SeaBIOS

Last updated
SeaBIOS
Developer(s) Kevin O'Connor
Initial releaseFebruary 25, 2008 (2008-02-25)
Stable release
1.17.0 [1] / 10 June 2025;40 days ago (2025-06-10)
Repository
Written in C
Platform x86
Included with KVM, QEMU
Standard(s) SMBIOS
Available inEnglish
Type BIOS
License LGPLv3
Website www.seabios.org

SeaBIOS is an open-source implementation of an x86 BIOS, serving as a freely available firmware for x86 systems. Aiming for compatibility, it supports standard BIOS features and calling interfaces that are implemented by a typical proprietary x86 BIOS. SeaBIOS can either run on bare hardware as a coreboot payload, or can be used directly in emulators such as QEMU and Bochs.

Contents

Initially, SeaBIOS was based on the open-source BIOS implementation included with the Bochs emulator. The project was created with intentions to allow native usage on x86 hardware, and to be based on an improved and more easily extendable internal source code implementation. [2] : 3–5 

Features

Features supported by SeaBIOS include the following:

A patch exists to load the SLIC table from a licensed OEM Windows BIOS. [3]

It does not support ESCD. SeaBIOS does not support either Intel ME or AMD PSP or their modules.

SeaBIOS's boot device selection menu can be accessed by pressing Esc during the boot process.

Uses

SeaBIOS can run natively on x86 hardware, in which case it is usually loaded as a coreboot payload; it can run on 386 and newer processors, and requires a minimum of 1 MB of RAM. SeaBIOS also runs inside an emulator; it is the default BIOS for the QEMU and KVM virtualization environments, and can be used with the Bochs emulator. It is also included in some Chromebooks, although it is not used by ChromeOS. [4]

Development

Most of the SeaBIOS source code is written in C, with its build system relying on the standard GNU toolchain. [2] : 5–7  SeaBIOS has been tested with various bootloaders and operating systems, including GNU GRUB, LILO, SYSLINUX, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeDOS, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. [5]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Releases - SeaBIOS". www.seabios.org. Retrieved 20 July 2025.
  2. 1 2 Kevin O'Connor (November 11, 2010). "SeaBIOS in a virtualized environment" (PDF). linuxplumbersconf.org. Retrieved December 13, 2021.
  3. ↑ "ghuntley/seaslic GitHub". Github.com. Retrieved 2014-02-25.
  4. ↑ Tofel, Kevin C. (2013-02-26). "3 alternatives to Chrome OS on Google's Chromebook Pixel — Tech News and Analysis". Gigaom. Gigaom.com. Archived from the original on February 25, 2014. Retrieved 2014-02-25.
  5. ↑ "Grub2 Other Os - Community Help Wiki". help.ubuntu.com. Retrieved 2023-10-10.
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