Canoeboot 25.04 "Corny Calamity" released! (free/libre BIOS/UEFI firmware replacement based on coreboot)
Hi everyone,
My name is Leah Rowe. I am the founder and lead developer of the Canoeboot project, which is my special Libreboot fork that provides free and libre boot firmware, based on coreboot. It is a *distro* of coreboot, in much the same way that, say, Trisquel or Parabola are GNU/Linux-libre distributions. Its purpose is to make free BIOS/UEFI boot firmware accessible for non-technical users.
It provides several coreboot "payloads" by default, such as the GNU boot loader named GRUB, or SeaBIOS. It also provides U-Boot, which implements a lightweight and sensible UEFI layer. These payloads can be selected at boot time, with different images that boot one of them as primary.
I maintain this project because I'm a passionate free software developer, and I want people to use it. I've been maintaining Canoeboot now for the past two years, as a fork of my other project named Libreboot, which is superficially similar.
The new release announcement is here:
https://canoeboot.org/news/canoeboot2504.html
Highlights:
* Acer Q45T-AM added
* All major upstream sources updated (e.g. coreboot, GRUB) as of 20 April 2025
* Many security fixes and bugfixes in GRUB
* Build fixes; the release was successfully compiled on bleeding edge distros, with the new GCC 15
* Build system improvements, especially error handling
* More reliable vendor file insertion
Incremental changes including more boards planned, for the next June 2025 release.
More information is available in the ChangeLog linked above.
One of the special improvements is that several bleeding edge distros were tested, namely: Fedora 42, and Debian Sid (*with experimental* dependencies including GCC 15). Libre bleeding edge distros like Parabola are also expected to work perfectly, in compiling Canoeboot from source.
One of the problems with the previous December release was precisely that the new GCC 15 and other toolchains are much stricter about certain coding styles and especially about warnings (more are treated as errors). I and several others have aggressively tested for and ironed out these bugs. This also applies for example to the ASUS KGPE-D16 port, where I made several changes, even crazy ones such as updating to the latest nasm (for parts of coreboot that are in x86 assembly language), because the old one used on that board would not properly compile in GCC 15.
Everything works perfectly. Enjoy!
If you have any questions about the release, I'm on the #canoeboot channel on Libera IRC, or name at domain on Mastodon.
Happy hacking!
I am a translator!
Ah, by "vendor file" you mean, something non-free?
To me, not saying non-free explicitly is most certainly deceiving a number of users, in particular as the title of the Libreboot home page says "Free and Open Source BIOS/UEFI boot firmware" and nothing in that page hints that there is any non-free part if one would install the software that is being advertised.
I am a translator!
From https://libreboot.org/news/policy.html:
- quote start -
What is a binary blob?
A binary blob, in this context, is any executable for which no source code exists, that you cannot study and modify in a reasonable manner. By definition, all such blobs are proprietary in nature, and should be avoided if possible.
For information about Intel Management Engine and AMD PSP, refer to the FAQ.
Blob reduction policy
Default configurations
Coreboot, upon which Libreboot is based, is mostly libre software but does require certain vendor code on some platforms. A most common example might be raminit (memory controller initialisation) or video framebuffer initialisation. The coreboot firmware uses certain vendor code for some of these tasks, on some motherboards, but some motherboards from coreboot can be initialised with 100% libre source code, which you can inspect, and compile for your use.
- quote end -
So there is an explanation of what a binary blob is, then it is mentioned that coreboot requires vendor code, but it is not said that this vendor code is a binary blob. Combined only with what the home page says, I would tend to deduce that this is not the case.
> if the situation is unclear, then their reading comprehension is probably insufficient in general so i wouldn't worry.
If anyone proposes to install some software for me, I will check the home page for that software and if it says that it is free software, I may gladly accept without reading other technical details such as installation, which I don't need to use the software.
> if that doesn't satisfy you, then there is canoeboot, which only contains libre files
Right, since I followed the news closely and I am aware of the context, I installed canoeboot on a Dell E6400, but I find ironic that the version that only contains libre files is called canoeboot while the version that does not is called libreboot.
I do think you're being slightly condescending to be honest; your statements imply that my readers are basically stupid, or otherwise a little bit thick. Again, I think you should show a bit more respect.
The term "vendor code" is widely understood to mean "not free software". For example, Nvidia drivers are "vendor drivers", whereas nouveau is a free driver.
I really don't understand what you're telling me. Are you saying that readers can't tell what I'm writing about?
Immediately after the text you've quoted, that you've allleged is unclear, it says:
"The libreboot project has the following policy:
* If free software can be used, it should be used."
