In September 2026, the Free Software Foundation officially began providing financial and legal support for the GNU Boot project. This initiative aims to create a completely free replacement for BIOS and UEFI firmware, ensuring that no closed-source components are used in the boot process.
The project was founded in 2022 by Denis Carikli and Adrien Bourmault following a split within the Libreboot community. While Libreboot began allowing binary blobs to increase hardware compatibility, the GNU Boot team maintains strict adherence to GNU criteria, requiring exclusively free licenses and open-source build tools.
GNU Boot relies on coreboot to initialize hardware, paired with loaders like GRUB or SeaBIOS. Currently, support is limited primarily to hardware from the 2008–2012 era, including specific ThinkPad models, older Apple devices, and select Asus motherboards. Modern hardware remains largely unsupported due to proprietary mechanisms like Intel Boot Guard.
The development team is now focusing on improving installation processes and documentation to make the transition to free firmware more accessible. They emphasize the importance of reproducible builds, ensuring that identical source code consistently produces the same firmware output for users.
