Canoeboot 20241207 released, now with U-Boot UEFI payload on x86

[Leah Rowe]

   Hello everyone,

   Yes that's right. You can use UEFI on a ThinkPad X200 now. The original
   vendor firmware (Lenovo) couldn't do UEFI! This feature has also been
   made available on many more mainboards, including the T400, T500, Dell
   Latitude E6400 and so on.

   To be clear: this is not EDK2/Tianocore. It's U-Boot. U-Boot runs as a
   coreboot payload and provides a UEFI boot environment, which makes
   installing GNU+Linux and BSD systems much easier than on, say, the GRUB
   or SeaBIOS payloads.

   Hi,

   [1]https://canoeboot.org/news/canoeboot20241207.html

   Canoeboot is a free/libre BIOS/UEFI replacement on x86 and ARM,
   providing boot firmware that initialises the hardware in your computer,
   to then load an operating system (e.g. GNU+Linux). It is specifically a
   coreboot distribution, like how Trisquel is a GNU+Linux distribution.
   It provides an automated build system to produce coreboot ROM images
   with a variety of payloads such as GNU GRUB or SeaBIOS, with regular
   well-tested releases to make coreboot as easy to use as possible for
   non-technical users. From a project management perspective, this works
   in exactly the same way as a Linux distro, providing a source-based
   package manager (called cbmk) which patches sources and compiles
   coreboot images. It makes use of coreboot for hardware initialisation,
   and then a payload such as SeaBIOS or GNU GRUB to boot your operating
   system; on ARM(chromebooks), we provide U-Boot (as a coreboot payload).

   For Canoeboot 20241207, today’s release, U-Boot is also provided as an
   optional coreboot payload on x86 machines. This provides a sensible
   UEFI implementation, useful for booting GNU+Linux and BSD systems more
   easily. More information available on the U-Boot x86 page.

   Information about the U-Boot payload can be found here:

   [2]https://canoeboot.org/docs/uboot/uboot-x86.html

   Highlights for this release:

   * U-Boot payload now available on x86 machines (previously only
   available for ARM64). With this, you can boot any number of GNU/Linux
   systems via UEFI. U-Boot provides a sensible, lightweight UEFI
   implementation. It's not quite as complete as EDK2, but boots every
   distro I've tried so far reliably.

   * U-Boot also updated to the latest v2024.10 release, on both x86 and
   ARM devices

   * Various bug fixes in the build system.

   The U-Boot tree in Canoeboot contains several fixes not currently
   present in mainline U-Boot:

   * Auto-boot timeout on the bootflow menu. This will auto-boot the first
   selected menu item after a few seconds, unless interrupted; you can
   interrupt it by navigating the menu to choose something else. The timer
   is stopped when interrupted. I implemented this myself, for the
   release. U-Boot also currently does not support setting a custom
   background colour on the bootflow menu, so this was hacked into the
   release by hardcoding the colour that U-Boot sets when drawing and
   re-drawing the bootflow menu.

   * A patch from Simon Glass that silently disables U-Boot's serial
   console if a suitable serial device is not found. Not all machines have
   serial output on them, and U-Boot would otherwise hang at boot time;
   this patch prevents U-Boot from hanging. Simon Glass is the principle
   maintainer of U-Boot's coreboot payload.

   This is based on the recent stable release of Libreboot, namely
   Libreboot 20241206. Therefore, this can be considered a stable release
   of Canoeboot.

--
Company director, Minifree Ltd
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References

   1. https://canoeboot.org/news/canoeboot20241207.html
   2. https://canoeboot.org/docs/uboot/uboot-x86.html

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