Then the next bullet point begins with "Some nuance is to be observed", followed by the example of VGA option ROMs for a few graphics cards (add-on ones).
The next bullet point talks about microcode as an exception to "if free software can be used".
That entire section, from which you quote, very clearly communicates that Libreboot provides binaries in limited circumstances, and the article more generally describes how the project tries to minimise this, so as to still provide as much free software as possible. An example of that in the past has been Haswell raminit for example; nowadays Libreboot provides free software for that, but previously provided a binary from Intel.
Moreover, what you're saying wouldn't even work. If I were to adopt a more linguistically strict criticism of proprietary software, then it must follow that Libreboot is attacking itself and must change, right? That it must remove all of them. and then it would become Canoeboot. I want all software to be free, but it isn't, and the only way to satisfy you would be to simply delete the Libreboot project and only do what is currently Canoeboot. This would result in fewer mainboards being easily accessible for coreboot novices, and those novices would therefore use *more* proprietary software, by not using coreboot at all.
And Canoeboot exists. So what's your problem? If you don't want Libreboot, that's fine. I maintain Canoeboot specifically for persons such as yourself, who only want the free software.
I am a translator!
Thanks for your replies.
> If I were to adopt a more linguistically strict criticism of proprietary software, then it must follow that Libreboot is attacking itself and must change, right?
To support your policy, you have argued previously that, by having more users use some computer that only boots with some non-free blob, and by having strong education against proprietary software, there will be more chances that someone eventually develops a free replacement of the blob.
While it looks a bit like wishful thinking to me, a strict criticism of proprietary software would just be part of that strong education, so completely consistent with those views.
> the only way to satisfy you would be to simply delete the Libreboot project and only do what is currently Canoeboot
Acually no, I just wish it would point more clearly to the limitations, i.e. the non-free blobs for many computers, from the home page. For sure, I am upset that something with blobs is called "Libreboot", but I understand you own the name and decide.
> I maintain Canoeboot specifically for persons such as yourself, who only want the free software.
I would like to thank you for that.
I agree that the term "vendor file" only means it came from the vendor; it doesn’t imply free or nonfree. Coreboot, for example, has included vendor-supplied free code like AMD's early AGESA. Better to focus on freedom status, not origin.
If someone wants to send me a patch for Canoeboot's website, they can very well do so, and I will consider what they submit. See:
https://canoeboot.org/git.html
The website is Markdown files in a Git repository, and the instructions for sending patches is there. I think it would be better if someone were to send such patches. I'm always open to suggestions for how to better improve the project.
Libreboot is the same way, and its instructions are here:
https://libreboot.org/git.html
As it stands though, I think the current website is perfectly acceptable, and strikes the right balance.
Actually maybe 32GB possible even. But I will only need 16 probably.
Really 32gb?? I looked online and only saw 16gb configurations. With 32gb, you could do some real work, run some big vm's, compile big packages, etc. That would be amazing.
ThinkPad P51/P50 and P70/P71 are feasible for porting too (similar hardware, not much tweaks needed). These are on TODO.
Those machines can take up to 128GB RAM.
Also the existing Libreboot T480 can take up to 64GB RAM.
Now that I look at it, that T480 seems to be the best combination of recent CPU + sufficient ram. And your minifree.org prices look great. That's one to seriously think about.
(Zoma and Leah Rowe don't read this reply, I have no desire to torture or forcefully convince people who don't want to be convinced, and you don't want to be convinced so you two don't read this, this reply is rather meant for other people to see the hypocrisy of your pretense to be "rebellious" and "misunderstood" by us "dogmatists" despite the fact that you "pragmatics" are a social majority trying to force your views on us minority "dogmatists")
> Seems the peanut gallery is thumbing down your posts anonymously... again
>
> just distasteful... [...]
"thumbing down your posts anonymously" As if it's a bad thing to just anonymously downvote anti-FSDG posts from people who are not interested in actual debate, people who want to force their majority-held "pragmatic" views about software freedom (or rather lack of of such freedom) upon the small outcast "dogmatic" projects like ours and then cry "persecution, you FSF cultists are being intolerant, well I'm know I'm the unappreciated martyrdom Einstein because people here downvote me so much so you are blind to the truth!"
