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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

These days you might be able to just point an AI at the original BIOS and tell it what you need done, instead of attempting to install a complete rewrite like Coreboot (which comes with its own limitations, the biggest one being that only a rather small subset of mobos are actually supported.)

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Yes, I know that there are examples in the wild of that kind of AI modding:

https://www.downtowndougbrown.com/2026/08/fixing-an-emachine...

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/modder-uses-...

Coreboot in desktops is perhaps in the best shape it has been in more than a decade because you have the MSI Z690-A/Z790-P series for LGA 1700 (Which were current gen when released, and still viable if you want Intel with DDR4, albeit the boards aren't available in retail anymore) and the recently released port for the MSI B850-P for AM5 Phoenix. It was a major leap from previously, where it only supported ancient platforms or unobtanium reference boards. I bashed Coreboot a lot for that, but now you actually have usable options. Same with Servers, with the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 for AMD Turin. When was the last time you saw Coreboot running on current gen boards available in retail, if ever?

The last time I looked at Coreboot it didn't have any configuration UI at all ("you have to set the options and recompile/reflash" was the answer I got), which basically makes it next to useless for a regular PC... and apparently it still doesn't. They've already done the hard work of RE'ing and all the hardware-specific stuff; how hard can it be to at least have a simple setup menu? Hopefully someone vibecodes (vibeports?) one in the next little while.

(Incidentally this is also one of my gripes with the Intel Macs, wanting to put Linux on one but having zero configurability pre-OS is a huge pain. Meanwhile a standard PC BIOS with the equivalent hardware has plenty of options. Maybe I'll get around to (vibe)porting a regular BIOS to mine...)

The menu part is the task of the payload. If you compile Coreboot with a payload you can get a menu no problem. EDK II, Seabios or grub payloads all support this.

If you want to you may want to point your vibes for vibecoding towards making a libpayload universal menu for Coreboot , that way you at least conform with the architecture.

I was an early user of the Z690-A from 2022 and while it was dull in features, the basics (Boot Menu) were already present. The configuration UI was TianoCore/EDK2:

https://youtu.be/eSz2VPH64SE?t=343

https://docs.dasharo.com/dasharo-menu-docs/dasharo-system-fe...

I do recall hearing the same thing than you but for those that used SeaBIOS and needed to recompile and reflash just to change boot order...

Regarding Coreboot, it is far worse than that. They literally do not care anymore; focus is not on corebooting all the boards, but on serving some sort of commercial "customer".

e.g. they do seldom if ever take patches for adding support or fixing issues in older boards. They just sit there ignored.

A fork or entire new project with different focus is sorely needed.

There is also the Libreboot which may be of your interest. What I see is that there is a lot of development on Coreboot but it is indeed mostly driven by companies working on their latest platforms. There are not many contributors working on older platforms. Though in my experience the response to patches is relatively quick.

I had the exact opposite impression, there are a lot of user contributions working on old platforms, and even specific platform communities. For example, you have 15h.org which is a community dedicated to AMD Bulldozer / Piledriver generation, and they managed to fix a few things that were left broken in Coreboot. I also saw an influx of users working in Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge / Haswell era Intel platforms with an occasional Skylake. The problem is, precisely, that most of the user contributions are for old platforms that nobody that does NOT currently owns those will want to touch if you're purchasing new. I would have been very enthusiastic about that work if it was done about 10 years ago or so, nowadays they seem to be hobby projects that don't advance anything forward.

There do exists individual users that work on newer stuff, after the MSI Z690-A / Z790-P there were 2 people that did ports for H610 since at that point the platform was supported and they only had to port the Motherboard. However, they are rather rare, since the kind of user that Coreboot seems to attract are from the privacy and security anti-ME/PSP crowd that don't even want to use newer platforms, which is the exact opposite of my view.

A lot of the work companies does may be just for their internal systems or reference platform and these may not get to the hands of end users, ever. I still recall Phoronix articles covering Coreboot releases always taking a jab at the new supported Motherboards until the MSI Z690-A DDR4 port from 2022.

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