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Article published by: Leah Rowe

Date of publication: 15 April 2023

Today, Libreboot gains its first desktop machine for nearly 2 years. The last one added was Acer G43T-AM3.

You can learn more about this on the HP Elite 8200 SFF Libreboot installation and hardware information page.

The patch for Libreboot was done, courtesy of Riku Viitanen, IRC nick Riku_V on Libreboot IRC. It’s quite a nice Intel Sandybridge platform, with all libre initialisation on the coreboot side, and Libreboot’s build system automatically runs me_cleaner while building for this board.

This board is significant because it’s relatively simple to flash, cheap, and readily available on merchant sites such as eBay. Desktop support has traditionally been much weaker in Libreboot, and this is something that should (can, and will) change.

Riku is also interested in adding HP EliteBook 2560p support in Libreboot. Coreboot has support for that board. For that board, I committed this patch in a branch of Libreboot, to make handling EC firmware easier for Riku:

https://browse.libreboot.org/lbmk.git/commit/?h=blobutil_kbc1126_ec&id=b9ee4e79c33365ede01fb7d2a0d5c8f3c1a1928c

I initially wrote the logic in that patch as part of another experimental branch of Libreboot, adding HP Elitebook 8560w (does not boot yet).

If my EC download script works for Riku, and 2560p support confirmed working when Riku tests it, then both of them shall by merged into Libreboot’s master branch. The EC firmware is not on a separate IC, for that machine; instead, it must be handled during the coreboot build process, for insertion into the main boot flash. This is actually better, for similar reasons as explained in the Libreboot blobs reduction policy, because it makes the EC firmware easier to replace with libre code (based on reverse engineering, perhaps).

I’ve purchased Dell Optiplex 7020 and 9020 workstations (Haswell gen), which is available for coreboot with this gerrit patch:

https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/55232/

Libreboot will eventually support all coreboot targets.

Libreboot has the following documentation available:

• lbmk maintenance manual (build system documentation)
• porting guide (largely Intel-centric, at the time of writing this post)

Riku’s work was inspired by reading these. The guides themselves are also in need of constant maintenance and improvement, relative to the changes in Libreboot.

Markdown file for this page: https://libreboot.org/news/hp8200sff.md

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