And when someone tries to debate these people: "wow, such arrogance, how dare my majority, widely-held-in-society views about how pragmatism is more important to the detriment of ideology and how massive projects like Debiain't and unFreedora are in the right to promote proprietary software be challenged by a tiny community of dogmatic cultist FSDG-fans? Surely they are the intolerant ones for rejecting my mainstream views and me trying to impose my views on their projects"
So dodging debate by downvoting is bad, but debating by harshly criticizing your stances through rich walls of text explaining why your stances are wrong is somehow also bad too, the only acceptable outcome would be for us to surrender entirely to your wishes, you don't want debate, you just want to win. There's nothing inherently wrong with being a brick wall, but when you act like you are "rebellious" for forcing your "pragmatic" brick-wall beliefs upon our "dogmatic" brick-wall ones and that we are the ones being intolerant and that you people are the ones being right, then you are just doing manipulation and coercion against smaller communities.
Canoeboot is not a FSDG-compliant project and it doesn't even hide its non-FSDG-compliance well, openly endorsing FSDG-violation in e.g. https://canoeboot.org/other.html where the only boot-firmware project suggested which is marked as FSDG-compliant in that page is GNU Boot meanwhile that page suggests MANY other, non-FSDG-compliant, boot firmwares (including "Libre"boot)
And here is a fitting example of a quote that represents the arrogance I've shown from "pragmatists", https://libreboot.org/news/policy.html says:
> I hope that these examples might inspire some people to take more action in demanding free software everywhere, and to enlighten more people on the road to software freedom. The road Libreboot takes is the one less traveled, the one of pragmatism without compromise; we will not lose sight of our original goals, namely absolute computer user freedom.
"The road less travelled", you say? Then why are all popular GNU/Linux distros "pragmatic", why is "free" Debiain't non-free and so popular and famous, why do people love focusing on the "pragmatic" nature of "Linux" to the detriment of GNU/Linux and so many (including "hero" cult-of-personality leader Linus Torvalds himself, selfishness and lack of morality being viewed as a virtue: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18419231) even react extremely hostile to the thought of free software as an ethical (idealist) rather than mere "pragmatic" position, why did that other page list so many "pragmatic" boot firmwares but just a single "dogmatic" (FSDG-compliant) one? This is a rhetorical question by the way, I don't want your answer, you people aren't interested in debate and even if you were I do not hold dear your undemocratic "right" to interfere in small "dogmatic" communities by constantly trying to lead a change of policy within just so that our "dogmatic" free software merges into the cruel external outside world by embracing proprietary dependencies, my main goal with this post is not to convince you but rather let the "dogmatists" (and questioning peoples) here see your hypocrisy.
Do you appreciate who this is for? (rhetorical question, I don't want your answer) We here have a vanguard, some ethical goal to strive for and the belief that acting correctly as a dedicated small group to improve society is more important than simply winning and doing unethical actions that would allow us to become an oppressor majority. Most either don't know about us or if they do they simply don't appreciate us and simply erase and mock us by e.g. calling it "Linux" instead of GNU/Linux, we try to have strict ethics and many of you find us to be "lunatics". People prefer the oppression of "pragmatic" conformance to the majority than strict ethical goals for improvement of the wellbeing of people. You are not partaking in revolution, you are partaking in a reaction, you are not the rebels, you are the rulers.
Don't take it too seriously, the above user has a history of writing long screeds like that, and truly seems to believe that people that don't entirely agree with FSDG are evil oppressors (a stance that convinces nobody but makes some of the fanatics on this forum feel good). This is known as the narcissism of small differences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences. They spend most of their time criticizing people like you, the developers of Fedora, or Linus Torvalds rather than actual proprietary software companies.
If it were up to them, only completely FSDG-compliant distributions would exist, and the vast majority of people, who don't have hardware supported by these distros, would have to use Windows.
100% whats going on, besides well people abusing the + and - rating for their own ideology.
Yes. narcissism indeed.
I don't consider Linus Torvaldo a hero and canoeboot while maybe not FSDG, can qualify as FSDG. The difference is she probably hasn't asked for it to be FSF endorsed.
Also there is this on the FSF page no less!
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Canoeboot
So the irony is thick.
To me revolution is fighting the standards that suck.
Like the standard bios with intel me enabled and full blast on.
Btw, one could argue any non-free data of any kind is proprietary even that which is baked in!
microcode updates aren't any more free or less free then the original microcode as far as I am concerned.
if the hardware isn't fully freely licensed, it ain't truthful to call it RYF.
RYP? maybe...
aka Respects Your Privacy.
Btw, freedom is being restricted constantly anyhow due to breaking backwards compatibility adopting services situation. And I am talking primarily about systemd. That's just one of them, theres quite a few beyond systemd.
I have no idea what that other person is banging on about.
Canoeboot is a 100% blob-free coreboot distribution. It does not knowingly distribute binary blobs of any kind. It intentionally provides the most free software possible, without compromise, and even has an entire policy written for it:
https://canoeboot.org/news/policy.html
This is Canoeboot's "Binary Blob Extermination Policy", written specifically with the GNU FSDG in mind. I suppose *technically* you could say then that Canoeboot has its own policy, instead of FSDG, but its own policy is, in substance, 100% identical to GNU FSDG.
So what's the problem?
I suppose what you say is somewhat OK, since you're quite right that I don't ask the FSF themselves to validate Canoeboot. I don't need their approval or acknowledgement, I know as much if not more than them and I just audit it all myself.
Also:
The FSDG label technically only applies to GNU/Linux distributions. Free *System* Distribution. I have in fact emailed the FSF this year to ask them, if they would rename it to "Free Software Distribution Guidelines" and tweak it slightly so as to include all such projects including e.g. coreboot distros.
And then I suggested to them that perhaps an entry on gnu.org/distros could be made, specifically for coreboot distros, and I told them the list of all the FSDG-aligned projects. They have not yet done so, unfortunately, but it is during the discussion about this that they did decide to link Canoeboot more prominently, on these pages:
I don't know if Linus Torvalds is a "hero" but I greatly appreciate his work. He made one of the biggest contributions to free software by creating a kernel (though it does include a few blobs, that number is decreasing and I believe now down to two) as well as version control system, both of which have achieved mass popularity and are used all over the world.
That's certainly a lot, lot more than any of us on this forum have done.
> Btw, one could argue any non-free data of any kind is proprietary even that which is baked in!
> microcode updates aren't any more free or less free then the original microcode as far as I am concerned.
I agree with you here. My laptop came with nonfree microcode and a nonfree BIOS and there's nothing I can do about that. I chose to install the newer BIOS that comes with newer microcode. If I'm running nonfree software anyway, might as well take the newest version.
> Btw, freedom is being restricted constantly anyhow due to breaking backwards compatibility adopting services situation. And I am talking primarily about systemd. That's just one of them, theres quite a few beyond systemd.
I disagree with this. Pretty much every software application breaks backwards compatibility at some point or other. You can debate the technical merits of such a change, but it doesn't restrict your freedom.
Honestly, I think Linus Torvalds deserves a lot more respect than he's getting, on this thread. It's perfectly acceptable to criticise Linux for its blob policy, if you are that way inclined; indeed, I do understand the mentality shared by many people here.
However, I do believe we all owe the Linux project and Linus a lot more respect. Without him, and without the works that he has created and maintained over the years, I think the free software movement would be in a much worse shape than it is now.
And FWIW I did read that BBC article about him, that was linked here, and I found myself agreeing with most of the sentiment expressed there. I'm the same way. I'm a free software activist, and I believe all software would be better if it were all free, but do I maintain Libreboot because of some lofty noble save-the-world feel-good factor? No. I started Libreboot in 2013 because I wanted to make more money selling coreboot computers on https://minifree.org/
And that's still the reason I maintain Libreboot today.
I maintain Canoeboot for similar "selfish" reasons, though Canoeboot is done purely for my own intellectual amusement.
I put in a lot of hours and effort on my works, and I've received similar abusive comments here, like what they say about Torvalds. I think it's symptomatic of a larger problem I've seen these days. In the old days, it used to be that if you disagreed with someone, but they were otherwise not a danger to you in any way, you would respect their opinion and maybe even still be their friend despite disagreement. Nowadays, I've noticed a trend, and this isn't just in the free software world, but a trend where people are further divided into camps, and anyone who disagrees with that camp isn't a part of that camp anymore, regardless of the good that they might otherwise do.
I say only this: respect the work, and respect people. Healthy debate and constructive criticism is all well and good, but I only ask that people try to remain civil, and try to accomodate others.
(Again Leah, this is not to convince you, this is for spectators)
> I say only this: respect the work, and respect people. Healthy debate and constructive criticism is all well and good, but I only ask that people try to remain civil, and try to accomodate others.
Curious (and expected) for an openly selfish person devaluing ethics as a drive in society to argue for morality just so that we can't mock your unethical views bcz to do so would be "disrespectful".
> I put in a lot of hours and effort on my works, and I've received similar abusive comments here, like what they say about Torvalds.
Opposing unethical selfishness is not abusive, abusive is you trying to take a "moral high ground" by arguing that us opposing your abusive anti-ethics selfishness is abusive. You want to be selfish and devalue morality but criticism of this is "abusive" and therefore immoral?
This selfishness doesn't accomodate others, this selfishness by definition focuses on the self for the detriment of others, for the detriment of ethics.
