@libreleah@mas.to
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

libreleah

@libreleah@mas.to

passionate nut who rants on irc and likes coreboot and openbsd. libreboot founder and lead developer (libreboot.org). bios on social media accounts are so asinine because you can't really say much that is meaningful. everyone has a different perception than you do. judge me on merit. every post by me reflects the opinion of my employer (also me). i don't know everything but i try to know enough - if i say something wrong, i want you to challenge me. they/them

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

FYI to Minifree customers, your orders will ship this week. I hit a few snags and was a bit held back, but things are running ship shape again as of today.

Also: the recent Libreboot 20240126 release is being pre-installed on each machine.

Here is the Libreboot 20240126 release announcement from a few days ago:

https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot20240126.html

I've tested it on a bunch of machines and it's solid, I also run it on my own machine. I'm holding off on further development now until all orders are shipped.

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

Libreboot 20240126 released!

https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot20240126.html

Highlights:

  • HP EliteBook 820 G2 added
  • HP Compaq Elite 8300 CMT added
  • HP EliteBook 8460p added
  • ThinkPad X220 eDP added
  • Dell Latitude E6530 added
  • EFI System Partition support
  • Extlinux/syslinux config scanning alongside GRUB configs. More distros should work
  • Ditto for installers (more USB distro installers should work)
  • New January 2024 coreboot revision
  • New December 2023 GRUB revision
  • GM45 thinkpads: S3 fix from upstream
libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

Libreboot 20240126 is compiling.

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

So I'm installing Qubes for a customer. I'm not usually one to complain about things, but I'll make an exception. Perhaps even to their mailing list:

Qubes installer is the least intuitive ever. It finishes, then a little button appears to click "next" but it's hidden in plain sight, and nothing changes on the screen to highly and visibly demonstrate to go next.

Same for configuration in general. I think it's still doing something so I leave it, but it finished ~30 minutes ago.

Bad UI design.

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

I'm writing a TODO page for Libreboot. Here it is:

https://libreboot.org/tasks/

It used to be there but I deleted it. Anyway, I'm copying all the notes from my diary, for things that need doing, or things that will be desirable for the project. Hence the page title: "Jobs that need doing". Straight forward and to the point.

So if you want to help out the Libreboot project, look at that page. I should be finished today, adding everything to that page.

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

What an irony. A train manufacturing company attempting to derail #RightToRepair in Poland.

https://www.404media.co/polish-hackers-repaired-trains-the-manufacturer-artificially-bricked-now-the-train-company-is-threatening-them/

Props to the Polish hackers keeping the trains running.

DRM is a scourge, and this is why we need to have free software everywhere - especially on public property.

libreleah,
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

one could say, they stopped the DRM in its tracks

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

The new Libreboot article is now live:

https://libreboot.org/news/10.html

It is technically 12 December 2023 in the UK; in 3 minutes from this post being published, it will be 13 December 2023.

Libreboot's first ever release was on 12 December 2013, so today has been Libreboot's 10-year anniversary.

I've spent all day writing the article. It explains the history of the Libreboot project, through my eyes.

Thoughts welcome. I'll likely tweak it, despite having published. What's there should be complete.

libreleah,
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

@samueljohnson yeah, tbh that statement wasn't really needed, so has now been removed - i used it for comparison, while raising a point, but the point itself is clear enough without such examples. the substance of the article, and sheer depth of it, especially that section as a whole, pretty much carries the point forward, driving it home without the need for analogy. patch:

https://codeberg.org/libreboot/lbwww/commit/44471f81a3091ca26c3d99ec7ff417b8f07e37a4

this change has now been applied, live. its removal does not alter the substance of the article.

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

Extremely fun fact:

https://binarly.io/posts/finding_logofail_the_dangers_of_image_parsing_during_system_boot/

Binarly showed a new exploit, allowing unsigned code to run in firmware on most UEFI-based systems. You can (within limits) run your own code in firmware, circumventing the Intel Boot Guard.

For years, it has been impossible to use coreboot on many modern intel machines, due to intel bootguard.

Very exciting times!

EDIT: Original post mentioned Tianocore but the bug relates to other image parsing tools used by vendors. Not the Tianocore one.

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

Fun fact: I maintain a project called the Untitled Static Site Generator, which uses pandoc+templates to generate HTML websites from repositories of markdown files. It's extremely flexible, highly configurable, and can be themed easily. The Libreboot website uses it. A single instance can handle hundreds of websites, with RSS, and....

https://codeberg.org/vimuser/untitled/commit/9cc6f5dc7349b7f339f99c84789b6c62ea7bb1c7

...I made it posix compliant. It was written in bash.

It now uses posix sh. It should work on any sh. Including BSD systems with pandoc.

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

If any of my readers are competent web designers, please get in touch. I don't need anything fancy (probably very little / no backend code).

I know someone who is working on a graphics design project, and their work is very good. They've asked me to set up a website for them.

I will maintain all the infrastructure, set up emails etc, I'm competent at that - but I suck at web design. I used to do it, in the 2000s, but my knowledge now is quite dated.

So, I wish to hire. Please get in touch!

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

This customer is getting OpenBSD. Libreboot X220 (custom order) with dwm, dmenu, st and ststatus. Suckless software. Dwm is a highly efficient, highly configurable tiling window manager.

My company: https://minifree.org/

I sell laptops with Libreboot pre-installed, which replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware. Libreboot offers greater security and faster boot speeds, and lots of unique features you can't get anywhere else. I'm the founder and lead developer of Libreboot. Sales fund my work.

image/jpeg
image/jpeg

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

It's 20 November 2023: Transgender Day of Remembrance.

I choose to honour the memory of David Kirk Ginder, a non-binary person who died by suicide on 27 June 2021, due to bullying by neo-nazi scum.

David was known online as byuu (later "near"), author of bsnes (later "higan") which is a free/opensource SNES emulator. This project even used it: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-Silicon-Valley-quest-to-preserve-Stephen-12759775.php

Emulators are what inspired me to study computing in the 2000s. I studied byuu's work. It inspired many other people.

RIP byuu

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

Nice paywall blocker:

Use "Bypass Paywalls Firefox Clean" https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean

It was nuked from the mozilla addon store due to DCMA order so you know it's legit. Source code on git. You can just install it from their repo. I use it and it's great.

there is also one that should work on chromium but i don't use it: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean

With this, one can read sites like New York Times easily. I also recommend Ublock Origin adblocker, Privacy Badger and "I still don't care about cookies"

micahflee, to random

This is a great article by @taylorlorenz and others, unfortunately behind a paywall. But also, lol at this part https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/19/antisemiticism-interent-elon-musk-israwl-war/

libreleah,
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

@micahflee @taylorlorenz Use "Bypass Paywalls Firefox Clean" https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean

It was deleted from the mozilla add-on store due to DCMA order so you know it's legit. Source code on git. You can just install it from their repo.

there is also one that should work on chromium but i don't use that browser: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean

With this, one can read the article you linked just fine. No worry. I also recommend Ublock Origin adblocker, Privacy Badger and "I still don't care about cookies"

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

I'm happy to announce price reductions, for several upgrades on https://minifree.org/ -

  • Libreboot T440p: £20 reduction on quad-core upgrades (i7-4700MQ) - now 60, not 80

  • Libreboot T440p and X230: £20 reduction on 2TB SSD upgrades - now 40, not 60

  • T440p and X230: £20 reduction on 2nd SSD

Libreboot installed. I'm Libreboot founder, and lead dev; sales fund my work. Libreboot replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware, improving security and it boots faster

Your choice of Linux distro/BSD

image/jpeg

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

I suck at photography.

Today is 16 November 2023, the 1-year anniversary of OSBoot and Libreboot merging to become a single, unified project; this is what birthed the Libreboot Binary Blob Reduction Policy, leading to about 2-3x as many boards supported in Libreboot. Libreboot today far surpasses both erstwhile projects: https://libreboot.org/news/policy.html

To celebrate, I've finally updated the T440p pic on https://minifree.org/; it used to show osboot. This new photo is of a T440p with Libreboot on it.

libreleah,
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

The T440p, pictured above, is the one I actually use myself. That's why it has a bunch of stuff plugged into it. It's my main development machine!

I sell laptops on https://minifree.org/ with Libreboot installed which replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware, offering faster boot speeds and better security. I'm also the founder of Libreboot. Sales fund the project.

I sell these modified machines with your choice of Debian Linux, other Linux distro or a BSD of your choice, alongside Libreboot.

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

Fun fact: it's transgender awareness week, throughout this week. See https://glaad.org/transweek/

Also fun fact: I too am transgender (non-binary). I'm a normal person who gets on with life; I do it every day.

If you know a trans person, say something nice to them. Compliment them. Welcome them. In some parts of the world, we are heavily shunned, even though we do no harm to anyone.

PS:

November 20th is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR): https://glaad.org/tdor/ - I know who I'll be honouring.

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

Today I learned that there are certain very special LInux distros/users who put /boot on a FAT32 file system.

Someone actually reported a bug in the recent 20231106 Libreboot release, because I removed FAT32 support in GRUB. Because our GRUB doesn't boot Windows/DOS directly anyway, and I didn't think some Linux users would boot Linux from a 1980s DOS file system. Really.

Anyway, patch:

https://browse.libreboot.org/lbmk.git/commit/?id=39aad57873b9e6265d089ef7dbb4dc5add5c659f

I do find it quite amusing. Anyway, use SeaBIOS in 20231106 if you're one of them.

libreleah,
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

I did some digging. Apparently this is common nowadays?? On UEFI machines.

E.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_system_partition

So the user could have been doing it before Libreboot; the last non-coreboot system I ever personally used was pre-UEFI.

Guess I'm oldschool. I've actually never personally used UEFI on x86. And in Libreboot, our default recommended payload, GRUB, just boots your Linux kernel on the bare metal.

Coreboot does init, jumps to GRUB (built for coreboot, not BIOS/UEFI) and directly boots Linux.

libreleah,
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

In other words, Libreboot's default setup is to not have any BIOS or UEFI callbacks. Coreboot just sets everything up and runs GRUB in flash, running on the bare metal; in this, GRUB is implementing all of its own drivers, does its own of everything, because again: no BIOS/UEFI callbacks or routines of any kind.

Then GRUB boots Linux in this setup. Directly. Coreboot provides a framebuffer for video, or text mode, and Linux video drivers set mode directly

this is what I've used for 10 years

libreleah,
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

In other words, I still live in the year 2005. Newer isn't always better, and in my opinion the UEFI spec is garbage. It defines interfaces that are completely redundant for the purpose of booting an operating system.

Coreboot's design is clean. here are better ways to boot linux:

grub in flash doing multiboot

linux in flash, kexec a linux kernel - the original intent of coreboot, when it was called linuxbios

u-boot spl (essentially similar to the coreboot payload concept but in u-boot land)

libreleah, to random
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

Canoeboot 20231107 released!

https://canoeboot.org/news/canoeboot20231107.html

It's based on Libreboot 20231106, which has several important fixes.

After this, simultaneous Libreboot and Canoeboot releases are planned for 12 December 2023. That is the ten-year anniversary for Libreboot, whose first release occurred on 12 December 2013.

Canoeboot is a fork that I maintain in parallel, showing what Libreboot be if it followed GNU FSDG; Libreboot instead has its own policy, since November 2022: https://libreboot.org/news/policy.html

libreleah, (edited )
@libreleah@mas.to avatar

@samueljohnson I checked it, and the link return HTTP 502 status; I'm inclined to believe that this is still the correct link, and that Sam will fix it later.

Check it in a few days / a week and if it still returns bad status, tell me. I'll look at it again.

EDIT: and i checked the invidious link. it often fails, but the same is observed on other invidious instances. probably due to youtube's ongoing battle against adblockers and alternative frontends.

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