Libreboot 26.10 makes EDK2 UEFI the default and adds 233 Chromebooks

Libreboot 26.10, named "Ominous Olive", is out. The biggest change is that most supported computers now boot through EDK2, an open source implementation of UEFI, by default. Libreboot is free boot firmware that replaces the proprietary BIOS or UEFI on supported Intel, AMD and ARM64 machines.

Boot firmware is the first code that runs when you switch on a computer. It sets up hardware such as the CPU and memory controller so an operating system like Linux or BSD can start. With EDK2 and full UEFI support, Libreboot says Windows can now boot on it too.

The release notes list Windows 10 and 11, 9front, Linux UKI bootloaders and systemd-boot, OpenBSD with an EFI bootloader and GPT partitioning, and FreeBSD in UEFI mode as tested and working. ReactOS did not work, because it has no UEFI support. The notes say RedoxOS probably works but do not say it was tested.

EDK2 is Intel's reference implementation of the UEFI specification. Libreboot uses a fork from MrChromebox that lets EDK2 run as a coreboot payload. Nearly all boards now use it, including older ones like the ThinkPad X200 and T500. Older 32-bit-only boards and some others, such as the HP EliteBook 8560w, still use standalone GRUB and SeaBIOS.

For backward compatibility, GRUB and SeaBIOS are now built as EFI versions inside the EDK2 menu. You reach them by pressing ESC at startup. The notes call the standalone versions deprecated and say they may be removed in a future release, though people can re-enable them by building from source.

The second major change is Chromebook support. Libreboot imported all 233 Intel and AMD Chromebooks supported by MrChromebox, using a new utility called mrimport. These are source-only in this release, so users must build them themselves. The notes say only the Baytrail "Kip" board has been tested and the rest need testing.

The project says this is not a fork of MrChromebox, which it treats as its upstream for these machines. MrChromebox's installation scripts should still work with Libreboot images. Libreboot's changes include a purple EDK2 background with its own logo, and the Intel ME (a hidden management processor) is disabled at build time by setting the HAP bit.

AMD Fam15h boards such as the ASUS KGPE-D16 now use the 15h.org fork of coreboot, which relies on AMD AGESA code. The notes say this gives more reliable memory and CPU setup, supports more RAM, and fixes IOMMU and TPM. EDK2 images for these boards are experimental and source-only, because the onboard AST2050 graphics chip does not set up a framebuffer. They are meant for use with a graphics card.

New hardware support includes the Dell OptiPlex 5050 SFF and 3040 Micro, the Supermicro X11SSH-F, and the ThinkPad X270 and X280. The ThinkPad X301 target is no longer marked as excluded from releases. The release also updates GRUB to 2.16 and imports EDK2 version 26.09.2.

The release also changes policy. Libreboot added a strongly anti-AI policy in a new file called AGENTS.md in its build system, lbmk. The project leader calls it the most important change in the release. The notes also say EDK2 replaces U-Boot on x86, citing what they describe as a largely AI-generated fork of U-Boot's x86 support. U-Boot stays in use on ARM64.

There are known problems. The keyboard layout defaults to UK QWERTY and cannot yet be changed from the EDK2 menu. The CSMWrap version of SeaBIOS takes up one CPU core, so a quad-core machine shows three cores in Linux. The project suggests using the GRUB EFI build instead, or switching to native UEFI boot. Rebar, a feature for modern graphics cards, is off by default because it broke Intel GPU video output in testing.