?"
Canoeboot
I am a translator!
Coreboot itself is free software but most computers "with coreboot" actually boot with a huge amout of non-free software.
If you follow canoeboot installation instructions, you will not install any non-free software, but on some computers non-free software will remain (i.e., it is left untouched) and be executed at boot by the main CPU.
If you follow gnuboot installation instructions, you will not install any non-free software and no non-free software will be executed at boot by the main CPU. Gnuboot only supports a subset of computers supported by canoeboot, and for those computers, canoeboot also does not leave any non-free software executed by the main CPU.
If you follow libreboot installation instructions, on all amd64 computers, you will install some non-free software. On computers supported by gnuboot, the only non-free software installed will be the microcode.
About maintenance:
- when bugs are discovered in a canoeboot release, they are usually not fixed before the next release, no matter how serious. So it is common that a "stable" release of canoeboot does not work at all on some machines, or with a major issue
- gnuboot certainly does less work than canoeboot, but it is still maintained, though at a slower pace. gnuboot also has about the opposite attitude to canoeboot in terms of release, perhaps a bit too much (still say something is untested while actually several people have tested it successfully).
This really helps clarifying the situation, thank you. Bookmarking for future reference.
One remaining question: "On computers supported by gnuboot, the only non-free software installed will be the microcode." Does this mean "already installed and not removed by gnuboot", or "installed by gnuboot"? I thought that microcode was already sitting on the board, but I have no idea where.
It is already built into the CPU and cannot be removed, at least not without killing the CPU.
Oh I see, thank you. So in this case "installed" means "already installed and irreducible".
I am a translator!
There was a mistake in my previous message (I cannot edit it now): I should have written "microcode update" instead of "microcode". The Libreboot maintainer says that those computers are broken without these non-free microcode updates but many people don't use them (they use gnuboot or canoeboot) and did not report any issue.