The wiki is being retired!
Documentation is now handled by the same processes we use for code: Add something to the Documentation/ directory in the coreboot repo, and it will be rendered to https://doc.coreboot.org/. Contributions welcome!
coreboot (formerly known as LinuxBIOS) is a Free Software project aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS (firmware) you can find in most of today's computers.
It performs just a little bit of hardware initialization and then executes a so-called payload, for example a Linux kernel, FILO, GRUB2, OpenBIOS, Open Firmware, SmartFirmware, GNUFI (UEFI), Etherboot, ADLO (for booting Windows and OpenBSD), Plan 9, or memtest86.
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Benefits —
There are many reasons for using LinuxBIOS.
- 100% Free Software (GPL), no royalties, no license fees!
- Fast boot times (3 seconds from power-on to Linux console)
- Avoids the need for a slow, buggy, proprietary BIOS
- Runs in 32-Bit protected mode almost from the start
- Written in C, contains virtually no assembly code
- Supports a wide variety of hardware and payloads
- Further features: netboot, serial console, remote flashing, ...
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Use Cases —
LinuxBIOS can be deployed in a wide range of scenarios.
- Standard desktop computers and servers
- Clusters, high-performance computing
- Embedded solutions, appliances, terminals
- Small form factor computers, Home-theater PCs (HTPC)
- No-moving-parts solutions (ROM chip as "hard drive")
- Various non-standard scenarios (e.g. FPGA in Opteron socket)
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 ASUS A8N-E with glued-on pushpin BIOS chip.
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