nonGeNUine Boot 20230717 released! (unofficial, proposed for re-use by GNU project)

Hi everyone,

https://notgnuboot.vimuser.org/news/gnuboot20230717.html

https://notgnuboot.vimuser.org/

I spent time making this, based on recent Libreboot 20230625 release. You may recall this thread last week:

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/censored-libreboot-c20230710-released-fsf-friendly-spin-100-free-software-zero-blobs

Well. I intended to do a mock GNU Boot release simultaneously, as above, but ran out of time last weekend. Anyway:

This is a completely FSF-compliant coreboot distribution, based on Libreboot, designed to comply with GNU FSDG. I made it mostly for fun. I'm aware of the attempt to fork Libreboot under the same name, but recently the libreboot.at people actually made this new project:

https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnuboot/

Despite my ideological disagreement with them, I do see that there is some value in it. Not everyone agrees with the new Libreboot policy. I told them that I would help out, if they renamed, and now I'm fulfilling that promise.

However, the GNU Boot (formerly libreboot.at) people have struggled to get devs and have been sort of slow. I knew they wouldn't believe me if I said I'd help them, so:

The above website and release, though marked unofficial, does pretty much what they want to do.

And it is made available to them, to re-use in their GNU Boot project.

Here is a brief summary of some improvements of my version over current GNU Boot (as of 17 July 2023, versus the official GNU Boot git repositories):

* coreboot/fam15h: acpica downloads are broken in GNU Boot,
which uses the original upstream. the upstream links are
broken. coreboot's build system downloads acpica, to run
iasl during build. This version of GNU Boot downloads
from a new mirror, hosted on libreboot rsync.
* coreboot/cros: acpica downloads also fixed here (i mirrored
the acpica tarball on libreboot rsync, for use in lbmk/gbmk
when downloading coreboot's crossgcc toolchain compilers)
* Uses much newer coreboot/GRUB/SeaBIOS revisions from
around February 2023. GNU Boot, at this time, currently
uses much older revisions from late 2021 / early 2022.
For real. Libreboot stayed on older revisions of these
for a very long time, updating only in early 2023, whereas
GNU Boot is currently based on Libreboot from late 2022.
* Based on much newer Libreboot (June 2023), whereas
GNU Boot proper is based on Libreboot from around
October/November 2022.
* Includes my massive audit of lbmk, which resulted in
most of the build system being re-written (in a much
cleaner coding style)
* gru_kevin and gru_bob chromebook support, with U-Boot
payload. Fully tested and confirmed working; Trisquel
will probably work, since Debian works.
* Dell Latitude E6400 support
* AMD Fam15h hardware: uses coreboot 4.11_branch, with a
bunch of my own fixes to make coreboot's crossgcc toolchain
in that version, compile properly on modern distros (tested
in Debian Sid, also known to work on current Arch Linux, so
will probably work on Parabola)
* Speed optimisations in GRUB, avoiding slow GRUB device
enumeration on some boards.
* Includes a fork of spkmodem-recv, re-written in a much
cleaner coding style, with better error handling. Forked
from coreboot, which was originally forked from GNU GRUB.
(also this version is pledged, when compiled on OpenBSD)
* Much more robust handling of coreboot utilities like
cbfstool or ifdtool, in the build system
* E6400 Flash Unlock utility included, written by Nicholas
Chin. This allows internal flashing on Dell Latitude E6400,
from factory BIOS, to GNU Boot (this version of it)

Anyway. Have fun!

PS:

And yes: there will be more like this, if they'll have me. I did this to demonstrate to neox/gnutoo who lead the other project, that I was (and am) indeed serious when I say I want to help.

This release, though unofficial, is based on Libreboot from *today*, and can be used right now. They will of course want to audit it, but that's fine.