Acer Begins Publishing UEFI Firmware Updates For Linux Users On LVFS For Fwupd

[Britoid]

The next laptop I buy, LVFS support is going to be one the major selling points.

[tildearrow]

Too bad Asus and Gigabyte does not support LVFS yet. 😢

I think it's safer to update your motherboard's firmware from its own menu. I've heard lots of reports from Windows users having bricked motherboards after doing firmware updates from the OS.

[zerothruster]

Afaik Acer UEFI updates are distributed like for Asus/Gigabyte, you download a zip file, extract it on a USB drive and then reboot into UEFI settings menu to actually load and flash it.

Rats! You mean I didn't have to keep windoze on it to do the update ? Oh well, I'll know in the future. Thanks.

For Acer's margins, you would think they would be at the forefront of linux on a $300 good enough computer. But they are damn near as useless as Apple. This gives me some hope for their future on linux, even though they can't code their way out of a paper bag.

What's wrong with Apple?

I have a 2014 MBP running Linux now; laptop is still supported enough by Apple to have a BIOS date of July this year (which came from Catalina beta; the latest one from Mojave is just a month earlier). Firmware mostly works fine too (have some weird BAR resource allocation issue with Thunderbolt hotplug on Linux; works fine on macOS though).

What other mainstream laptop is still getting BIOS updates of any sort after 5 years?

[amdtesterman]

Yes. I never said LVFS should replace all methods.

You mean that at this moment it is better a system that works than one that currently does not? Yeah I'm not a moron, that's obvious.

I was talking on the long run, if vendors start using LVFS it's going to be so much better. Also for Windows, as LVFS per-se isn't Linux-only, anything can access the repo and download stuff and send it to the UEFI firmware through the "UEFI capsule" feature of the firmware, just as it works on Linux.

More obvious statements. Yes, LVDS can take off only if vendors start loading all their firmware there, if it stays like it is now it's only a toy. But please note that there is growth in LVDS usage over time.

it is obvious, to the long-term can be so so better. but nowadays.. there is only a few vendors with a few models offering this. But yeah, LVFS is very good ... but the vendors are so so important in the equation, and they usual FAILS XD

[ThoreauHD]

For Acer's margins, you would think they would be at the forefront of linux on a $300 good enough computer. But they are damn near as useless as Apple. This gives me some hope for their future on linux, even though they can't code their way out of a paper bag.

[starshipeleven]

more options to update bios are better than less, do you agree with me ?

Yes. I never said LVFS should replace all methods.

I think is better to rely on your capacity to update the bios always you want it, than the capacity of the vendor in giving you the possibility to do so but in automatic way that can never comes to you

You mean that at this moment it is better a system that works than one that currently does not? Yeah I'm not a moron, that's obvious.

I was talking on the long run, if vendors start using LVFS it's going to be so much better. Also for Windows, as LVFS per-se isn't Linux-only, anything can access the repo and download stuff and send it to the UEFI firmware through the "UEFI capsule" feature of the firmware, just as it works on Linux.

it is better to have the option in ALL the laptops than only a few but in automatic way

More obvious statements. Yes, LVDS can take off only if vendors start loading all their firmware there, if it stays like it is now it's only a toy. But please note that there is growth in LVDS usage over time.

[amdtesterman]

No it's not better because it relies on the user to actually check some website for his device, and this website can be utter shit (for example for Acer) so finding a firmware can be annoying. Or of course the user can use crapware "updaters" from the hardware manufacturer if he is still using Windows, but they are bad.

Manual install through UEFI settings menu is a good fallback system, but it's not better than a repository for all firmware updates with an updater daemon.

The number of laptops will grow once the manufacturer has set up their firmware for using LVFS (UEFI capsule) system for their updates as they reuse the same "base" for many devices.

more options to update bios are better than less, do you agree with me ? okey, we are going to see if there is a laptop vendor that has all them laptops in the LVFS.. mmm.. error 404, not found, I think is better to rely on your capacity to update the bios always you want it, than the capacity of the vendor in giving you the possibility to do so but in automatic way that can never comes to you... for example, now there is out in the market a lenovo e595 and lenovo e585, do you know that the thinkpad e585 is year old and there is NO support in LVFS yet( and there won't be surely...) to sum up what I say, it is better to have the option in ALL the laptops than only a few but in automatic way

[DanL]

It's a nice step forward, but I would like to see an actual changelog on Acer BIOS updates so I know if it has a chance of fixing the user's issue, is a critical security update, etc.
Acer is not the only one guilty of this.

[starshipeleven]

sorry, bad spelling, the asus bios system update is better because it can be update through the bios itself, much better than be supported randomly by LVFS, because acer have 1 only model, but dell has little more.. only a few.

No it's not better because it relies on the user to actually check some website for his device, and this website can be utter shit (for example for Acer) so finding a firmware can be annoying. Or of course the user can use crapware "updaters" from the hardware manufacturer if he is still using Windows, but they are bad.

Manual install through UEFI settings menu is a good fallback system, but it's not better than a repository for all firmware updates with an updater daemon.

The number of laptops will grow once the manufacturer has set up their firmware for using LVFS (UEFI capsule) system for their updates as they reuse the same "base" for many devices.