I do not respect this selfishness. You have admitted that you are in simply for personal benefit and that you don't actually care about the free software movement as some lofty ethical goal and that you are just abusing a movement explicitly founded on ethics to promote your selfishness. Hence it was correct for me to link that article, because it represents the views of selfishness, the views society promotes in order to corrode the definition of software freedom for selfish benefit and corrode other ethical values, just like how Torvalds mocks the free software movement due to its ethical positions.
Thanks for the mask-off.
EDIT:
from another reply:
> I maintain Canoeboot specifically for persons such as yourself, who only want the free software.
No, you have explicitly said that you are maintaining Canoeboot solely for selfish reasons and that your pretense of wanting to "help" is a lie. You are not maintaining this for us. You are maintaining this for yourself.
I will continue selfishly working on Canoeboot in my free time and benefiting you in the process. Cheers.
It is quite telling of your worldview. It doesn't matter that my work is of benefit to many. I am the opposite. I believe it is a delusion, to suggest that anything we do is for anyone but ourselves. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a liar, or they are going to become miserable very soon. Your statements amount to the following assertion:
You assert therefore that I must be selfless, and do work only for the benefit of others, and that I should not have a personal motive. Typical of many persons such as yourself. My motives are none of your concern.
I respect Linus Torvalds, and I would ask that you try to be more respectful of yourself. Nobody owes me, you or anyone else a damn thing, but we should at least try to respect each other in spite of our differences.
Show some damn respect for the people who work for free on the projects you love, and personally benefit from. And maybe try to do something for yourself too.
You are "altruistically" writing long, angry screeds on the Trisquel forum that barely anyone will pay attention to. Meanwhile the people you criticize are "selfishly" writing free software that benefits people.
I wasn't angry, and I'm not angry now. I was just calmly pointing out the logical fallacy of claiming or implying that some people only act for the greater good, or for the community/collective. This is false, and it always will be. Such sanctimonious hypocrisy sickens me, in fact; people who claim to be selfless are either lying and just trying to control you or sell you something, or they're actually serious and they'll soon be miserable and probably rebel at some point.
It's true that we can enjoy helping each other, and working for each other, but that's just then another selfish indulgence where you are doing what satisfies you first. If other people happen to benefit from your actions, so be it, but don't delude yourself.
We are all selfish, and that's OK. The only important thing is that you are happy, but a discipline anyone much learn is also to try not to hurt others at the same time. If you still end up helping people regardless, well I consider that a bonus. Extra points if someone tells you what a great job you're doing and thanks you for your work.
I don't know, maybe some people aren't like this? I just can't imagine it. It sounds alien to me.
Selfishness doesn't need to mean sacrificing others, as many seem to imply. Selfishness is just the tendency to look after yourself, so I would consider it to be a good thing.
So when I said earlier for example that I maintain Canoeboot specifically for "persons such as yourself", referring to the person that I was writing to, that wasn't a lie; I'm maintaining Canoeboot for my own intellectual amusement, but it is nonetheless intended for other people to use. If it wasn't for other people, and was only for me, then it wouldn't exist, because I would just compile coreboot, GRUB and so on manually, like I did in the old days. I maintain it for my intellectual amusement, but it's designed to be used by other people (and also me, because some of the tools in cbmk greatly assist in development).
Therefore, the fact that it's designed to be used by many people, and that it is targeted mostly at FSF fans who only want free software, well, it's not inaccurate what I said. What I later clarified was my own personal motivation, which shouldn't concern anyone, but I suppose the other person wanted to show me up or something. This attitude was later revealed when they said I "masked off" - did I? I think I've been pretty honest on this forum about how I feel for the past two years, and I would regard my speech in this thread to be rather mild by comparison ;)
EDIT: Also, now I feel dumb, because I've only later realised that you were replying to Kiki the Cyber Whatever, not I, Leah Rowe. Nevertheless, I stand by my statements. I think I basically know the reason a lot of people in the FSF-aligned community dislike me, it's because we work in the same space, but we arrive at the same conclusions through different thought processes, and it kinda shows; I'm of the more conservative-minded variety of people, promoting *freedom* as a means of personal self empowerment, whereas this whole selfless-think-for-the-collective-dont-think-for-yourself type attitude that Kiki seems to be promoting reminds me basically of socialist dogma. And many of the people I've spoken to in the FSF leadership tend to be pretty liberal or left-wing.
