Dear Gert,


Am 28.03.21 um 09:26 schrieb Gert Vanhaerents:

Hi Coreboot,

Welcome to coreboot.

(Please note, coreboot is spelled all lowercase.)

We are from a computer store and we sell computers and laptops with Linux or Windows or dual boot. For Linux we are many asked for laptops with coreboot, probably due to the presence of intel ME spyware in the laptops.

Please note, that coreboot has nothing to do with the Intel Management Engine as it’s a separate “chip” running it’s own firmware [1].

So, we are now investigating whether there is a possibility to offer the laptops with coreboot. Normally we buy our laptops at a distributor, we have also asked the distributor to have coreboot they don't know anything about bios/eufi or coreboot. They only deliver the laptops with the bios/eufi that the manufacturer made it, we can always ask for a bios update but not for other bios systems like coreboot. We don't have any contact with the manufacturer or have any contact data. I know there are laptops of this brand that have coreboot on it, but to buy directly ar the manufacturer we don't sell enough (i think  we must sell 10.000 laptops in a quarter or more).

My questions:

- We i have installed coreboot, can i also boot Windows 10 or boot in dual-boot (Windows and Linux)?

Yes, you can do that, but it often depends on the mainboard.

- The installation of coreboot is very unclair. I have looking to google but i don't realy know how can install it.

There are several ways. Often, the tool flashrom is used, and then you can decide if you program the chip externally or internally. If internal flashing is supported, depends on the device.

- Can i install coreboot like we normally flash a bios? (startup with a efi boot stick and run a batch file, or startup in the bios and do a bios update directly from the bios with a usb stick with the flash file)

That depends on the device. If the internal flashing method is supported, you’d likely start a GNU/Linux live system, and run flashrom from there.

- Or do i need a eeprom programmer or something like that? > - Must itake out the motherboard completely of the laptop?

Both items seems to belong together, as you have to attach the external programmer to the chip somehow. It depends on the device and where the flash ROM chip is located.

To work with coreboot it's very important to have a very fast procedure to install it in mass production. We cannot spell a few hours on each laptop. It must be a flash file for a model laptop and a other flash file for a other model laptop. So we can install coreboot on the best selling models. Startup from a usb-stick, do a flash update wait 5 or 10 minutes and reboot,  ... done.

When it's possible in the procudure like above can i get some help to make the first coreboot flash.

Everything you asked for is possible, but depends on your device. First of all, a coreboot port needs to exist for your device.

As you are running a business and making a profit and you didn’t share any device details, I recommend to contract a consulting firm [2] to analyze the situation.


Kind regards,

Paul


PS: No offense, but it’d be great, if you used a spell checker before sending an email to a mailing list.


[1]: https://www.coreboot.org/Binary_situation
[2]: https://coreboot.org/consulting.html