Announcement#
I’m glad to announce that the Heads bootloader now officially supports a Google Chromebook. The device is an Acer Chromebook Spin 714, or “KANO” as it’s often called. This is the first Chromebook supported by Heads, and I’m hopeful that there are many more to come.
Feel free to check out the Heads wiki guide. If you want to do a deep dive, you can check out the GitHub pull request as well.
For the full story of bringing Heads to KANO, read my account of the port.
What Is Heads#
Heads is custom Coreboot firmware and a Linux bootloader in ROM. You can read more about what Heads is here.
The way I’ve been describing Heads is as a more secure bootloader.
Why This is a Big Deal#
All Chromebooks ship with an open source bootloader called Coreboot. MrChromebox has ported Coreboot to a wide array of ChromeOS devices. Heads is built on Coreboot, and by forking MrChromebox’s Coreboot, we can get Heads running on a lot of ChromeOS devices.
If your Chromebox/Chromebook is listed on the MrChromebox devices page as supported, there is a good chance that we can port Heads to it.
I currently have two other ChromeOS devices that I plan to port Heads to in the future. If you have a Chromebook or Chromebox device and would like to see Heads on it, feel free to reach out to me via email or join the Heads community.
Shoutouts#
- mdrobnak - For the initial Heads PR.
- MrChromebox - For helping answer some questions regarding Chromebooks and for the whole MrChromebox Coreboot project.
- tlaurion - For helping me with the PR over the last few months.