Insights on the usefulness of LinuxBoot?

General Privacy & Security
1

Hello,

Recently, this link was posted on the Hacker News.
I’m not really familiar with all the sequence that precedes the actual OS boot.

In my understanding, currently when powering on most modern computers, the UEFI is loaded, which is a piece of software full of proprietary drivers that in turn loads a bootloader (in Librem standard installations, I guess that would be Grub?). The bootloader then launches the OS itself.

If anyone had insight on the following topics, I’d be grateful:

  • The pre-OS boot sequence seems a bit messy to me, and most of my findings were confusing. Does anyone have an “overview” regarding how things are handled before being handed to the OS?
  • Does LinuxBoot make sense for use by Purism, or is it a “stuff Linux in everything you can” approach?

Regards,

edit: this was posted in General security & privacy chat as I’m concerned by proprietary software running before the OS does, though I’m not certain to what extent this could be used to spy on users. Insights welcome here too!

1 Like
2

Uefi or LinuxBoot ae like Coreboot in Purism.

Grub is a loader between your bios and the actual OS.

3

So this would make LinuxBoot a still-free-but-overkill replacement for Coreboot, wouldn’t it?

4

I think LinuxBoot is not thought as a replacement for coreboot but for uefi. Ever looked if your own computer at home could run Coreboot? As I was not aware of the problems I should have with UEFI when buying my computer, I can’t change it without buying a new computer so if LinuxBoot maybe suports more Mainboards I would definitely appreciate it :wink: