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

[amdtesterman]

I don't understand what you are saying here.

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.

[starshipeleven]

it is better, bexcause any laptop vendor that has support for lvfs support all the laptops brands.. the latest either.. XD

I don't understand what you are saying here.

[amdtesterman]

They don't support Windows either for that matter. Only update method offered is to copy the firmware on a flash drive, reboot in UEFI settings and then use its own tool to do the job.

That's already good enough.

it is better, bexcause any laptop vendor that has support for lvfs support all the laptops brands.. the latest either.. XD

[amdtesterman]

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

there is no need for asus at least, they have the possibility to do this with the bios..

[blackiwid]

Stupid question, I get kind of excited about such news, Vendors start to care about linux great, but isn't that also a problem?

Firmware/Bios can be seen as hardware according to the FSF if it's a fixed hardware, but if you can send updates to every machine very often and automatically without the user making even a decision about it, is that then still true?

I mean I guess it also comes down how complex this firmwares are if it's only a microcode in a cpu you likely can't include a backdoor into that, but in this 5 TB Uefi Firmwares? So doesn't such updates reduce the security against this companies and the state that can force this companies to include anti-features, like backdoors and stuff like that?

[Slithery]

Is there a central listing of vendors / products that support fwupd? In future builds its a legitimate value add that I want to consider in purchases but the info is all over the place.

https://www.fwupd.org/lvfs/devicelist

[zanny]

Is there a central listing of vendors / products that support fwupd? In future builds its a legitimate value add that I want to consider in purchases but the info is all over the place.

[starshipeleven]

I was starting to get excited when I saw A315 - but model numbers from Acer have very little consistency. My own Aspire 3 A315-41-R18T (bought new at the start of this year, but the design seems to have been around for maybe 15 months now) could reasonably be described as low-end and is 1920x1080, but Ryzen 5 2500U. Oh well, maybe my next laptop won't need windows for UEFI/BIOS updates.

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.

[starshipeleven]

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

They don't support Windows either for that matter. Only update method offered is to copy the firmware on a flash drive, reboot in UEFI settings and then use its own tool to do the job.

That's already good enough.

[Space Heater]

It's good to see forward progress, I wish HP would finally make their laptop firmware updates public.