Category: coreboot

Hi community,

I’m Alexander Couzens on the list and in IRC known as lynxis. I’ve experience with embedded Linux and hardware integration of wireless devices using OpenWrt. I started modifying my vendor BIOS several years ago because my brand new Lenovo X201t didn’t allow me to use good wireless cards because it checked all pci networks devices against a white list. After my mainboard was replaced I had to do the same modification again or install coreboot. Of course I went for coreboot 🙂 While installing coreboot I also started developing it, my GSoC is the H8S Embedded Controller firmware. The EC controls a lot of things in your laptop. An EC controls the battery charging and discharging, the keyboards, docking and undocking, multiple sensors, thermals sensors, fan, lid switch and power regulators.

Continue reading GSoC 2015 H8S EC firmware

Hello coreboot!

My name is Łukasz Dmitrowski and I study Computer Science at West Pomerania University of Technology in Szczecin. I am relatively new to coreboot and firmware programming, but definitely want to dive in, this is why I have chosen coreboot from all available organizations. Last year I participated in GSoC and implemented MQTT-SN client for Wiselib library. It was really great and interesting experience. This year I am excited even more about my project! It is a very good starting point to get familiar with coreboot and stay with you also after GSoC.

Continue reading [GSoC-2015] Introduction – End user flash tool

Moin!

A new post after a long time. I’ll introduce myself again for the benefit of (few? :P) faded memories. I am Naman, a senior year undergraduate from India. I worked on developing alternate resource-efficient CBFS access patterns for ARM SoCs as a part of GSoC-2014. I am fortunate enough to engage as a GSoC student for coreboot this year too. I have had a busy semester but finally, as the summers arrive, I look forward to dive into the riveting world of coreboot hacking!

This summer I would be working to introduce a qemu target for arm64 architecture supporting coreboot. Currently, In order to work on aarch64, users require to have suitable hardware. This project intends to clear away this constraint. We have a growing aarch64 support with the tegra132 port, but no support for arm64 in emulation. Having a qemu target might be helpful for many projects which aim to arm64 work.

Continue reading [GSoC-2015] Introduction – Qemu Support for ARM64

Hey coreboot community!

My name is Nicky Sielicki. I’m one of our Google Summer of Code 2015 participants. I’m a sophomore, err– I guess now I’m a junior, at the University of Wisconsin. You can read personal details about me at nicky.io, or maybe get to know me– I’m n1cky on freenode! Come say hello.

I’ve been hanging around the coreboot community for about 6 months or so after learning about coreboot from a 2008 GoogleTechTalks video about coreboot and why it’s awesome. I purchased a chromebook in hopes of playing around with coreboot and learning something. Over my winter break, I spent a lot of time reading, flashing unsuccessfully, and understanding more about coreboot.

Continue reading GSoC 2015 Introduction – Nicky Sielicki

Dear coreboot community!

I want to wholeheartedly thank every single one of you, who has contributed code to the coreboot project, reviewed code, improved our documentation in the wiki, or has contributed to the project by other means. You all have helped create a truly great project.

In 2014 alone, more coreboot devices have shipped than in all previous years combined! Since the start of coreboot v2 in 2003, 345 contributors have put over 12 thousand commits, an estimated effort of 457 years (COCOMO model) into the project. Since 2010, we have added support for all new Intel mobile and AMD R and G series processors. In the last year alone, we have added support for ARM/ARM64 SOCs from 7 vendors and, support for the MIPS and RISC-V architecture.

Continue reading On coreboot leadership…

Intel has released the FSP 1.1 specification . Watch for patches on the coreboot Gerrit in the near future.

We want to make coreboot more accessible and usable for businesses. In order to coordinate efforts, we plan to create a business organization (a.k.a. a coreboot consortium) that helps commercial players out in the field to become a part of the coreboot community, share marketing materials, participate in working groups, and other efforts to promote the use of coreboot in the market place and be successful with coreboot based solutions.

If you work for an organization that is using coreboot, developing coreboot, or is just interested in coreboot, please help us learn about your needs and wishes and fill out the following form: http://goo.gl/glhNh5

coreboot has grown and matured a lot in the last few years and we have many new contributors and users. This growth has been something I have been thinking about for some time. I often ask myself what makes a good community? How does our community grow and flourish? How do we get new contributors and new students for GSOC. How can I contribute to growing our community?  These questions were on my mind as I attended the GSOC reunion in San Jose last fall and again later at the coreboot meetup in Prague. Discussions at both events helped shape my ideas, but GSOC reunion had some key elements to shaping a good community.

A reoccurring topic at GSOC gatherings is how to  expand project communities, keeping students engaged after GSOC, and how to get new students and contributors involved with projects. Normally, these discussions are among mentors, who are well entrenched in the FLOSS culture, are experienced developers, and have developed strong relationships within their project. Unlike previous mentor summits, the GSOC reunion was open to past students and mentors to attend, which brought a different perspective. Many of the students  were not involved in the projects after GSOC and we wanted to know why. This was an opportunity to hear from students about what worked for them and what didn’t work. Most of the students I met still used lots of open source software, but there were a number of reasons that they no longer developed on their GSOC project. Some students lost interest in the project, but still developed on other projects. Some students got jobs that didn’t deal with open source, but would do it again given the opportunity. Finally, there were some students (and mentors) that said that they didn’t like working in open source, that they were mistreated, forced or flamed out, or never felt welcome and appreciated. It is the last group that I wanted to make a difference in.

While most developers don’t experience something as terrible as the harassment that happened in the context of Gamergate or other terrible behavior documented at technical and open source conferences the last several years, it does indicate that there is a problem in our open source communities. This terrible behavior online and offline is unacceptable.  You shouldn’t be required to have a thick skin to develop open source. It should be a collaborative, not combative environment. We can’t lose valuable contributors because they felt uncomfortable or unwanted. A few mentors of large communities have had to deal with some really ugly incidents  (I’m trying to recall, but I think it was folks from Debian and Ubuntu among others) and they provided some great advice. The first was that mature communities should have some rules for behavior.  The second, and maybe more important, is that community members must point out when someone is behaving poorly. I felt that these were important point and started to consider how to make coreboot a more safe and welcoming place.

Typically, harassment, trolling, flaming, etc  is not a problem in the coreboot community.  We have a group that is generally friendly and helpful. We try to encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior, but we could do more.  With a growing and maturing community we are going a step farther and describing what is unacceptable within our community with the coreboot Code of Conduct. It is a simple and straight forward statement about what we expect from out community members. The code of conduct is based on the Citizen Code of Conduct and similar documents in the open source community. Feel free to comment and provide feedback either publicly or privately.  Please note that this isn’t directed at anyone in particular or for a specific instance. It is part of “growing up” as an active and maturing community.