LinuxBoot is the concept of using a Linux kernel and initramfs as a bootloader.
The official documentation for LinuxBoot is the LinuxBoot Book 📖, where you can find information on how LinuxBoot works and implementing it with various approaches, such as based on coreboot or UEFI PEI.
The linuxboot repository contains a
reference build system implementing LinuxBoot primarily targeting servers and
PCs, which started as NERF in January 2017 at Google.
We encourage participation to keep up to date and find a suitable solution for a specific use case.
Linux is the proven approach for almost 20 years in military, consumer electronics, and supercomputing systems - wherever reliability and performance are paramount.
As a bootloader environment, it offers
- Steadfast reliability through bespoke and well-tested drivers
- Improved boot time by excluding unnecessary code, typically 20 times faster than other solutions
- Runtime customization to support site-specific needs, covering both device drivers as well as executables
Linux is officially recognized as a bootloader, as stated by Greg Kroah-Hartman:
LinuxBoot is a Linux Foundation project1 and as such has a technical charter.
We are having open meetings every two weeks welcoming everyone to discuss the latest developments, news, upcoming talks and events, and so on.
We keep track of what we discuss in the meeting notes.
The LinuxBoot calendar is displayed below. Use the "Add to Google Calendar" button, or import the ICS file to your favorite calendar app.
<iframe src="https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=0e3f928ce4fff4b3b656e8a816a5ff8c550c8a9ea3a13a03c08217ba38626f64%40group.calendar.google.com" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0" scrolling="no"></iframe>- Philip Molloy
- Daniel Maslowski
- Ron Minnich (HPE)
- Mailing list
- Slack (Join here)
The following are just a subset of the organizations and people involved.
- Netflix
- Horizon Computing Solutions (acquired by IT Renew (in turn acquired by Iron Mountain (archived)))
- Two Sigma
- 9elements Cyber Security