WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:15.600 If those want to enter the lines afterwards, so everyone as far as possible to the middle, please 00:15.920 --> 00:20.880 Thank you. And right side as well, please get to the middle. 00:23.760 --> 00:25.760 Thank you. Thanks a lot. 00:28.960 --> 00:30.960 Testing. 00:31.360 --> 00:48.560 Okay, we'll be starting as soon as there's enough leeway for the sound in the room, so. 00:48.560 --> 01:04.320 Hello. So, yeah, as was introduced, my name is Leo Roe. I'm here to talk about my projects 01:04.320 --> 01:12.000 Lieberboots. I assume most of you here know what it is, but it's a free corporate distribution 01:12.000 --> 01:19.040 by a slash UEFI firm on replacement. I will also have somewhat of a detour in this talk and 01:19.040 --> 01:30.480 talk about one of my other projects, canoe boots. So, yeah, first of all, who am I, so I've been, 01:30.480 --> 01:38.000 I started the Lieberboot project in December 2013. I started another project called canoe boots 01:38.000 --> 01:44.480 in 2023. I will also be talking about that at some point in this talk. I've been using free software 01:44.480 --> 01:51.520 the next since 2005. I've been an avid supporter of it ever since. I'm also involved quite heavily 01:51.520 --> 01:58.960 in politics. I've been advised by our friends that it's probably not good to be part of a talk. 01:58.960 --> 02:05.840 So, let's just say I'm a digital slash human rights activist. How that translates into free 02:05.840 --> 02:14.240 software. Well, you know, the thing to realize about free software is it's not just for computer 02:14.240 --> 02:23.600 geeks. When you think about it, the way society works, we live in a computer age. We use computers 02:23.600 --> 02:30.160 for everything nowadays. Everyone needs an internet connection. Everyone's got, everyone's got in 02:30.160 --> 02:36.480 their pockets nowadays. What would have been regarded as a supercomputer 50 years ago. So, 02:37.680 --> 02:43.120 everything that you do into in civil society depends on access to computing, access to information, 02:43.120 --> 02:53.280 and how you're computing functions should be, the whole idea with free software is, 02:54.480 --> 02:59.200 you have the freedom to run the software however you want, you can modify it however you want, 02:59.280 --> 03:05.840 you can study it, you can share it. In the context of politics and society in general, 03:06.480 --> 03:15.040 that translates essentially into democracy. If all of the services that you use in everyday life 03:15.040 --> 03:22.000 are proprietary, meaning you don't have control over your technology, then it can be argued 03:22.080 --> 03:32.000 that you don't necessarily have a full, fully democratic society. So, free software is not, 03:32.000 --> 03:38.000 as I say, it's not just for, you know, nerds, it's for everyone. Now, the thing to realize 03:38.000 --> 03:43.520 about software freedom is, it's all well and good. If you know how to install Linux, you 03:44.720 --> 03:49.920 have some idea of what you're doing, but everyone needs to have free software because 03:50.720 --> 03:58.080 if only a small group of people know how to use it, then that's obviously no good. You need, 04:00.320 --> 04:06.720 you need everyone else to work on all of their services that you use. So, they need software 04:06.720 --> 04:12.640 freedom as well. If you've got an entire industry that's all, you know, Windows, Mac or wherever else, 04:13.600 --> 04:21.680 that's no good. So, I'm going to go first into the structure of this talk. So, in previous 04:21.680 --> 04:26.800 talks that I've done, I've been much more sort of theoretical, you know, I've gone on for, you know, 04:26.800 --> 04:33.760 an hour talking about my projects and detail. The first 20 to 25 minutes of service talk is going 04:33.760 --> 04:38.480 to be, you know, going through the history, the technical aspects of the project, but it's not going to be, 04:39.200 --> 04:43.200 it's not going to be overly technical, it's going to be more ideological, and we're going to talk 04:43.200 --> 04:49.520 about the goals of the project, but the focus of this talk is going to be on the second half. 04:49.520 --> 04:55.520 So, I'm going to try to get through the talk itself in about 20 to 25 minutes, and then the second 04:55.520 --> 05:00.880 half of this talk, I'm going to give a live demonstration showing the book itself. So, I'm going to go 05:00.880 --> 05:06.800 through the build system, I'm going to go through, I'm basically just, the first thing I'm going 05:06.800 --> 05:11.040 to start with is I'm going to show, you know, if you're, if you're just a user, you want to use 05:11.040 --> 05:16.320 the book, I'm going to show all of the typical ways that you'd use it, I'm going to show, maybe 05:16.320 --> 05:21.200 go into some of the development aspects, show how certain things it maintains, things like that. 05:21.200 --> 05:28.640 And during that second half, it will also be a question, a Q&A. So, if you have any questions, 05:30.080 --> 05:35.440 like, if I'm doing the demo, if I'm doing the demo and, you know, something that doesn't seem 05:35.440 --> 05:41.520 right, you know, put your hand up, interrupts me, I'll explain, I'll stop and explain, and if you want, 05:42.240 --> 05:46.880 yeah. So, that's assuming, of course, that I stick to this schedule, we don't know how long 05:46.880 --> 05:51.440 this talk's going to go on for. So, what is LibreBoot? As I briefly mentioned in the intro to this 05:51.440 --> 05:56.720 talk, it's a free, or open-source, spios, or UFI firmware replacement. What does it mean? 05:57.680 --> 06:04.880 The bios, or UFI, as some people, as a lot of people refer to it, is the thing that starts 06:04.960 --> 06:10.720 your computer. So, it starts the CPU, initializes memory controller, peripherals, then it comes up with a 06:10.720 --> 06:16.320 nice little interface, you start your boot load, a big reporting system, right? So, you know, Linux, 06:16.320 --> 06:23.760 BSD, whatever it is. LibreBoot is also what's known as a core boot district. So, in the past, 06:23.760 --> 06:30.000 some people have, have wrongly assumed that LibreBoot is a fork of core boot. That's not the case. 06:30.960 --> 06:39.840 You know how, you know how you have, say, Debian, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, I suppose, those are Linux distributions. 