As far as I can tell, this is the only reason, you'll likely lose a bunch of functionality (that's been my experience); so "principle" is the only reason I'm aware of (or minimalism, but that's a principle too is it not?).
I suppose if nothing else, you can run a more up to date firmware if the vendor stopped supporting yours, but I have no idea what that means in a practical sense.
That still doesn't answer the question of why it's better. Unless you're paranoid about an OEM backdoor, I think this is cool but not worth the effort.
I think firstly is the FOSS obsession and backdoor paranoia from evangelists, and secondly and the more practical one is that the proprietary IBM BIOS is full of bugs and anti-consumer blacklists and whitelists designed to limit repairability and upgradeability, which stil boggle my mind on how those laptops got such a good image on that front.
I'm not sure that's paranoia (as others have pointed out, OEM firmwares have had security problems before), but sure, let's ignore security problems for a moment.
1. Firmware contains bugs. Old proprietary firmware tends to not get fixes. If you switch to an open source version, you can get the bugs fixed.
(Edit) 1.a. Old proprietary firmware also doesn't tend to get new features, and open source replacements can cover that. (eg. booting over HTTP(S) or security features to help against Evil Maid attacks)
2. Libreboot claims to be faster to boot than the vendor firmware. Depending on the particular device/firmware, that wouldn't surprise me at all.
As far as I'm aware, it has less functionality than the OEM, so you use it to _remove_ features (good and/or bad).
Aside from that, I suppose it means you can run a more up to date firmware if yours is no longer maintained, but I'm not sure what that means in practical terms.
There's also the "hyper paranoid" fork "canoeboot" which has no proprietary blobs, and presumably _even less_ functionality.
The short answer is; if you don't know why you want it or need it, you probably don't.
close04|5 days ago
alias_neo|5 days ago
I suppose if nothing else, you can run a more up to date firmware if the vendor stopped supporting yours, but I have no idea what that means in a practical sense.
ktm5j|5 days ago
joe_mamba|5 days ago
yjftsjthsd-h|5 days ago
1. Firmware contains bugs. Old proprietary firmware tends to not get fixes. If you switch to an open source version, you can get the bugs fixed.
(Edit) 1.a. Old proprietary firmware also doesn't tend to get new features, and open source replacements can cover that. (eg. booting over HTTP(S) or security features to help against Evil Maid attacks)
2. Libreboot claims to be faster to boot than the vendor firmware. Depending on the particular device/firmware, that wouldn't surprise me at all.
nix0n|5 days ago
Lenovo does have a history with installing a very obvious spyware rootkit on their consumer PCs[0].
[0]https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/ps500035-s...
alias_neo|5 days ago
As far as I'm aware, it has less functionality than the OEM, so you use it to _remove_ features (good and/or bad).
Aside from that, I suppose it means you can run a more up to date firmware if yours is no longer maintained, but I'm not sure what that means in practical terms.
There's also the "hyper paranoid" fork "canoeboot" which has no proprietary blobs, and presumably _even less_ functionality.
The short answer is; if you don't know why you want it or need it, you probably don't.