Hello @Mario_Limonciello I haven’t been able to receive a response from Martin by mail, I don’t know if you have any way to communicate with him, I just want to know if I can help him any way move forward the Coreboot port. As well as discuss with him the current blockers and risks of trying to use it on a real laptop (maybe not usable or breaks everything (USB-C/Power Management, etc.).
I’ve sent Martin a mail a week ago, if he’s busy at the moment, IMO it’s okay I can wait more time for a response.
EDIT : I just saw @Martin_L_Roth’s update post, sorry for the ping
I thought it was possible to try and build it like the Coreboot starter/starting tutorial where you need to get Coreboot and the Seabios payload running in QEMU. But you’re most likely right, thanks for the information, I clearly wasn’t aware.
The starting tutorial is actually mostly intended to ensure your build environment works properly, and the QEMU board is an easy target to test this for as you don’t need to flash any hardware (but as mentioned, this QEMU ROM will only run on QEMU and a Framework ROM will only run on a Framework). The general flow of building coreboot for a particular board (like the Framework laptop) will be similar though, but you will need to change the configs appropriately.
I’ve done flashing hardware and dumping firmware through SPI flash before, so this part is okay for me, as well as taking precaution around backing up the known good/and official BIOS before doing any hardware mod.
I’ve got also the proper hardware for flashing at 1.8V.
azalea port likely won’t ever be more than a proof-of-concept simply because of the state of the AMD FSP and openSIL codebases for the Phoenix chip
Will openSIL be better in a few years ? Won’t this allow this PoC to be more polished in the future once openSIL is way more ready for consumer laptops ? Or maybe become usable daily ?
And there’s a mention on Phoronix, which links to the thread. This is very cool! Hopefully something Framework can build on for the future, perhaps. Or at least serve as a model Coreboot for AMD platform in general.
Arguably most exciting with the new platform support in Coreboot 24.05 is supporting the Framework 13 AMD laptop. This is the early support for the Framework 13 AMD and still does require binary blobs but at least this is progress being made and better than the default proprietary BIOS. It’s an experimental Coreboot port being worked on by various AMD firmware engineers and other stakeholders as an unofficial project.
Absolutely fantastic news!! Am I reading correctly that existing Framework 13 laptops available for sale today could have Coreboot installed on them? If not, what steps remain.
Many, many thanks to all the folks who put effort into this.
What was posted was a very early proof of concept that doesn’t have everything working. It will likely be a while before coreboot is “productioj ready” so please don’t buy a framework 13 ok the expectation or promise of coreboot (in essence I’m saying make your purchasing decision on what would be delivered today, not promised or expected tomorrow).
The article and posts up above in this thread give a lot more context for this
The AMD based Framework Laptop 13 available for sale today can have an prototype version of Coreboot installed that lacks many features and is still experimental (meaning it could be unstable or even brick your device).
If I’m reading the information correctly, the current Coreboot support for the Framework is for AMD, and is in an alpha state. Framework wouldn’t install this on a laptop you purchase from them without an official statement to that effect, and they probably wouldn’t be installing Coreboot until it’s stable, if ever. This would be up to the end user to install for themselves.
Hi @Martin_L_Roth , I’d like to follow up on this: “If someone wanted to raise some money for additional features…”
Which additional features did you have in mind? How much do coreboot consulting firms charge for items like this? Seriously weighing whether it would be worth my time to set up a go-fund-me or similar. Would love to help facilitate movement here if I can.
It would be a great discussion topic for the open-source firmware community (and not only). Since we plan the sixth Dasharo User Group and following vPub on 13th June, maybe more people would be interested in joining and discussing this topic.
I will contact Felix and @Martin_L_Roth to see if they have time to discuss coreboot for Framework-related topics and let us know about the progress of their endeavors.