In other words: FSF people promote freedom for the collective, and they consider it a bonus if they themselves benefit personally. Whereas I promote software freedom *for me*, and it's a bonus if I end up helping others too. FSF are trying to build a Free Software Cathedral for everyone to enjoy, whereas I want to build Free Software Inc. However, I will also always serve the collective in practise, because I realise the interdependent nature of our world, not just in software but everything. In practise, we do need to help each other. But I'm fighting for myself. and that is the difference between myself and some people here. It's one of personal attitudes, and it reflects in the way people like myself communicate to the world.
I was defending you, because Kiki seems to criticize everyone who doesn't completely agree with FSF dogma, using inflammatory words like "evil" and "oppressor." I don't think this kind of attitude really has anything to do with left-wing views, I mean there are a lot of right-wingers here in the US who think that anyone who disagrees with them "hates America." And I don't think the "selflessness" thing has much to do with left-wing views either; I haven't heard any prominent leftists say that you have to do everything for altruistic motives.
Also, Richard Stallman is a progressive (by US standards) based on the political views he posts on his website. And I don't think he has any issue with people working on free software for selfish motives. He is OK with selling software, and even selling exceptions to the GPL. I would say I generally agree with most of his views on politics, as an American myself.
Lol yeah, sorry. Again I realise the irony. I thought you were talking to me, not Kiki.
As to the FSF; I agree wholeheartedly in principle with its mission. It serves a most noble goal, that of promoting software freedom and enhancing it as a result. They have historically sponsored a lot of development too; they also greatly assisted Libreboot, in the early days of the project, and I'm still grateful for that.
The irony is that I didn't start any hostility in this thread. Other people did, obviously traumatised by some things of the past, and I've tried to diffuse the situation, but I suppose some people are just angry.
As for language. Kiki is actually mild.
lxo (linux-libre guy) once told me that Libreboot since November 2022 is essentially pushing crack cocaine or something. I'm paraphrasing of course, but that's what he compared Libreboot's modern blob reduction policy to. I'm now a "collaborator".
Am I though? I could simply not provide the extra hardware support, and could have kept Libreboot how it was. If I had done that, then fewer people would be using coreboot, and the people currently using Librebooted ThinkPad T480 for example would still be using Lenovo UEFI firmware, which is 100% proprietary. Libreboot replaces almost all of the code there with free software.
I generally never agree with absolutism; there are a few exceptions, but I'm generally a pragmatist by nature. My pragmatism says that if you can't have it all, you can at least have some of it. Partial freedom is better than no freedom.
Same thing with Linux for example. I think Linux, the version distributed by kernel.org, is fantastic. If linux-libre were the only project, then a lot more people would be using Windows and Macs; this would be bad!
However, I greatly respect the FSDG dogma too, and wish to serve it. If FSDG was the *only* choice, that would be bad; and some members of the FSF believe that FSDG is the only valid choice, and that nothing else should exist. I simply believe that there should be room for both; Libreboot and Canoeboot are both excellent, as are many other projects that I know of. For example I find Canoeboot extremely fun to maintain. Even with some of the hostility I put up with here, I enjoy it. It has users. Even the FSF uses it. I attended their Machine Learning talk at FOSDEM 2025 and they were very clearly using a Dell E6400 hooked up to FOSDEM's projector, which would almost certainly have Canoeboot on it (GNU's own boot project doesn't support the E6400 at this time).
Zoë Kooyman herself (FSF's executive director) has told me that she greatly admires Canoeboot, and that the FSF in general is thankful for my work; they also told me that they were dismayed by some of the previous hostilities, which I therefore decided to end, and as a result they are now promoting Canoeboot alongside GNU's own project, ever since February 2025. I even alluded to that here:
https://mas.to/@libreleah/114072729848843616
As for politics, I'm moderately conservative myself; mostly liberal, on social things, since I believe politics should only focus itself on the money and leave *people* alone. I'm a card carrying member of the Conservative party, here in the UK.
> If linux-libre were the only project, then a lot more people would be using Windows and Macs; this would be bad!
Yeah I made this point earlier in the thread. Apparently some people here would prefer if GNU/Linux were only usable on a tiny number of computers that are no longer in production.
> As for politics, I'm moderately conservative myself; mostly liberal, on social things, since I believe politics should only focus itself on the money and leave *people* alone. I'm a card carrying member of the Conservative party, here in the UK.
I'm not a conservative but I guess I am glad that there are some more sane conservatives in other countries. Here in America, conservatives have turned into a cult of personality that follows every impulse of their authoritarian leader, and I'm not sure in what way they really fit the definition of conservatism anymore.
The people in usa who support trump, are not conservatives, don't let them delude you into believing them.
I can sit in a garage and call myself a car. That doesn't make it true.
I am very progressive as far as the US would be concerned. I feel like if all bernie sander's proposals would be implemented, we would still not be in danger of being a socialist country.
If I want that, I will go to denmark or sweden. :P
Yeah I actually think the Democrats are the conservative party here. I find them pretty disappointing to be honest because they don't do very much when in power, but they generally preserve the status quo (i.e. conservatism) which I much prefer to what Trump is doing right now. I supported (and even campaigned for) Bernie in 2020 but that didn't go anywhere.
By the way, Denmark and Sweden are by no means socialist countries. They have capitalism, just with a strong welfare state and unionization.
well, i only promote canoeboot stuff here, since it's trisquel. but since you ask:
yes, i do have an x1 carbon gen6, and i've looked at the schematics. same EC as the T480. pretty much the same board, probably ok to port. i've got a bunch of other skylake and kabylake thinkpads to port. we'll probably h ave a few of them for the june release.
i wanted them in the april release but i was awol in february and half of march, on other errands, so ended up prioritising mostly build system and infrastructure things for this release. board support will be my focus for june now.
and there are also a few more canoeboot-eligible boards that i'm looking at
What boards are you looking at for Canoeboot? I'm interested.
A bunch more Latitude Dells, similar to the E6400. Been on TODO for a while now. Plus a few extra x4x desktop boards.
Someone I talk to has also been working on the loongarch machines, on adding coreboot bringup to that platform; the blob situation is actually pretty favourable and hopefully once that's ready and Libreboot has it, Canoeboot will too. Those machines are about equivalent to AMD's Zen2 ryzens so they're pretty good (some of them don't have FPUs, which is really stupid in 2025, but hey, China, also MIPS).
Probably a few arm64 boards that I could target too, in a future release; some of these are initialised purely by U-Boot, and not coreboot. Libreboot and Canoeboot both can build U-Boot images quite easily, in the build system. U-Boot is currently only provided as a coreboot payload, for arm64 and x86 machines, but standalone U-Boot is perfectly feasible.
Canoeboot is here to stay, and will continue to be developed. There's plenty of scope for the FSDG-coreboot projects to grow, and it is my will and decree that Canoeboot shall lead this effort. I've said before that my mission is still 100% freedom, and therefore Canoeboot exists to serve that goal (alongside Libreboot which has the same goal, albeit more pragmatic).
It would be beautiful if Canoeboot could work on DELL Latitude D505, and also ASUS, HP machines.
Will the june release be testing or stable btw?
If it is testing, I definitely want to buy one.
I do agree with these dogmatic fsf on one thing though.
I prefer to trust ath9k at least until other wifi cards are liberated. Which, who knows when or if that will ever happen. ;)
I hope you still have some ath9k wifi cards though, preferably the 450 Mpbs ones.
Those Atheros cards are still perfectly useful. If you have an area with crappy WiFi then you just need to get a better WiFi signal. I can sit in my house and watch videos all day without issue with an Atheros card. Mostly where they don't perform well is on public WiFi in coffee shops, but coffee shop WiFi has become so infested and privacy invasive in recent years that I don't use it any longer anyway.
Much appreciated update !
Thank you for the hard work.
I really wish people would stop being so damn narcissistic
Its better for people to have some freedom than none.
And some people will only accept the latter.
Aka, coreboot + intel me disabled type ideal
>Its better for people to have some freedom than none.
While that may be true in some sense, it is important to make the distinction between projects that aspire towards total freedom and those that aim for partial freedom, or a compromise.
I appreciate the work Leah has done (and continues to do) but in my opinion it was a mistake to include non-free components in Libreboot releases. A separate fork that included those components would be useful for those willing to make a compromise for performance/availability, but including them in Libreboot confounded its original purpose. For years Libreboot was known as the boot firmware that allowed for a fully free system. This is no longer the case, so it confuses the issue when trying to onboard newcomers to the Free Software movement.
It's worth noting that I'm writing this on a ThinkPad X220 running Libreboot. I chose to make the compromise (although I own several fully free systems) because I needed extra performance for work. However, my choice was informed. New users may be under the misapprehension that such systems are fully free as a result of the naming issue and history of Libreboot. That's really my only issue here.
One final thing, I understand that the passion of some users here may be coming off as aggression, but I find their defensiveness refreshing and necessary. Without stalwarts like these, FSF values and those of projects like Trisquel may have been watered down a long time ago. It is absolutists that drive progress in these projects, and I'm grateful they're around.
