Canoeboot 20231101 released!

Leah Rowe in Canoe Leah Mode™

1 November 2023

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Article published by: Leah Rowe in Canoe Leah Mode™

Date of publication: 1 November 2023

A corresponding Libreboot 20231101 release is also available. Simultaneous same-day release!

Introduction

This new release, Canoeboot 20231101, released today 1 November 2023, is based on the Libreboot 20231101 release, porting changes in it on top of Canoeboot 20231026 as a base. The previous release was Canoeboot 20231026, released on 26 October 2023.

Canoeboot provides boot firmware for supported x86/ARM machines, starting a bootloader that then loads your operating system. It replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware on x86 machines, and provides an improved configuration on ARM-based chromebooks supported (U-Boot bootloader, instead of Google’s depthcharge bootloader). On x86 machines, the GRUB and SeaBIOS coreboot payloads are officially supported, provided in varying configurations per machine. It provides an automated build system for the configuration and installation of coreboot ROM images, making coreboot easier to use for non-technical people. You can find the list of supported hardware in Canoeboot documentation.

Canoeboot’s main benefit is higher boot speed, better security and more customisation options compared to most proprietary firmware. As a libre software project, the code can be audited, and coreboot does regularly audit code. The other main benefit is freedom to study, adapt and share the code, a freedom denied by most boot firmware, but not Canoeboot! Booting Linux/BSD is also well supported.

Canoeboot is maintained in parallel with Libreboot, and by the same developer, Leah Rowe, who maintains both projects; Canoeboot implements the GNU Free System Distribution Guideline as policy, whereas Libreboot implements its own Binary Blob Reduction Policy.

Work done since last release

This changelog is based on the Libreboot 20231101 changelog; changes from Libreboot 20231101 that are suitable for Canoeboot have been included in this release, and so, this changelog has been modified (based on the Libreboot one):

Coreboot, GRUB, U-Boot and SeaBIOS revisions

Canoeboot 20231026 and 20231101 are both based on these revisions:

However, Canoeboot 20231101 has added several new patches on top of several of these, that fix certain bugs or improve certain functionalities. More information is available elsewhere in this page.

Build system tweaks

These changes were made:

This is only about 1 week’s worth of changes; this Canoeboot release is largely a bugfix release.

Hardware supported in this release

All of the following are believed to boot, but if you have any issues, please contact the Canoeboot project. They are:

Servers (AMD, x86)

Desktops (AMD, Intel, x86)

Laptops (Intel, x86)

Laptops (ARM, with U-Boot payload)

Downloads

You can find this release on the downloads page. At the time of this announcement, some of the rsync mirrors may not have it yet, so please check another one if your favourite one doesn’t have it.

Post-release errata

The following binary blobs were overlooked, and are still present in the release archive for Canoeboot 20231101 and 20231026; this mistake was corrected, in the Canoeboot 20231103 release, so you should use that if you don’t want these files. They are, thus:

Thanks go to Craig Topham, who is the Copyright and Licensing Associate at the Free Software Foundation; you can find his entry on the FSF staff page. Craig is the one who reported these.

The Canoeboot 20231026 and 20231101 release tarballs will not be altered, but errata has now been added to the announcement pages for those releases, to let people know of the above issue.

You are advised, therefore, to use the Canoeboot 20231103 release.

Update on 12 November 2023:

This file was also overlooked, and is still present in the release tarball:

This has now been removed, in the Canoeboot git repository (cbmk.git), and this file will absent, in the next release after Canoeboot 20231107. Thanks go to Denis Carikli who reported this. The patch to fix it is here:

https://codeberg.org/canoeboot/cbmk/commit/70d0dbec733c5552f8cd6fb711809935c8f3d2f3

Markdown file for this page: https://canoeboot.org/news/canoeboot20231101.md

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