The Meteoric Rise Of Fwupd+LVFS For Linux Firmware Updates

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Meteoric Rise Of Fwupd+LVFS For Linux Firmware Updates

Intel firmware expert Brian Richardson was at FOSDEM 2020 to talk up UEFI Capsule Update functionality and the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) for allowing OEMs/ODMs to easily distribute firmware updates to Linux users for application with the Fwupd firmware updating utility...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LVFS-Meteoric-Rise

[brent]

Yeah, LVFS is great. What I'm still missing is NVMe support. I think some experiments have been done in that direction, but nothing is shipping in fwupd yet. This is a bit sad because NVMe has a standardized firmware update mechanism.

I had a pretty bad experience with this lately. My SSD had system freeze issues with an older firmware. Even though the update mechanism is standard and can be used with a simple command, the manufacturer of my SSD only shipped a stupid Windows program for updating. In the end, I had to manually extract the firmware data from the Windows installer with binwalk and some binary tinkering and hope for the best. It worked, but this is certainly something NO user should ever need to do.

[Syfer]

How do you report stale firmware to fwupd? My Dell laptop(Inspiron Gaming 15) got a few firmware updates in the first two years since its release, but there have since been two newer firmware updates on Dells website which are missing from fwupd

[intelfx]

How do you report stale firmware to fwupd? My Dell laptop(Inspiron Gaming 15) got a few firmware updates in the first two years since its release, but there have since been two newer firmware updates on Dells website which are missing from fwupd

Work with your vendor to have them push updates to LVFS. It works this way only.

[rgloor]

But most interesting was this graphic showing the rise of LVFS with its adoption over the years and a look at many of the hardware vendors now distributing firmware updates via this open-source platform:

Hhmmm..... interesting how Brian Richardson completely left out AMD on the graphics.
(I know Brian is from intel. But come on! Be a grown up. That is a area where all need to work together, not the place to play business political games.)

Never the less: Thanks to everybody / all companies contributing to fwupd / LVFS.

[santiago]

How do you report stale firmware to fwupd? My Dell laptop(Inspiron Gaming 15) got a few firmware updates in the first two years since its release, but there have since been two newer firmware updates on Dells website which are missing from fwupd

Please use their suggested method from here https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devices/ :

If your device is listed but missing a firmware update that you see on the vendor website, please file an issue against the LVFS website.

[Buntolo]

Hhmmm..... interesting how Brian Richardson completely left out AMD on the graphics.
(I know Brian is from intel. But come on! Be a grown up. That is a area where all need to work together, not the place to play business political games.)

Never the less: Thanks to everybody / all companies contributing to fwupd / LVFS.

Not to defend intel, but AMD hasn't jumped on the fwupd/LVFS ship yet:

https://fwupd.org/lvfs/vendors/

AMD

Vendor is evaluating the service

[Britoid]

Not to defend intel, but AMD hasn't jumped on the fwupd/LVFS ship yet:

https://fwupd.org/lvfs/vendors/

Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question, but does AMD make anything that's not updated at runtime by the kernel?

[rgloor]

Not to defend intel, but AMD hasn't jumped on the fwupd/LVFS ship yet:

https://fwupd.org/lvfs/vendors/

OK. My fault. I misinterpreted some news about AMD firmware updates landing. Thought they would go via LVFS. But now rereading some articles (like Linux-Firmware Adds Updated Binary For Fixing Performance With RX 5600 XT vBIOS Update), it looks like those go actually into the kernel tree (linux-firmware.git).

[santiago]

I'm looking for laptop for work and LVFS support is one of the required criteria for it. Unfortunately seeing lots of big names on the slide (in the article) doesn't mean that their recent devices are supported right now, or even planned to. HP -- few workstations, no laptops at all; System76 -- evaluating; Acer, MSI -- no info on devices; no ASUS, and so on.

So right now I have to choose between Dell and Lenovo. But I have something to choose between and this is good.

LVFS is wonderful. I saw presentation from some other conference by Richard Hughes himself and he talked that this cross-vendor update service opens some other interesting opportunities. They can see what hardware components each package updates and if one vendor releases update for some common HW they can notify other vendors that such update exists.