Many years ago, GNUtoo worked on replacing the nonfree GPU driver (also known as Video BIOS or Video option rom) of the ThinkPad X60, with help from other people (Ron Minnich, Vladimir Serbinenko, Peter Stuge). This work made it possible to create 100% free software boot distributions for commonly used computers (like some ThinkPads models, etc). This work was then rewritten multiple time by people other than GNUtoo to be a proper driver and work more reliably on a wider variety of computers.

Around the same time, GNUtoo was also helped Leah Rowe make refurbished ThinkPad X60 pass the FSF (Free software foundation) hardware certification by providing configuration code to build 100% free software images that can replace the nonfree BIOS, along with lot of explanations. Leah then reused all that, and also wrote a proper build system to create Libreboot in 2013.

When in 2022 Libreboot started to include nonfree software, GNUtoo and Adrien Bourmault (neox) created a new 100% free software boot distribution that keeps the spirit of the Libreboot project of that time. For instance it supports the same computers. At the end this gave birth to GNU Boot.

Since then GNUtoo and Adrien worked to redesign a big part of the build system, documentation system, etc. This makes then makes GNU Boot different form the other boot software distributions.

Over the years, GNUtoo also was involved in many distributions with a wide variety of build systems (Guix, Parabola that uses the Arch Linux build system, Trisquel that use the Debian build system, Replicant that uses the Android build system, Yocto/Openembedded many years ago).