Canoeboot technically could support that X220 you have there. I will explain why:
Intel ME is present, but the flash is partitioned on these machines, into these sections:
* Descriptor: config data (not software)
* GbE NVM: config data (not software)
* ME (software) - this plus Descriptor/GbE is 5MB
* BIOS (software - in this case coreboot) - this is 3MB
Libreboot handles the ME region by auto-downloading a generic factory image from the vendor, for processing, during build time; this include running me_cleaner.
The ME is *shrunk* by me_cleaner, to 84KB on that machine, instead of the default 5MB size. Then, the BIOS region is enlarged to like 7.8MB or whhatever it is.
Now, how could Canoeboot support it? Easy:
Canoeboot could theoretically provide images with just the BIOS part, and nothing else, shaped to fit into the original BIOS region of 3MB.
In so doing, Canoeboot would therefore not need to handle the ME at all, and the instructions could be re-written accordingly, so that the Me region is skipped; since Canoeboot wouldn't need to handle the ME, nor distribute it, even indirectly, that's one blob down.
Next up is CPU microcode. I tested X220 without microcode, extensively, back in 2017. Works fine.
I won't do this for Canoeboot, because it basically complies with the lettter but not the spirit of FSDG; also, it would mean providing the user with the risk of bricking their computer (and linking to Libreboot's documentation as a fallback would violate FSDG).
This is a mere technicality.
This also applies to most of the ivybridge and sandybridge computers. Libreboot auto-downloads the files needed, so that the user doesn't need to worry what's currently in their flash. The policy of Libreboot is that any image it can generate must be the full image, whenever that is feasible. (I'm looking at some newer alderlake where this isn't feasible yet, so on those I'd have to avoid handling the ME).
It *may* even apply to the Haswell machines, but those are less stable without microcode. Much less stable.
EDIT:
Also, on X220 (sandybridge or ivybridge in general actually), you can still disable the ME without modifying the ME region at all. Instead, you can set the "Alternate ME Disable" or "HAP" bit in the descriptor region - and there's an extra setting from coreboot's side called "Soft ME Temporary Disable" (Libreboot also does this, by default). Since the descriptor region is non-copyrightable non-software, it's just config data, this would be OK.
This actually is an interesting edge case, because the FSF only says those machines aren't FSDG since the flash is partitioned like that; if the ME was on another IC like the EC is, it's be a "secondary" exemption. It's completely arbitrary, I'm just telling you how it is, since I've been dealing with these machines for years.
To be honest, that was a weird thing to me also, osboot should have been in my opinion the current libreboot and canoeboot should be named libreboot
But its beyond my ability or choice to change this. But in any case, thumbing me down for that opinion is rather stupid. Whether it is you or others, I don't know.
It's just so tone-deaf is all.
The viewpoint I gave is very accurate to most people who desire some degree of freedom.
Going full hog on it, just is to much for some people to be willing to do because it locks out a lot of hardware options.
Most people want privacy but not everyone seeks the kind of freedom people FSF talks about.
Some people don't even seek privacy which is just idiotic. How anyone can tolerate ads on the web and feed the giant corporations who put them there is beyond me. Its just like saying, "keep being abusive monsters, we don't mind."
Anyways point being, some people reject all of this even not realizing if your government is not benevolent, you have much to hide.
I wasn't the one to thumb you down. I don't thumb up either. That's lame. People should express their opinions.
And I'm willing to be honest, to say what I've said publicly several times, and on IRC:
Building up osboot as a name would have taken a lot longer, and Libreboot was already established, so I decided to merge everything there. My calculation was that Libreboot couldn't live up to its full potential, under the previous policy.
I originally planned to maintain a FSDG branch of Libreboot, but didn't get round to it for a long time. Then the FSF made their own project, and you know the rest of the story; Canoeboot was then created because I was unsatisfied with their performance, and figured that the community, if it insisted on having such a project, deserved something at least half-decent.
And thus, Canoeboot was born. Initially created to compete with them, but now I just maintain it because it's fun.
I do think the current Libreboot is perfectly acceptable. I was and I am very upfront about the nature of it, I don't try to hide what it is, as some other people might have done. For example the Binary Blob Reduction Policy, the Freedom Status page - it's very clear from reading the site, that the project is what it is now.
Libreboot is also still a fully free distro, on machines where that is possible. The binary blob reduction policy explicitly states that if a blob can be avoided, it should be; the only exception is CPU microcode updates, because I don't consider that to be a freedom issue at all since the CPU already comes with older microcode anyway, so the choice isn't freedom or none, the choice is buggy microcode or less-buggy microcode.
So people can make an informed decision. Canoeboot is there for them, if they don't like Libreboot.