06:39.840 --> 06:44.560 So, if you want to use Linux, you don't have to download the Linux kernel. You don't have to download, 06:44.560 --> 06:52.080 you know, GNU Core Utils, or X11, Waylands, and all of the variant, you don't have to do everything yourself. 06:52.080 --> 06:57.520 You have these wonderful projects that package everything for you and make it really, really easy, 06:57.520 --> 07:03.040 and they provide user documentation support. LibreBoot is essentially that, but for core boot. 07:03.040 --> 07:12.880 So, it packages core boot and all of the various programs there. So, why, use LibreBoot? Well, 07:15.280 --> 07:20.080 LibreBoot is a free software project. So, I assume most people in this audience know what free 07:20.080 --> 07:26.240 software is, but free software, I'll just briefly explain again in case any one person doesn't know. 07:27.200 --> 07:32.480 Free software means you have the right to study the program, see, I have worked here, 07:32.480 --> 07:37.600 you can run it on as many computers as you like, share it with your friends, you can do whatever you want with it. 07:39.520 --> 07:47.120 This is an important thing to have from an ideological perspective. It's a matter of civil liberties, 07:47.120 --> 07:53.040 as I explained earlier on in this talk. It democratizes computing essentially. 07:53.360 --> 08:01.280 So, this is really the main aspect of LibreBoot. The main point of LibreBoot is to be a free firmware 08:01.280 --> 08:06.240 distribution, but there are other reasons you might want to use it as well. So, it has quite a lot of 08:06.240 --> 08:13.120 nice encryption features in Grab, for example, if you want to boot Linux and you want to 08:13.120 --> 08:18.720 encrypt everything, you can use full disk encryption on standard proprietary firmware, but 08:18.880 --> 08:25.440 LibreBoot, for example, comes with Grab as one of the boot loader options when you start. 08:25.440 --> 08:33.120 It can read luck's partitions directly. So, you can have an encrypt. So, if you have the 08:33.120 --> 08:39.920 slash boot director, we've got with your Linux kernel, you can decrypt that directly so that nothing 08:39.920 --> 08:47.680 on your disks is in secure. And as other security features as well, I've got into some of 08:47.680 --> 08:55.760 this later on in the talk. No DRM, no anti-features. So, for example, this ThinkPad that I've got, 08:55.760 --> 09:02.080 this is a ThinkPad T580. It was added to LibreBoot last month, actually. On ThinkPad's, for example, 09:02.080 --> 09:09.040 if you want to use your own wireless card, that's upgraded to something better. The Nova usually has 09:09.120 --> 09:17.040 a whitelist in their firmware that means you can't use anything but what they provide. 09:17.040 --> 09:24.560 LibreBoot doesn't have features like that. Another advantage to LibreBoot is, because it's a 09:24.560 --> 09:29.280 free software project, because the community has control over it, because you can study it, 09:29.280 --> 09:35.920 change it and completely understand every aspect of it, you get continued for 09:36.320 --> 09:41.760 LibreBoot also tries to provide security features. You really can't get most of the 09:41.760 --> 09:49.200 firmware projects. And, well, it should go with that saying, if we want free software 09:49.200 --> 09:53.040 on everywhere, if we want everyone to use free software, then that logically must mean that 09:53.040 --> 09:57.200 every computer has to have free firmware, whether it be a LibreBoot or something else. 09:57.920 --> 10:04.160 Our brieflet's explain what a core boot payload is. Now, core boots, as I explained, 10:04.160 --> 10:10.320 is the projects that LibreBoot uses for hybrid initialization. But core boots only does 10:10.320 --> 10:14.960 hybrid initialization. It doesn't provide, you know how when you boot your machine and it 10:14.960 --> 10:20.560 comes up with a nice little, like many, you can select your, I don't know, your SSD or a 10:20.560 --> 10:26.160 flaster over or net those or something like that. Core boot doesn't do any of that. It just 10:26.160 --> 10:31.440 starts your hardware and then jumps to what's called a payload. This payload is typically 10:31.440 --> 10:37.680 what provides your bootloader. So, you can use grab Linux, you can use EDK2, EDK2 is the 10:38.400 --> 10:44.640 Intel's reference implementation for UFI. It is a free software project, it's on the GitHub. 