System76 vs. The LVFS Firmware Updating Service

[phoronix]

Phoronix: System76 vs. The LVFS Firmware Updating Service

This week the latest open-source drama was a differing of opinions between Richard Hughes of Red Hat who maintains Fwupd and LVFS for Linux firmware updating from the desktop and that of Linux PC vendor System76...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...=System76-LVFS

[numacross]

Is System76's hardware capable of updating using just the UEFI? For example on newer Dells you can update the UEFI with itself by pressing F12, selecting the updater and providing the universal .exe (FreeDOS- and Windows-capable) on a FAT32 partition either on a HDD or USB storage.

Updating the firmware from the OS, especially Linux, is nice to have, but an OS-agnostic way is very useful too.

[andre30correia]

the question here! how much Dell pay for this guy say that

[boxie]

+1 for the use of the word defenestrated

Not enough things get thrown out of windows!

[sdack]

Don't do business with RedHat.

[[email protected]]

Looks like Redhat NIH in full swing. If their solution for everything is not used, must be bad.

[numacross]

the question here! how much Dell pay for this guy say that

If you mean me then the answer is nothing. The same functionality is available from different vendors like ASrock, but not as accessible (you have to go into the Setup in order to activate it, which takes time).

I gave Dell as an example because I've the most experience with their stuff and they have excellent support in LVFS. You can even update the Thunderbolt firmware through it without having to compile stuff and sysfs wizardry if you use the bleeding edge kernel and fwupd versions. In contrast to their UEFI updates the Thunderbolt firmware used to be Windows-only.

All in all I see nothing wrong with promoting open-source friendly vendors

[lu_tze]

Looks like Redhat NIH in full swing. If their solution for everything is not used, must be bad.

UpdateCapsule is not RedHat's solution. It's everyone's solution, except System76+AMI. They are the special snowflake with NIH here.

[numacross]

Looks like Redhat NIH in full swing. If their solution for everything is not used, must be bad.

It's a hard problem. I'm not aware of any comprehensive firmware update solution for Linux before LVFS. Being able to update multiple stuff with one tool is desirable both for convenience and security. We wouldn't be happy with all vendors rolling their own proprietary update methods like on Windows now would we?

Judging by the list of vendor support they are doing good job so far - https://fwupd.org/vendorlist

[CochainComplex]

CLEVO should pull their bioses... Than System76, Tuxedo, Schneider many more.... Won't have to.... Ive a Tuxedo and Dell .. It is nice to see how flawless it works with Dell... I wish more vendors would participate... It's a pain to build fat pseudo dos bootsticks compared to fwupd.... And I don't get why system76wants to build their own. . Reminds me of the mir, Wayland... Issue