Debian Warns Of Hyper Threading Issue With Intel Sky/Kaby Lake CPUs

[starshipeleven]

Does windows get microcode updates through windows update?
I'm not a big fan of software patches and favor fixing it through firmware updates.

yes they do, they did screw up an update once with Pentium Anniversary Edition and it was working very weird until they patched again.

Any half-decent OS can load different microcode updates anyway, and given how long is the firmware update support you usually get, it's only a logical consequence.

[starshipeleven]

However, giving it some extra thought, the argument that it's preferable in this particular case is not convincing. Your CPU is using microcode no matter what, so so if you install the intel-microcode package, you're not causing any additional non-free software to be used. You're just replacing one blob with another blob.

Yeah, but for some arcane reason some subsets of free software enthusiasts go rampage if the same firmware is loaded on runtime instead than from a ROM on the board.
Debian is on this bandwagon for example.

[torsionbar28]

Yeah, but for some arcane reason some subsets of free software enthusiasts go rampage if the same firmware is loaded on runtime instead than from a ROM on the board.
Debian is on this bandwagon for example.

^ lol too true! ROM = meh. Loadable firmware blob = ZOMG TEH SPYWARE!

[MaxToTheMax]

Yeah, but for some arcane reason some subsets of free software enthusiasts go rampage if the same firmware is loaded on runtime instead than from a ROM on the board.
Debian is on this bandwagon for example.

Well it makes sense not to ship it with the base OS because a lot of people are running CPUs that may not even need it.

[torsionbar28]

intel regularly releases new microcode for their cpu's. over the years intel has had a lot more misbehaving silicon than amd.

Haswell & Broadwell:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8376/i...eep-broadwelly

Core2:
https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer...ore-cpu-errata

Another Skylake bug a year ago:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2016/01/11/intel-skylake-crash-erratum/1/

And one from Sandy Bridge:
https://www.techpowerup.com/152978/s...y-after-launch

[randomsalad]

Do we want Linux distributions to alter Uefi configuration?

I wouldn't want ANY operating system altering my EUFI configuration.

[Jumbotron]

Driving right by in my AMD Bristol Ridge APU laptop and desktop and looking at the carnage.

[BaronHK]

More like dangerous to run Debian. You're telling me that I'm supposed to run this crap on a production system and disable one of the biggest perks of having a Core i7? HAHA! No. Their refusal to ship device firmware is really stupid. The whole reason we have firmware is to avoid precisely this kind of situation.

Back in the 90s when Intel processors didn't have replaceable firmware, things like the Pentium FDIV and F00F bugs required removing the processor and sending it to Intel for a replacement.

The processors that misbehave under Debian won't misbehave under Fedora, because Fedora ships and updates linux-firmware quite often. Also, my wifi works.

It's funny how Debian goes to all this trouble to be "Free", but then they package things like Widevine, Flash, RAR, etc. and just say that it's not officially part of Debian. The FSF has Debian on the non-recommended list of distributions even though Debian policy makes it much harder than necessary to set your computer up properly and most people end up figuring out a way to get the firmware anyway because they have devices that don't work without it. There is no functional difference, spare a little disk space used, of making available and pre-installing the firmware, since if you don't have the device, it will never get loaded, and few (if any) users want their computer to be non-functional in some way if it's missing.

Fedora is actually more Free by the FSF's own guidelines than Debian is. While Fedora ships firmware, the FSF would declare Debian non-Free for suggesting the firmware or making it available, which it does, but Fedora does not suggest, pre-install, or make available the non-Free software that is hosted by Debian. They don't stop you from installing it yourself from RPM Fusion and they don't try to break it (which would make an operating system non-Free if it did), but RPM Fusion is another project that is not made available by default or recommended by the Fedora project websites.

While there is some effort to set Fedora up, critical hardware isn't broken out-of-the-box simply due to lack of firmware. Debian has picked some odd policies and it continues to do so.

Also, after a while, Debian Stable becomes crusty enough that it won't work properly on new-ish hardware. Not only is the kernel Linux that it ships with sufficiently old that it still has a bunch of Skylake behavior that will make your laptop less efficient and will run down your battery, they insist on breaking the wifi chip until you can install the iwlwifi firmware (which is more of a pain because modern laptops don't have ethernet ports!), *and* to top it off, if you don't disable Hyperthreading, then certain Skylake processors will malfunction on Debian unless the manufacturer releases a new BIOS, which, guess what, probably only installs if you have Windows(!) all because Debian won't ship firmware for the kernel to replace on boot to solve things like this, like a sane OS does.

I don't even consider Debian. The people making their policies are braindead. There shouldn't be a struggle to set up a modern operating system. Sure, there are things to install and settings to tweak in Fedora, but it's not effing broken right out of the gate.

Right now I pretty much use Fedora because on other distributions my laptop is somewhat broken and finding out why or fixing it robs me of the time that I could be using my computer. If I ever want Long Term Stable, I'll go with CentOS. Whenever 8 is out, I guess. You could conceivably install CentOS and never have to do a distribution upgrade again. It's supported for longer than a Debian Stable or Ubuntu LTS, and it gets feature and driver backports.

[VikingGe]

intel regularly releases new microcode for their cpus

That's kind of the point here, they already have a fix, whereas AMD don't even seem to have a clue why their CPUs don't work.

[starshipeleven]

Well it makes sense not to ship it with the base OS because a lot of people are running CPUs that may not even need it.

They don't ship firmwares because they are non-free, it's not like microcodes occupy a ton of space or are dangerous for people not needing them.

And doing so would allow them to avoid having to ask their users to do total bullshit like disabling HT