Canoeboot 20240612 released!
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, in the same way that 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 GNU+Linux distro, providing the same type of infrastructure, but for your boot firmware instead of your operating system. 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).
This is a bugfix release, and is considered stable. It fixes a series of bugs that were discovered in the previous Canoeboot 20240504 and 20240510 releases from 4 May 2024 and 10 May 2024 respectively.
The errata on Canoeboot 20240504 meant that all ROM images had to be removed, so a new stable release had to be made ASAP to compensate - the Canoeboot 20240510 binaries were also removed for the same reason, namely that the included xHCI patches (that weren’t actually needed on any machines) could potentially be problematic. This Canoeboot release excludes xHCI GRUB patches on all boards, because xHCI is not physically available on any current Canoeboot hardware, at least not x86.