Libreboot 26.10 brings full UEFI support and 233 Chromebooks to free boot firmware

Release ships full UEFI support

The Libreboot project has published version 26.10 of its boot firmware, codenamed "Ominous Olive", dated 15 October 2026 and announced by Leah Rowe on libreboot.org. Libreboot replaces the proprietary BIOS or UEFI firmware on supported Intel, AMD and ARM64 machines with free software, handling hardware initialisation such as CPU and memory controller setup before an operating system starts. The centrepiece of this release is complete UEFI support built on the MrChromebox EDK2 payload, which the announcement says makes Microsoft Windows bootable for the first time alongside the Linux and BSD systems Libreboot has traditionally served.

The changelog is measured against the previous 26.01 release, and the announcement warns that the design changes are large enough that existing users should study the notes carefully — twice, by the author's own suggestion.

EDK2 becomes the default payload

According to the release notes, EDK2 — Intel's reference implementation of the UEFI specification, whose source is free software even though vendors usually ship proprietary forks of it — is now the default payload on virtually all 64-bit-compatible hardware Libreboot supports, including machines as old as the ThinkPad X200 and T500. Boards that can only run 32-bit firmware keep the setup from the previous release.

For backward compatibility, GRUB and SeaBIOS are still provided in flash as EFI builds, selectable from the EDK2 boot menu with the ESC key, and the GRUB build continues to read its configuration from CBFS just as the coreboot-payload version did. The bare-metal SeaBIOS and GRUB payloads are now deprecated and could be dropped in a future release, although they can be re-enabled by anyone building Libreboot from source. iPXE is enabled by default on certain boards.

233 Chromebooks imported from MrChromebox

The release imports every Chromebook currently supported by the MrChromebox coreboot distribution — 233 mainboards in total, covering everything from Baytrail-era Intel chips up to recent Intel and AMD platforms. The import was automated with a new utility, util/mrimport, which generates the build-system configurations, revisions and submodules for each board; Libreboot then layers its own modifications on top.

Those modifications include setting the HAP bit at build time to disable Intel ME, which the notes argue is not reliably disabled in default MrChromebox setups; unlocking Intel Flash Descriptor regions with ifdtool; embedding CSMWrap, a SeaBIOS CSM wrapped for EFI, plus MemTest86+ inside EDK2; shipping a GRUB EFI build for older configurations; using native raminit on Haswell Chromebooks; and using libgfxinit in place of GOP on Intel Chromebooks up to Kabylake.

Only the Baytrail "Kip" boards have been tested so far, and the Chromebook support ships source-only this time, meaning users must build the images themselves. The announcement stresses that this is not a fork: MrChromebox remains the upstream for Chromebook support and will be kept in sync where possible, and MrChromebox installation scripts and documentation are expected to work with Libreboot images.

Fam15h server boards revived

AMD Fam15h mainboards such as the KGPE-D16 now build from the 15h.org coreboot fork, which uses AMD AGESA source code rather than the previous custom initialisation code. The notes report more reliable memory and CPU initialisation, support for more RAM, a batch of bug fixes, and working IOMMU and TPM. These boards ship regular SeaBIOS and GRUB binaries, while experimental EDK2 images are source-only and aimed at machines with dedicated graphics cards, since the integrated AST2050 chip only initialises in text mode and EDK2 requires a framebuffer. By the author's account, these mainboards now function properly for the first time.

An anti-AI policy tops the changelog

Unusually, the announcement lists as its single most important change a strongly anti-AI policy, recorded in a new AGENTS.md file in the lbmk build system — placed ahead of the UEFI and Chromebook work that dominates the release in practice.

Why it matters

Full UEFI support removes the long-standing limitation that kept Libreboot machines in a mostly Linux and BSD world: Windows and any other UEFI-compliant operating system can now boot on hardware running entirely free boot firmware. Adding 233 Chromebooks — cheap and widely available hardware — vastly expands the number of machines that can have their proprietary firmware replaced, even if that support is largely untested and source-only for now. The Fam15h work meanwhile gives older server boards a genuinely working free-software option. The trade-off is disruption: the switch to EDK2 deprecates familiar payload setups, so existing users will need to work through the changelog before flashing anything.