Welcome to coreboot

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Revision as of 16:09, 23 November 2006 by Uwe (talk | contribs) (More payloads.)
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The wiki is being retired!

Documentation is now handled by the same processes we use for code: Add something to the Documentation/ directory in the coreboot repo, and it will be rendered to https://doc.coreboot.org/. Contributions welcome!

LinuxBIOS is a Free Software project aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS (firmware) you can find in most of today's computers.

It performs just a little bit of hardware initialization and then executes a so-called payload.

Some of the many possible payloads are: a Linux kernel, FILO, GRUB2, OpenBIOS, Open Firmware, SmartFirmware, Etherboot, ADLO (for booting Windows 2000 and OpenBSD), Plan 9, memtest86 and many more.

Benefits

There are many reasons for using LinuxBIOS.


  • 100% Free Software BIOS (GPL)
  • No royalties or license fees!
  • Fast boot times (3 seconds from power-on to Linux console)
  • Avoids the need for a slow, buggy, proprietary BIOS
  • Runs in 32-Bit protected mode almost from the start
  • Written in C, contains virtually no assembly code
  • Supports a wide variety of hardware and payloads
  • Further features: netboot, serial console, remote flashing, ...

Use Cases & Deployments

LinuxBIOS can be (and is) deployed in a wide range of scenarios.


  • Standard desktop computers
  • Clusters, high-performance computing
  • Embedded solutions, appliances, terminals
  • Small form factor computers, Home-theater PCs (HTPC)
  • Servers (serial console, remote flashing, fast boot times)
  • No-moving-parts solutions (except for CPU fan & power supply)
  • Various non-standard scenarios (e.g. FPGA in Opteron socket)
  • One Laptop per Child (OLPC)

Quick Links

About
Find out more about LinuxBIOS.
News | Press | History | Documentation | Screenshots | Contributors

Developers
Get involved! Help us make LinuxBIOS better!
Development Guidelines | Issue Tracker | Doxygen | Browse Source | JTAG | EHCI Debug Port

Status
Find out whether your hardware is already supported.
Supported Motherboards | Supported Chipsets & Devices | Build Status

Vendors & Products
Do you want to deploy LinuxBIOS? Buy LinuxBIOS solutions?
Products | Clusters | Laptop | Desktops

Getting Started
Download LinuxBIOS and get started!
Downloads | Payloads | Build Tutorials | Confirmed Working SVN Revisions | Flashrom | Misc

Support
Learn how to contact us and find help and support.
Mailinglist | FAQ | Glossary | LinuxBIOS Options
More than a million devices already run on LinuxBIOS!


News