System76 Continues Advancing Coreboot Support, Adding UI For Firmware Updates

[phoronix]

Phoronix: System76 Continues Advancing Coreboot Support, Adding UI For Firmware Updates

We've known that Linux PC vendor System76 has been investing engineering resources into Coreboot support and while not yet ready for end-users, they are making progress. For once it's ready for their customers, they have also begun crafting a graphical user-interface for these firmware upgrades to Coreboot...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=System76-Coreboot-Progress

[Britoid]

kinda dumb no fwupd

[mmstick]

kinda dumb no fwupd

That's because we have our own firmware delivery method that works really well.

[Britoid]

That's because we have our own firmware delivery method that works really well.

I'm sure people of other distributions appreciate having to download an external proprietary tool rather than it being integrated into the system updater and a tool supported by nearly every Linux distro and the Linux Foundation .

[ElectricPrism]

I thought I read somewhere that fwupd + systemd created permission issues that that could 100% hard brick your device. Not surprising to see no fwupd if true.

[isantop]

I'm sure people of other distributions appreciate having to download an external proprietary tool rather than it being integrated into the system updater and a tool supported by nearly every Linux distro and the Linux Foundation .

The firmware update tool is not proprietary. All code we produce in-house is available under an open source license. Usually this is GPL, though we also produce some MIT code as well as projects using variations on BSD licenses.

The new version is being written in Rust + GTK, and will be available to users on any distribution as a standalone tool (as well as integrating with system settings in Pop_OS).

- https://github.com/system76/firmware-update
- https://github.com/system76/ecflash
- https://github.com/system76/intel-spi

[ElectricPrism]

The firmware update tool is not proprietary. All code we produce in-house is available under an open source license. Usually this is GPL, though we also produce some MIT code as well as projects using variations on BSD licenses.

The new version is being written in Rust + GTK, and will be available to users on any distribution as a standalone tool (as well as integrating with system settings in Pop_OS).

- https://github.com/system76/firmware-update
- https://github.com/system76/ecflash
- https://github.com/system76/intel-spi

Fantastic, these kinds of business strategies really keeps System76 devices on my radar as highly desirable devices.

I hope to someday see a decent AMD CPU / AMD GPU offering since AMD have been killing it making AMD+Linux a smooth experience out of box and update wise.

[jackpot51]

kinda dumb no fwupd

The new firmware UI is a frontend to firmware update services. Adding fwupd support to this UI for Pop!_OS is on our roadmap.

[Kivarnis]

Fantastic, these kinds of business strategies really keeps System76 devices on my radar as highly desirable devices.

I hope to someday see a decent AMD CPU / AMD GPU offering since AMD have been killing it making AMD+Linux a smooth experience out of box and update wise.

Agree'd whole heateredly, looking at them for our next gaming laptop purchase.

[RahulSundaram]

I thought I read somewhere that fwupd + systemd created permission issues that that could 100% hard brick your device. Not surprising to see no fwupd if true.

That's such a vague statement. What does that even mean? What permission issues?