10:45.440 --> 10:53.440 You can, LibreBoot provides, LibreBoot doesn't provide every payload. You can modify it and 10:53.440 --> 11:00.720 add whatever you want, but we provide grab C-bass in Uboots on various boards, and I'll go into that 11:00.720 --> 11:07.120 later on in the software as well. You can use other payloads, and this will be in the demo. 11:08.080 --> 11:12.480 You can actually modify each board to use core boots. So, we have our own 11:13.360 --> 11:18.560 logic in the LibreBoot build system for adding payloads to boards, but you can override that and use 11:18.560 --> 11:23.680 core boots. Logic instead, and core boot has more options. Again, I'll go through this in the demo 11:23.680 --> 11:29.040 in the second half of the talk. So, you can find, if you want to know more about core boot in general, 11:29.040 --> 11:32.640 but there is one of LibreBoot's upstream projects, you can go to core boot.org. 11:34.480 --> 11:40.800 Now, so, I explained earlier on in the talk that LibreBoot is a core boot distribution. Well, 11:41.760 --> 11:51.760 let's compare this to say Debian. If you've got Debian, there's a bootstrap script that makes 11:51.760 --> 11:58.480 the install roomage, and then you've got a package manager. Same with any other Linux distribution. 11:59.280 --> 12:04.400 Naturally, LibreBoot has what, I'll go into this in brief history about the LibreBoot project. 12:04.400 --> 12:12.720 So, I started the projects in December 2013. It wasn't initially a project as such. 12:13.600 --> 12:19.200 I was running, and I'm still running actually, a company on the internet called Mini-Free. 12:19.200 --> 12:23.920 Mini-Free.org. It wasn't called Mini-Free.org back then. It was a different domain name, but 12:23.920 --> 12:30.720 saying same thing. A friend that I was talking to at the time was very excited about what I was doing. 12:30.720 --> 12:35.440 I didn't really have any plans in the early days of the projects. I just had my company, 12:36.000 --> 12:40.000 you know, and I provided corporate images, I provided source code on my company website. There wasn't 12:40.000 --> 12:46.800 really a project when they saw first started. It was just commercial, right? But a friend saw the 12:46.800 --> 12:53.200 potential before I did, actually. Here's previously, I'm not going to actually say his name, 12:53.200 --> 13:00.160 but he contacted the F&F and needless to say the F&F was ecstatic. They're licensing and compliance 13:00.240 --> 13:09.600 manager Joshua Gay. That's his name. I see Nick was Jay Gay at the time. He emailed me personally, 13:09.600 --> 13:14.240 to say that the Free Suffolk Foundation is really happy with what you're doing, and they wanted to 13:14.240 --> 13:24.560 promote my work. So, I initially just went through the certification process. So, the F&F, 13:24.720 --> 13:34.320 they have a process, a certification process, it's called, respects your freedom. It's for hardware, 13:35.360 --> 13:40.880 hardware suppliers, and the idea is that they want to verify that each company selling whether 13:40.880 --> 13:46.640 it be a computer, a 3D printer, I don't know, every 3 player, mobile phone, whatever it is. It has to 13:46.640 --> 13:53.760 be all free software that they can't have any spyware, can't have anything malicious, fully free 13:53.840 --> 14:03.680 in spirit, and actually free. So, I went through the process for that. In the early days of 14:03.680 --> 14:09.920 the projects, I ended up, I actually didn't take this as seriously back then. I mean, I was kind 14:09.920 --> 14:15.120 of aware of it, but you may or may not be aware. Corbyn is nominally a free software project, 14:15.120 --> 14:23.600 but it doesn't always, sometimes in Corbyn, you do need certain binary blobs for certain 14:23.600 --> 14:30.320 boards, and I'll go through that later on, but the original purpose of leapboots, as part of 14:30.320 --> 14:38.560 this certification process, was to provide a fully free, deep blobs, Corbyn distribution, fully 14:38.640 --> 14:45.600 free, few months in 2016, after applying in 2015, LibraBoot was actually referred to as 14:45.600 --> 14:55.600 Gennew LibraBoot, and we did actually did three releases of that then. My rationale for having 14:55.600 --> 15:02.560 LibraBoot joined the Gennew Projects back then was, I didn't possibly see how it could hurt, 15:02.640 --> 15:10.560 I only saw ways that it could be improved simply by virtue of the prestige of the Gennew 15:10.560 --> 15:16.800 infrastructure itself. LibraBoot was, and is a free software project started with the same goals, 15:16.800 --> 15:23.680 we want free software everywhere. So, ideologically, we were compatible. There were some technical 15:23.680 --> 15:30.320 disagreements during this time that were not foreseen during the application process, 15:30.320 --> 15:37.920 so standards relating to documentation, coding styles, also the governance of the projects. 15:39.440 --> 15:46.880 I was very critical at the time, because basically I felt like LibraBoot was LibraBoot's 15:46.880 --> 15:53.760 and the points of the FSF was just to promote it. But long story short, there was a very 15:53.760 --> 16:01.200 ugly breakup from the Gennew Projects in 2016. I regret what happened. Not really going to go into 16:01.200 --> 16:07.920 much detail in this talk. There's actually an article on LibraBoot.org. If you can go to 16:07.920 --> 16:13.920 LibraBoot.org, forward slash news, forward slash 10, date to melt 10, as in 100, date to melt. 16:14.240 --> 16:23.600 But the next few years, LibraBoot then was its own projects. During this time, I actually 16:23.600 --> 16:29.600 stepped down. I'm going into this history of the projects now. So, I actually stepped down 16:29.600 --> 16:35.840 from the LibraBoot projects for a number of years, from 2017 to 2021. I was going through some 16:35.840 --> 16:40.080 of my own things at the time, so I left other people in charge that were in the projects then. 16:40.720 --> 16:50.000 We created a committee that everyone could vote on decisions. It was decided then that