Libreboot 20231021 Brings Some Additional Laptops, Desktops / Motherboards For Testing

Libreboot 20231021 was published for testing today as the newest Coreboot downstream focused on providing only fully free software support for system firmware with more stringent open-source requirements than Coreboot itself.

The Libreboot 20231021 release incorporates support for the HP EliteBook 2170p, HP EliteBook 8470p, and Dell Latitute E6430 laptops. Plus there is also support for the Dell Precision T1650 desktop. These are all old Intel Ivy Bridge era systems. With their age they can work on fully free software firmware but at the same time the hardware is very old, the performance is terribly slow by 2023 standards, and especially more so if considering all the CPU security mitigations necessary for these old processors. But for now that's the name of the game of largely having to rely on older hardware platforms if wanting blob-free firmware, with few exceptions.

This Libreboot release also restores support for the ASUS KFSN4-DRE, ASUS KCMA-D8, and ASUS KGPE-D16 desktop/workstation motherboards. For those wanting to run very old AMD Opteron systems in the name of free software, the new Libreboot release restores the support there.

The new Libreboot release also adds GRUB LUKS2 support, brings various build system improvements, updates the incorporated U-Boot, and more.

Those wanting to learn more about the new Libreboot testing release can do so via Libreboot.org.