LinuxBoot for all

LinuxBoot is a proven approach to replacing the proprietary UEFI DXE phase or U‑Boot runtime environment with a Linux kernel and an open initramfs, offering a smaller, auditable and reproducible firmware stack, with u‑root as the standard initramfs in hyperscale deployments and Heads used on user‑facing devices where local attestation and measured boot matter, while LinuxBoot itself remains deliberately agnostic to the initramfs used. Despite this proven track record in data centres, the knowledge has not flowed back to the broader hardware community, leaving servers, workstations and single‑board systems without accessible documentation, tooling or deployment recipes. This project brings together expertise from different areas of the open firmware ecosystem to close that gap and create a feedback loop that draws hyperscaler experience back into the LinuxBoot project itself rather than letting it remain siloed. Over the course of the project, the team will document the use of Fiano to remove unneeded DXE modules from UEFI firmware, establish reproducible build pipelines with CycloneDX/SPDX SBOMs for x86, ARM and RISC‑V hardware, and produce a revised LinuxBoot book with concrete deployment recipes for servers, workstations and single‑board systems, while a U‑Boot + LinuxBoot proof‑of‑concept on a Rockchip SBC, where LinuxBoot replaces the U‑Boot runtime environment as the in‑firmware operating system, will serve as a vendor‑facing reference to lower the barrier for hardware manufacturers to adopt LinuxBoot.