the 16:50.000 --> 16:56.160 whole projects would be rewritten. One of the design flaws of the original LibraBoot 16:56.160 --> 17:03.680 build system was, it wasn't really very flexible. It worked, but you type one commands, build one 17:03.680 --> 17:11.600 board, and it wasn't really a concept of configurability back then. So, the purpose of the 17:11.600 --> 17:16.240 rewrite was going to go into some details about what they are. So, I started our split with a 17:16.240 --> 17:21.280 very strict and clear policy that basically says, and this is what I'm going into now, if a 17:21.280 --> 17:28.400 blob can be avoided, avoid it, if it can't include it. Try to minimise the harm that certain 17:28.400 --> 17:32.640 blobs can do. So, for example, on a lot of new Intel systems, if you need, if you have the 17:32.640 --> 17:39.360 Intel management engine, LibraBoot by default will use the ME cleaner utility, and there are some 17:39.360 --> 17:44.560 other examples as well. You can actually read that if you, that's the basic summary. If you want to 17:44.560 --> 17:49.760 read the read it in detail, there's this link on the slide, LibraBoot.org, forward slash 17:49.760 --> 17:56.880 news, forward slash policy, that's to now. Now, I should clarify that this was originally on the 17:56.960 --> 18:05.920 OSBoot website, and I'm going to go into some details later on. I did not use the rewritten design 18:05.920 --> 18:11.520 for the LibraBoot build system, then I took my work from 2016, when I essentially steps down 18:11.520 --> 18:18.240 from the projects and modernised it. So, made it possible to use new machines, added lots of 18:19.200 --> 18:25.440 well, but I did, but I basically said, look, new people have not done releases in five years, 18:26.240 --> 18:32.560 and I've got this built system over here in LibraBoot that works, it's got a ton of new boards 18:32.560 --> 18:38.080 and people are using it, people are happy. So, I decided then, why don't I also do this in LibraBoot? 18:38.160 --> 18:48.000 So, that's exactly what I did. Took, throughout five years of bad code and just to cover. 18:49.360 --> 18:56.720 So, obviously, though, from the perspective, then LibraBoot had been essentially dead for a 18:56.720 --> 19:03.520 number of years. So, getting people involved was very difficult. Yeah, it was a bit. I mean, 19:03.520 --> 19:12.880 we got there in the end, but so, but the problem, as I've explained with LibraBoot, was if you have 19:12.880 --> 19:21.360 this policy of only having fully free software, no blobs, no nothing, you can only support boards 19:21.360 --> 19:30.800 from 10, 15, even, sometimes 20 years ago. So, my thought then was, well, why don't I just merge 19:30.880 --> 19:35.120 the two projects together, just have, we've already got LibraBoot, which has been established for years. 19:35.840 --> 19:41.360 So, with a Canadian developer that I was working with at the time, I'm not, I apologise, 19:41.360 --> 19:46.400 Keleb if I'm risk-pronounceing you know, at Keleb, at Grung, someone maybe someone can 19:48.560 --> 19:54.240 correct my pronunciation. Anyway, he did a lot of work with me on OSBoot in 2022. So, 19:54.240 --> 20:02.640 he was amazing, and you can go on to the LibraBoot.org, at LibraBoot.org forward slash 20:02.640 --> 20:08.000 contribbed by HTML, it's got all of the contributions that people have made, he's on there, 20:08.000 --> 20:15.200 and yeah, so we worked together on that, and so he worked on the build system. He worked on 20:15.200 --> 20:22.640 the documentation, I worked on the build system, and we merged at OSBoot.org was completely removed 20:23.280 --> 20:30.400 and redirected to LibraBoot. There was a release shortly after that post merge, and you can 20:30.400 --> 20:40.080 probably tell what's going to happen next. The FSF being the FSF decided, well, we are not very 20:40.080 --> 20:48.640 happy with this. So, at the LibraBoot Planet 2023 conference, one of their people decided why don't 20:49.600 --> 20:57.120 we make another LibraBoot project, LibraBoot.org. Now, I would be a hypocrite, if I said that I 20:57.120 --> 21:03.680 objects to a thought, I don't. I want people to thought my work, if you want to do your own thing, 21:03.680 --> 21:09.200 and you want to go your own way, that's fine. But they tried to use the LibraBoot name, and 21:09.200 --> 21:15.520 they made it very clear that they wanted me to stop using the LibraBoot name. So, what exactly 21:15.520 --> 21:23.120 was I supposed to do? So, I basically just said, well, okay, so I was aware that this was going to 21:23.120 --> 21:29.760 happen, because one of the people that I work with in LibraBoot was contacted by one of their developers 21:29.760 --> 21:35.520 at the time saying, hey, do you want to work on this new LibraBoot thought with us? And he told me 21:35.520 --> 21:45.360 about it. So, I saw that the FSF was doing a talk from Dennis. He's one of the founders of the 21:45.520 --> 21:50.080 LibraBoot project. He had a talk. He didn't say that there was going to be a LibraBoot 21:50.080 --> 21:55.680 thought. It was called something like, seizing the means of free software, production, 21:55.680 --> 21:59.120 or something like that. Anyway, I anticipated that he was going to, 21:59.120 --> 22:04.320 correctly, that he was going to announce a fork during that talk. So, I did a LibraBoot 22:04.320 --> 22:14.160 thought the same day, hours before his talk. It passed amounts of work much more than we did before 22:15.040 --> 22:22.160 in the same period. We did like three leases in a month. After a month, a drew 22:22.160 --> 22:29.040 defaults, the owner of source hats, they were using source hats to host the website, 22:29.040 --> 22:33.760 the repositories, they're mailing this, everything. As some people may know, drew 22:33.760 --> 22:37.360 defaults is not a fan of the FSF, and I basically went through them and said, look, 22:38.000 --> 22:43.280 can we do something about this? So, long story short, the project was deleted from 22:43.280 --> 22:52.160 source hats and after that they didn't want to. I can probably surmise that they wanted it to 22:52.160 --> 22:58.320 look a bit more grass roots rather than hosting it on GNU.org, and calling it GNU LibraBoot, 22:58.320 --> 23:02.080 which obviously wouldn't fly. They wanted to make it look a bit more sort of independent. 