[HN Gopher] "It's not that bad" they told me - Coreboot
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       "It's not that bad" they told me - Coreboot
        
       Author : todsacerdoti
       Score  : 30 points
       Date   : 2025-04-09 21:40 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (lilysthings.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (lilysthings.org)
        
       | fsflover wrote:
       | Being too lazy for such project, I just bought my Librem 14 with
       | coreboot, and everything works fine. Even more, I can use TPM
       | with a hardware key to verify the boot integrity. Can only
       | recommend.
        
       | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
       | > I DO NOT WANT TO ONLY HAVE MBR BOOTING
       | 
       | https://doc.coreboot.org/payloads.html says you can use grub as a
       | payload; does that work?
        
       | CursedSilicon wrote:
       | Coreboot seems like such a great project. Until you actually try
       | to use the damn thing
       | 
       | I wanted to set up some old Optiplexes with Coreboot for a
       | Windows XP LAN party. I ended up going through _several_
       | motherboards with bad flashes, both of Core and Libreboot
       | 
       | Eventually I rolled up in their IRC and basically asked what the
       | hell I was doing wrong.
       | 
       | "oh yeah we disabled [some feature]. You need to dump a bunch of
       | firmware blobs first and then add those to the build"
       | 
       | Even after doing that though I found I was able to boot SeaBIOS
       | (but nothing else!) and Windows would similarly just immediately
       | crash and burn trying to load in any capacity. Linux worked
       | "fine"
       | 
       | More annoyingly it was both _slower_ than the vendor firmware and
       | SeaBIOS would also hang on an LSI SAS card I had inserted (I
       | guess it was trying to run the card OptROM?) which was annoying
       | because I wanted to use the machine to flash the card to  "IT
       | mode" (aka JBOD mode)
        
       | jwrallie wrote:
       | I did it with my X220 last year, it was almost painless because
       | there are several tutorials that I could reference.
       | 
       | There were two downsides, Windows 11 cannot sleep, or rather it
       | sleeps but cannot wake up anymore, and you cannot adjust
       | permanently the default drive (I believe you can if you reflash).
       | 
       | For people using Linux it works perfectly, and accessing the chip
       | is quite easy, you don't need a full disassemble.
        
       | userbinator wrote:
       | Took one look at Coreboot/Libreboot a while back, and decided
       | I'll go the "classic" BIOS-modding route (which I have a lot more
       | experience with) instead.
       | 
       |  _I DO NOT WANT TO ONLY HAVE MBR BOOTING_
       | 
       | Incidentally, I'd consider MBR boot an advantage compared to
       | UEFI. As Linus says, it's "this other Intel brain-damage".
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-09 23:00 UTC)