{"slug": "u-boot", "name": "U-Boot", "category": "other", "category_name": "Other software", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 6, "warners": 0, "score": 3.381, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2025-12-12", "latest": "2026-10-13", "why": "the u-boot project does support the board and I was able to flash a newer u-boot", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 4, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "the u-boot project does support the board and I was able to flash a newer u-boot", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "u-boot.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://u-boot.org/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["U-Boot", "u-boot"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 764397632, "item_id": 47774852, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47774852", "by": "imoverclocked", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the u-boot project does support the board and I was able to flash a newer u-boot", "excerpt": "Yes, and no. I have an OrangePi 5 Ultra and I'm finally running a vanilla kernel on it. Don't bother trying anything before kernel 6.18.x -- unless you are willing to stick with their 6.1.x kernel with a million+ line diff. The u-boot environment that comes with the board is hacked up. eg: It supports an undocumented amount of extlinux.conf ... just enough that whatever Debian writes by default, breaks it. Luckily, t", "context": "OrangePi 5 Ultra owner running vanilla kernel", "use_case": "bootloader for RK3588 board", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Orange Pi 6 Plus"}, {"id": 757569313, "item_id": 47348082, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47348082", "by": "M95D", "date": "2026-03-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "U-boot and coreboot are free (ring -2 if they include ACPI / SMM, else still ring 0).", "excerpt": "I appreciate your detailed reply. I think we are looking from different perspectives. You are correct in an item-by-item way, but you need to put them all together and see the bigger picture. In my comment, it may have made a mess confusing technologies and their capabilities, but I was looking at the forest, not the trees. There are only two viable firmware alternatives in the world right now: ring 0 U-boot* or the ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Never Bet Against x86"}, {"id": 739875824, "item_id": 46242239, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46242239", "by": "baobun", "date": "2025-12-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Have you checked out uboot?", "excerpt": "Have you checked out uboot? https://u-boot.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "ARM bootloader", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Boot Order of the Raspberry Pi Is Unusual"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "imoverclocked", "context": "OrangePi 5 Ultra owner running vanilla kernel", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47774852", "date": "2026-04-14"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["bootloader", "bootloader for rk3588 board", "arm bootloader"], "compared": [], "makers": [{"id": 734750784, "item_id": 45921924, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45921924", "by": "rogermeier", "date": "2025-11-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Wolfgang and me introduced the concept of the SPDX-License-Identifier", "excerpt": "Wolfgang and me introduced the concept of the SPDX-License-Identifier, see https://spdx.dev/learn/handling-license-info/ also landed within the Kernel later, beside of many things we did for our stuff at Siemens, upstream first such as https://github.com/u-boot/u-boot/tree/master/board/siemens", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Denx (a.k.a. U-Boot) Retires"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50051530", "title": "Will Linux phones become a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47894747", "title": "My audio interface has SSH enabled by default", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47732535", "title": "The Orange Pi 6 Plus", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47380512", "title": "Fedora 44 on the Raspberry Pi 5", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47278836", "title": "Never Bet Against x86", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46401499", "title": "OrangePi 6 Plus Review: The New Frontier for ARM64 SBC Performance", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 801135953, "item_id": 50070997, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50070997", "by": "megous", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "u-boot with display support and graphical menu", "excerpt": "Yes, the feedback that would tend to get addressed was always related to actual HW issues, and the issues listed in your blog article seem to all be failry superficial without any effect in practice. Eg. eMMC and DRAM is a commodity, various phones batches likely got different components based on what was available. I know for sure that my pinephones have different eMMC chips from different vendors that have differen", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Will Linux phones become a viable alternative to the Android/iOS duopoly?"}, {"id": 766390641, "item_id": 47899415, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47899415", "by": "lukeh", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "have to accept that as an artefact of U-Boot", "excerpt": "Re: yours, that is a _long_ boot time. Boot time on mine isn't great, but I think I'm just going to have to accept that as an artefact of U-Boot, Linux, and an Ethernet switch chip that takes some time to initialise. Anyway, re: my widget: it's a personal monitor mixer [1], something one might use in the studio or live, not dissimilar to existing products in the market, except: it supports up to 64 channels of Dante ", "context": "", "use_case": "bootloader", "switched_from": "", "story": "My audio interface has SSH enabled by default"}, {"id": 764397632, "item_id": 47774852, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47774852", "by": "imoverclocked", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the u-boot project does support the board and I was able to flash a newer u-boot", "excerpt": "Yes, and no. I have an OrangePi 5 Ultra and I'm finally running a vanilla kernel on it. Don't bother trying anything before kernel 6.18.x -- unless you are willing to stick with their 6.1.x kernel with a million+ line diff. The u-boot environment that comes with the board is hacked up. eg: It supports an undocumented amount of extlinux.conf ... just enough that whatever Debian writes by default, breaks it. Luckily, t", "context": "OrangePi 5 Ultra owner running vanilla kernel", "use_case": "bootloader for RK3588 board", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Orange Pi 6 Plus"}, {"id": 758118480, "item_id": 47382405, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47382405", "by": "my123", "date": "2026-03-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "U-Boot nowadays speaks UEFI :)", "excerpt": "U-Boot nowadays speaks UEFI :) (and so does LK) New Android devices all use a UEFI bootloader: https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/bootloader/generic-bootloader/gbl-dev", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fedora 44 on the Raspberry Pi 5"}, {"id": 757569313, "item_id": 47348082, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47348082", "by": "M95D", "date": "2026-03-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "U-boot and coreboot are free (ring -2 if they include ACPI / SMM, else still ring 0).", "excerpt": "I appreciate your detailed reply. I think we are looking from different perspectives. You are correct in an item-by-item way, but you need to put them all together and see the bigger picture. In my comment, it may have made a mess confusing technologies and their capabilities, but I was looking at the forest, not the trees. There are only two viable firmware alternatives in the world right now: ring 0 U-boot* or the ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Never Bet Against x86"}, {"id": 742443649, "item_id": 46402728, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46402728", "by": "imoverclocked", "date": "2025-12-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "vanilla uboot firmware", "excerpt": "So, I agree but less than I did a few months ago. I purchased an Orange Pi 5 Ultra and was put off by the pre-built image and custom kernel. The \u201cpatch\u201c for the provided kernel was inscrutable as well. Now I\u2019m running a vanilla 6.18 kernel on a vanilla uboot firmware (still a binary blob required to build that though) with a vanilla install of Debian. That support includes the NPU, GPU, 2.5G Ethernet and NVMe root/bo", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OrangePi 6 Plus Review: The New Frontier for ARM64 SBC Performance"}, {"id": 739875824, "item_id": 46242239, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46242239", "by": "baobun", "date": "2025-12-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Have you checked out uboot?", "excerpt": "Have you checked out uboot? https://u-boot.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "ARM bootloader", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Boot Order of the Raspberry Pi Is Unusual"}]}