There are number of open firmware projects, some of which are listed below.

While all the firmware below is open source, some of it uses read-only firmware embedded in ROM chips and some of the read-only firmware does not have freely licensed public source code. Some of the devices in this situation do not have enough RAM that they could completely avoid the read-only firmware in the ROM chips.

The Open-Source Firmware Foundation (OSFF) promotes open firmware and the Open Source Firmware Conference (OSFC) has presentations on open firmware.

Booting

Project

Debian package

Description

Comment

coreboot

src:coreboot

initialising computers from reset

only utils are built in Debian

u-boot

u-boot

initialising computers from reset, used on ARM a lot

rpi-open-firmware

initialising Raspberry Pi devices from reset

original project on indefinite hold but librepi fork is alive, toolchain not upstreamed

TianoCore

src:edk2

UEFI

hardware support not packaged in Debian

Embedded controllers

Project

Debian package

Description

Comment

CrOS EC

Chromebooks

crust

crust-firmware

AR100 OpenRISC EC in Allwinner ?SoCs

pse-fw

Intel Programmable Services Engine ARM Cortex-M7 companion cores

system76-ec

System76 Open Source Embedded Controller

System76 laptops

Dasharo system76-ec

Dasharo fork of System76 Open Source Embedded Controller

Clevo/NovaCustom laptops

Keyboards

Project

Debian package

Description

Comment

ZMK

QMK

TMK

Network

Project

Debian package

Description

Comment

bcm5719-fw

BCM5719 firmware reimplementation

Requires LLVM/Clang fork to build

Radio

Project

Debian package

Description

Comment

OpenFWWF

Broadcom/AirForce chipset based WiFi devices

open-ath9k-htc-firmware

firmware-ath9k-htc

Qualcomm Atheros AR7010 and AR9271 USB based WiFi devices

requires binutils/GCC patches

carl9170fw

firmware-linux-free

Atheros AR9170 based WiFi devices

not built from source in Debian; needs sh-elf toolchain, no patches needed

Prism54 FreeMAC

Conexant based WiFi devices

no longer developed, Subversion repository was lost, only a snapshot of the code remains

OsmocomBB

GSM devices

not suitable for end users, only researchers

Audio

Project

Debian package

Description

Comment

Sound Open Firmware

firmware-sof-signed

various Intel audio devices

most devices that can run SOF require Intel signatures on the binaries (1 2 3 4 5)

Visual

Project

Debian package

Description

Comment

colorhug2-firmware

?ColorHug family of open display colorimeter hardware

Requires a proprietary toolchain to build

Misc

Project

Debian package

Description

Comment

linux-firmware

firmware-linux-free

misc firmware gathered by Linux developers

not built from source in Debian

fx2lib

Cypress FX/FX2 code library

fx2lafw

sigrok-firmware-fx2lafw

Cypress FX2(LP) based logic analyzers

embeds copy of fx2lib


CategoryHardware