23:02.080 --> 23:07.200 But the FSFs tried again, and they created a new project called GNU Boots. 23:09.200 --> 23:12.640 A bit more respectful this time, they weren't trying to use the LibraBoot name, 23:12.640 --> 23:18.240 but they still had the same rotten attitude. They were going around telling people that 23:18.240 --> 23:25.680 LibraBoot is a proprietary software project. So, I decided, well look, they were also using 23:26.000 --> 23:32.080 LibraBoot from July, 2022. This was a bit 2023 at that point. They were using a version of LibraBoot 23:32.080 --> 23:36.080 that was a year out of date. And I looked at the repository and they didn't really seem to be going 23:36.080 --> 23:42.080 anywhere, so I thought, you know what? Why don't I make a project that does exactly what you want? 23:42.160 --> 23:47.680 So in October, 2023, I launched a new project called GNU Boots. GNU Boots is essentially the 23:47.680 --> 23:53.120 old LibraBoot, the old policy, fully free FSF compliant, all of that. 23:56.000 --> 23:59.760 There's a lot of this talk, there's a purpose of this talk is not to talk about GNU, but obviously 24:00.640 --> 24:05.360 no LibraBoot talk is complete without mentions of the FSF, and this is part of the history of 24:05.440 --> 24:11.280 LibraBoot projects. So, that long story short, a few years later, things come down, 24:12.640 --> 24:18.960 full, well and good now. Anyway, I don't want to keep talking about the FSF. 24:19.760 --> 24:24.640 So, there's been loads and loads of new work over the last few years. So, for example, this 24:24.640 --> 24:31.840 thinkpad that I'm running is a T5, I thinkpad T580. The T480 was added, well, it was also the 24:31.840 --> 24:39.120 Deluxeplex 3050 micro. Yeah, a developer that I work with, Marta Kookley, I hope I'm pronouncing 24:39.120 --> 24:44.240 the name correctly this fun. He works on a utility called D-guards, which, besides, there's a feature 24:45.120 --> 24:49.920 on Intel systems called the Intel Boot Guard, and what that does is, if the manufacturer 24:49.920 --> 24:54.720 enables it, your firmware is cryptographic signs. So, if you change anything in the firmware, 24:54.720 --> 25:00.960 it doesn't boot anymore. So, this makes orbit impossible. On 8th generation, I say 8th generation, 25:01.040 --> 25:08.160 anything that has Intel Management Engine version 11. Any, there are any 11.x. 25:08.960 --> 25:14.480 He wrote a utility called D-guards, which used an existing vulnerability in ME version 11, 25:15.200 --> 25:20.800 who decides to completely, the vulnerability in question on the ME, basically allows you to run 25:20.800 --> 25:26.160 on-time code. So, he used that to disable the, to figure out how to disable the Intel boot guard 25:26.160 --> 25:30.800 and from that, we can now support a lot of newer machines, because a lot of newer new machines 25:30.800 --> 25:40.320 are used, but good. Yeah. So, I'm going to go briefly through the future roadmap of the projects. 25:40.320 --> 25:45.600 So, at the moment, there's a lot of work needed on the documentation of the boot. A lot of people 25:45.600 --> 25:50.400 that got back to me and saying, it's all over the place. If I want to figure out how to flash 25:50.400 --> 25:55.120 one machine, I've got to read this page, then that page, and it's all one of the things that we 25:55.120 --> 25:58.960 really need to do in the projects that the moment is, is audit the documentation and make it a bit 25:58.960 --> 26:07.360 more fluent for the, for non-technical people. One of the things I also want to do with 26:07.360 --> 26:15.120 Libre boot is Ad Tiana Core. There is a Tiana Core, or if you're okay to, on lots of modern 26:15.120 --> 26:22.080 desktop systems now, you need to have URIFIRE, because if you're in particular, alongside 26:22.080 --> 26:28.720 the core boot, allows you to have a feature called real okay-table bar, or base address register. 26:28.720 --> 26:33.280 If you want, if your graphics card needs to use a lot more memory, as a lot of them do now, 26:33.280 --> 26:37.600 as you need to have this feature, and we currently don't have this feature, but with a long 26:37.600 --> 26:44.080 side, you need to pay two. If you have like an Intel arc or modern video and the work wherever 26:44.080 --> 26:49.200 it is, a lot of graphics cards just simply don't work anymore. You need URIFIRE, so we're looking 26:49.200 --> 26:58.160 into that. I'm currently working on integrating a bunch of other projects, so there's another 26:58.160 --> 27:04.640 project called Mr Chromebox, which supports a lot of Intel-based Chromebooks. I've been working 27:04.640 --> 27:09.920 with, well, not working with, but the developer of that project has provided me with some advice, 27:09.920 --> 27:15.280 and I'm currently working on integrating those in Libre boot. Libre boot also became part of 27:15.840 --> 27:21.760 a nonprofit organization called Software in the Public Interest last year. They essentially 27:21.760 --> 27:25.680 provide fiscal sponsorships of projects, so if you want to make a donations paid or something 27:25.680 --> 27:30.880 like that, then they can also provide a lot of legal related services. They provide support for 27:30.880 --> 27:35.280 a lot of big projects like Debian, Arch, I think. Yeah, Arch Linux is a member. 