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UK based Linux hardware vendor Star Labs announced today the general availability of the Coreboot 6 open-source firmware for its Linux-powered laptops.
The Coreboot 6 open-source firmware is now available for the Star LabTop Mk III, Star LabTop Mk IV, and StarBook Mk V notebooks, along with an updated Coreboot Configurator utility, bringing lots of new features and improvements.
Highlights include a new Boot Graphics Resource Table (BGRT) logo, updated Firmware Support Package (FSP), updated microcode, new Video BIOS Tables (VBT) that prioritize performance over power consumption, as well as the use the libgfxinit graphics initialization (aka modesetting) library for embedded environments for the Star LabTop Mk III and Star LabTop Mk IV laptops.
In addition, the updated Coreboot Configurator utility now lets users enable or disable the microphone, webcam, Wi-Fi, clock gating, hyper-threading, and Intel VT-d. Also, there’s now a new option to adjust the thermal design power (15W/20W/25W) for all three laptop models, and Q-Events are now available for specific models.
A couple of bugs were squashed in this update, namely a bug where Qubes would not boot, requiring the disablement of the Clock Gating setting, as well as an issue where the Function Lock state was lost.
If you are the lucky owner of the Star LabTop Mk III, LapTop Mk IV or StarBook Mk V Linux laptops, and you’re using the Coreboot open-source firmware, you can update it to version 6 right now by installing the updates from the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS), following the instructions from here. If you’re not using Coreboot, but you want to switch to it, check out these instructions on how to enable it.
Last updated 3 years ago