27:38.080 --> 27:44.160 If you want to, I said in Ireland, in this talk, I'm not going through the technical aspects of 27:44.160 --> 27:49.360 Libre boot in detail, and I'm not going through it. If I wanted to talk about every 27:49.360 --> 27:55.120 contributor that has ever done anything for the project, it'll be like a hundred slides. If you 27:55.120 --> 28:00.480 want to go on to, if you go on to Libre boot.org forward slash a contract that HTML, you can find 28:00.480 --> 28:06.960 a list of people who have contributed to the project. I am wrapping up the talk part now, and 28:06.960 --> 28:13.440 I'm going to do the demo a little bit. If you want to help Libre boot, some generic advice 28:13.440 --> 28:19.840 is, use it. Tell people about it, tell your friends, tell going line, log about it. If you're 28:19.840 --> 28:24.320 technically inclined, you can work on corporates itself, you can add your main boards, you can 28:24.320 --> 28:29.280 as explained before you can also work on improving use of documentation, also provide use of 28:29.360 --> 28:35.840 this bottom LC. This is obviously obligatory of this part, I've used some images from other 28:35.840 --> 28:42.560 projects. Thank you, and as I explained before, the next part of this talk will be a demo, 28:42.560 --> 28:46.880 and a Q&A. So, yep, thank you. 28:46.880 --> 28:59.120 Now, I am mindful of the facts that I'm currently holding this microphone, but I 28:59.200 --> 29:04.800 need to be able to type to do the demo. So, would it be possible for me to wear the thingy, yeah, 29:04.800 --> 29:07.760 thank you. 29:29.120 --> 29:58.800 Okay, so I'm going to sort of improvise. 29:58.880 --> 30:09.760 So, I'm going to go in. Okay, so if I go now into the, let me put that terminal on the other screen. 30:10.880 --> 30:18.800 Oh, yeah, if anyone wants to ask questions, so as I said before, I'm going to do a demo now on Libre 30:18.800 --> 30:24.160 boot itself on the build system, how it works, but if you want to ask anything, 30:24.640 --> 30:30.160 this is the Q&A session now. So, if you have any questions, I'm sure someone wants to 30:30.160 --> 30:35.680 pass around the mic or ask any questions you have, it can be about the demo itself, or 30:35.760 --> 30:56.480 I can't see up. Okay, hopefully you can see this. So, I see what, I've got an idea. Can you 30:56.480 --> 31:01.520 stand with me and hold the mic to my mouth so I can speak and use both hands? This is me improvising. 31:02.080 --> 31:15.120 So, thank you, thank you very much. Yeah, yeah. Really difficult to do anything on this screen. 31:15.120 --> 31:19.680 Yeah, if anyone has any questions, if I pass around the mic and you can ask what if you want 31:19.680 --> 31:27.280 about Libre roots, yeah, if you have any questions I want to. I can't see my mouth on the second 31:27.280 --> 31:35.680 screen, so it's kind of difficult to. I was wondering, how safest Libre boots to use on my 31:35.680 --> 31:40.480 laptop that I use every day and that I don't want to crash and keep booting? 31:42.880 --> 31:50.400 Relatively safe, so we have a testing process, so we do testing releases first and then we do 31:50.400 --> 31:56.000 stable releases. If you want to have some assurance that you won't break your machine, I recommend 31:56.080 --> 32:02.720 sticking to stable releases of Libre boots. Generally, that will not pose an issue. If you do have 32:02.720 --> 32:08.400 problems, you can report them immediately and we will try. Okay, I can't see what I'm doing. 32:08.400 --> 32:12.320 So, should I then first check all the hardware if it's all supported or... 32:17.520 --> 32:22.320 Sorry, so I'll say again. Should I then first check if all my hardware is supported by Libre 32:23.280 --> 32:30.480 Oh yeah, so if you go to Libre boot.org forward slash dot forward slash in store, there is a compatibility 32:30.480 --> 32:40.560 list there. Okay, thank you. Hello, could everyone see the screen clearly before? Like when it was 32:40.640 --> 32:46.960 black and white? We'll try to ask somebody from this half, 32:46.960 --> 33:10.240 um, well, it's right, I'm trying to just, I can't literally see what happened. 33:11.200 --> 33:13.280 If there's any questions, feel free to ask. 33:16.400 --> 33:23.120 Hello, so from what I understood by scheming the website aside from Chromebooks, 33:23.840 --> 33:29.360 basically every other machine requires you to open it in order to connect an external flash at 33:29.360 --> 33:37.680 to install it. Is there like any plans to deal with it? Because like, well, I probably can do that, 33:37.760 --> 33:42.960 but if we are targeting basically the entire world, it's more complicated for them. 33:45.440 --> 33:50.800 Yeah, really, I think it just, it really just depends on the machine that you're flashing. 33:50.800 --> 33:55.200 So, some are easier than others. Some you can just run software to install Libre boot. Some you 33:55.200 --> 34:00.880 do need to take apart. Unfortunately, it's just one of those things that's currently unavoidable. 34:00.880 --> 34:05.360 Okay, I have a light mode and I wouldn't mind someone on now. Okay, can people see that terminal 34:05.360 --> 34:10.000 better now? Okay, much better, right. So we've got, I don't know if we've got left. 34:11.840 --> 34:16.080 Any other question, maybe? Okay, we've got about 10 minutes. Okay, 10 minutes should be enough time. 34:16.080 --> 34:21.760 So I'm just going to briefly go through, I'm going to, and I know, how do I actually enable mirror mode? 34:26.080 --> 34:30.240 Yeah, just keep asking questions. If you have any questions, I'll be happy to ask them. 34:31.200 --> 34:35.200 I don't need normally doing mirror mode in front of us. 34:39.680 --> 34:43.920 Okay, I'll just, I'll just do it this way. Okay, so if you want to use Libre boot, 34:43.920 --> 34:52.080 I'm going to give you a brief tech demo. So let's say what you have, sorry, what is the single 34:52.080 --> 34:59.520 the most powerful device currently compatible with Libre boot? It really depends on what you want to do. 34:59.520 --> 35:06.880 So if you want a laptop, for example, the most powerful laptop you want to use right now is probably 35:06.880 --> 35:13.200 I think pad T48 or T580. If you want a desktop machine, it really depends on what you're doing. 35:15.200 --> 35:23.040 If you're mostly concerned with multi threading, for example, there's an older boards that we 35:23.040 --> 35:31.440 supports, the ASUS KGB D16 is really old now, but you can use large 16, that's who 16 35:31.440 --> 35:36.320 course, if you're using, if you don't, that's a compiling building, then it's kernels. 35:37.200 --> 35:42.640 Anything that needs a lot of thread. If you're building a modern desktop for workstation use, 35:42.640 --> 35:50.720 you might use one of the has-well systems that we support. We are looking to add more 35:51.360 --> 35:56.960 modern older desktop boards at some points in the near future. There's really no concrete answer 35:56.960 --> 36:02.160 to your question, the most powerful or viable system to use really depends on your use case scenario. 36:03.200 --> 36:05.120 That sounds like a great question, okay, thank you. 36:05.120 --> 36:10.880 Okay, so yeah, brief tech demo, so there's really not much to it. So let's say you want to 36:11.920 --> 36:16.560 feel, again, feel free to interrupt me anytime. If you want to use another question here. 36:17.440 --> 36:23.200 Okay, so I'm just going to briefly go through, so if let's say you just want to use 36:23.200 --> 36:29.520 a little bit, right? Let's say I want to install a little bit on a think-pad T580. 36:30.800 --> 36:38.320 So if I do this command, m, s, m, s, m, k, b, co-book list, or less, you can get a list of boards, 36:38.320 --> 36:44.960 and you can search T580, and actually we'll do know what's in the output here, but let's say now I want 36:45.040 --> 37:08.320 to build for the device that you can do, like, like, blah, okay, it's very difficult to see what I'm doing here, so, okay, go ahead, ask your question. 37:09.280 --> 37:18.880 One of the question is, like, how easy is it to, like, make it possible for, like, a new device? 37:18.880 --> 37:25.360 If I have, let's say, a modern think-pad, and I want to try adding support for that, how long do you 37:25.360 --> 37:30.800 think it would take? Is it, like, a lot of reverse engineering and things, or just go look at 37:30.800 --> 37:37.920 documentation, specs, and just write? Yeah, so if it's not already supported in the corporate 37:37.920 --> 37:44.240 projects, then there are going to be certain questions you have to ask. So it's the chipset already supported, 37:44.240 --> 37:52.640 like, what, what, what Intel Gen is, is the platform, like, is everything supported properly? 37:53.680 --> 37:58.880 Generally speaking, on laptops, there's also an extra chip called the EC, the embedded controller, 37:58.880 --> 38:04.240 which is very different per machine, and you usually have to do a bit of reverse engineering there. 38:05.200 --> 38:12.320 Corby tries to generalize as much as possible for each platform, such that each mainboard 38:12.320 --> 38:18.560 has its own quirks to find in code, but then you have universal code that's you reused on 38:18.560 --> 38:23.680 that hundreds of different mainboards. Go to the corporate projects first, work with then, 38:23.680 --> 38:28.720 add, add the boards. When you add a board to the labor boots, it's essentially, by virtual 38:28.720 --> 38:33.120 configuration, the labor boots supports what the corporate already has, and it provides 38:33.920 --> 38:40.960 the pre-configures, things that you can use. Yeah, there's no real set answered to your question, 38:40.960 --> 38:47.840 yeah, that I would advise that you contact the corporate projects about this. Okay, so I'm going to go through 38:48.960 --> 38:54.960 so I just built one of the the main things you have to realize about every talk is there is going 38:54.960 --> 38:59.040 always going to be an error when you do a commands that works perfectly, that morning, 38:59.600 --> 39:05.120 you're always going to have something. Okay, so I'll ask another question if you want five. 39:05.120 --> 39:11.760 Oh, yeah, for the recent inclusion of the top ten router, is that indicative that there might be 39:11.760 --> 39:18.400 more, sorry, again, what router? Oh, the top ten one. Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry. Oh, sorry, 39:18.480 --> 39:23.680 just to finish, sorry, get you off. Is that indicative that there might be more support for 39:23.680 --> 39:28.960 like older lake twin lake products down the line? Yes, and this is something that we're actively pursuing. 39:34.800 --> 39:42.560 You're asking if we're looking at more, more boards, more from that same generation, right? Yes. 39:43.520 --> 39:48.880 Great presentation. I have a question here. You mentioned that you are supporting 39:49.600 --> 39:59.600 a generation of core i5 i7 CPUs from Intel, such as the ThinkBat T480 and T480s, 39:59.600 --> 40:05.680 what about T490 and 90s, which are using the same generation of Intel CPUs? 40:05.920 --> 40:12.720 Ah, yes. I believe you said the ThinkPad T490, the T490 uses Intel management engine version 12, 40:13.520 --> 40:20.400 for which hack to disable the Intel boot guard has not yet been found. So that's currently not feasible 40:20.400 --> 40:31.120 in reboot. Thank you, great talk. So if I want to use a TPM and ideally something like 40:31.120 --> 40:35.600 measured boot through reboot, can I do that? How is it? Is it? 40:36.640 --> 40:43.120 Libreboots has no facility for use of a TPM. There are other projects that use it. You can look at 40:43.120 --> 40:49.840 a project called heads, for example, which uses TPM and has what it calls measured boot. 40:50.560 --> 40:56.240 It uses the Linux kernel as a payload and it uses K exec for its own interface to boot your 40:57.200 --> 41:02.720 system. It's very similar to using something like, say, grub or something like that. And yeah, 41:02.720 --> 41:07.120 it has that feature. Libreboot currently does not facilitate this in any way. That's not 41:07.120 --> 41:14.960 to say it can't, just that it currently doesn't. You could probably modify whatever you want to 41:14.960 --> 41:21.600 do that. TPM is enabled on some boards, but we don't really use it for anything at the moment. 41:22.560 --> 41:30.560 Okay, so the tech demo is a bit of a nightmare actually because I can't see what I'm doing 41:30.560 --> 41:34.720 because I'm looking at the screen. Anyway, I can't really show it running because we've 41:34.720 --> 41:39.520 run a few minutes left. So let's say you're a user. You want to do Libreboot. Let's say you're 41:39.520 --> 41:47.520 in deviant, right? You got like that NK dependencies, deviant. That will run all your, that will 41:47.520 --> 41:51.680 install all the build dependencies. And then if you want to build for your board, you do. 41:52.880 --> 41:57.600 But this is Doc, you can, you can go on to Libreboot.org forward slash docs forward slash build. 41:57.600 --> 42:02.880 There's also documentation about the build system itself on forward slash docs forward slash main 42:02.960 --> 42:12.960 team. But if you want to, so go ahead and ask more questions if you want, I'll be 42:12.960 --> 42:20.960 up side if you want to crowd around me afterwards as well. So you do that in KB, 42:20.960 --> 42:25.840 call it this, it shows you that a bunch of boards and then you do. And then you just, you can just 42:26.080 --> 42:32.640 call those, you know, build every board. We can add target nine here. I can't, I don't know. 42:32.640 --> 42:40.160 Hello, maybe if we. We have time for one last question. Yep. 42:42.160 --> 42:50.320 I question, I have a Libreboot on X 200 laptop, which I'm really happy about that, about 42:51.200 --> 42:58.080 two, that five seconds. But I have a problem, maybe it's not a feature already implemented with 42:58.080 --> 43:06.720 a QMU and instruction to have hardware acceleration. So, of course, we have the machine 43:06.720 --> 43:13.120 really slow. So when you say hardware acceleration, what you're referring to? I'm talking about 43:13.920 --> 43:24.560 the WXM. Yeah. Well, it's a fairly out the, the most efficient answer is it's a very old machine. 43:25.280 --> 43:30.880 If you want modern hardware acceleration features and what not, you need to upgrade your hardware. 43:32.240 --> 43:37.360 I hope, I know that's not probably not what most people want to hear, but think Pad X 200 is 43:37.360 --> 43:46.960 18 years old. So, yeah, but if I use it, the normal wheels, I have acceleration, 43:46.960 --> 43:52.320 be my virtual machine. Oh, sorry, I misunderstood. Are you referring to virtualization? 43:52.880 --> 43:58.880 Exactly. Oh, okay. Yeah, that is something that we can look into. So, what's, if you have a bug 43:58.960 --> 44:05.360 relating to that, you can send it to the bug tracker on code bug, code bug, dot or forward slash 44:05.360 --> 44:12.000 reboot, forward slash, I'll be in K and you can information about that. Thank you for your talk. 44:12.800 --> 44:21.760 Okay. Yeah, I do apologize. Anyway, yeah. So, basically, if you want to, I briefly alluded 44:21.840 --> 44:29.440 to it in this somewhat Ubisoft successful tech demo, but as you saw from some of these commands, 44:29.440 --> 44:34.240 if you want to build Libre boot and install it on the machine, it's usually just like one or two 44:34.240 --> 44:39.280 commands. If you were going to build your own firmware from scratch, you'd need to download 44:39.280 --> 44:46.080 core boot and tackle the, of the commands you'd need to know which cross compilers to, to build. 44:46.480 --> 44:51.840 You'd need to download grab, you need to download this, download that, and it'd be hundreds of 44:51.840 --> 44:57.120 commands you'd have to go through 50 different configuration files of 50s probably hyperbole, but you get 44:57.120 --> 45:05.440 the point. One commands and it just does everything. That would have been what I was going to, 45:05.440 --> 45:11.040 that I would have demonstrated that, but as I've, as I'm informed, run out of time. Again, 45:11.040 --> 45:25.200 thank you for coming to my presentation. If you have any more questions, we have all day. So, 45:25.200 --> 45:31.040 feel free to crown around me in the corridors outside or ambush me at your leisure during the 45:31.040 --> 45:34.080 rest of the frosttime conference. Thank you again for coming to my talk.