Originally posted by starshipeleven
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Lenovo To Make Their BIOS/UEFI Updates Easier For Linux Users Via LVFS
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Originally posted by starshipeleven View PostBecause it's managing firmware that is not distro-specific as it is using standard UEFI interfaces to install it, and is also a blob.
There is little reason to have it go through the usual packaging and testing and QA of each distro.
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Originally posted by aaahaaap View PostHmm, pretty much no package/application that's available in distro repos is distro specific,
More often than not this means that they will break or at least be unstable if you try to use a distro's binary in a different distro, as the actual compiled binary shipped by the distro isn't really exactly the same as the one shipped by another.
Say using a Ubuntu binary on Arch, or vice-versa.
Why you think Flatpack and Snap packaged applications are a thing? Because they allow to install applications that don't have these limitations and can be installed/updated reagrdless of what the rest of the distro is doing. And of course they come from repositories that are not controlled by your distro's maintainers (which is the whole point).
what makes this special?
It's the same exact stuff that comes from hardware vendors, and has exactly 0 need to interact with the rest of the OS as it's just downloaded by the tool, checked and then sent to the UEFI board firmware for processing, unlike other blobs shipped with the distro (see below) that need to actually be integrated with the distro itself.
There are also already plenty of binary/blob packages available.
For example, the firmware blobs loaded at runtime from Linux-firmware https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux...ware.git/tree/ upstream repo will have to be placed in different path depending on what path the distro uses for storing firmware blobs loaded by the kernel.
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Originally posted by shmerl View PostAre they even trustworthy? They injected spyware / malware in their UEFI blobs in the past. Their hardware is nice, but their firmware is trash.
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Originally posted by aaahaaap View PostHmm, pretty much no package/application that's available in distro repos is distro specific, what makes this special? There are also already plenty of binary/blob packages available.
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Originally posted by starshipeleven View PostAll normal distros load updated CPU microcodes on boot if available, and the G50-45 is using an AMD processor so it is not affected by Meltdown.
Besides, it's a sub-500$ laptop, you should be already be happy that they didn't fuck up the firmware so bad that Linux kernel panics on boot (as happens way too frequently with HP laptops nowadays).
EDIT: for the sake of making it more clear, I mean that unless you are using a nutjob distro your laptop will be OK even if the board firmware will never be upgraded again.
My sub $200 Lenovo running Linux will never see a BIOS update as it was made for Lenovo under contract. I didn't see boot alerts on it until the kernel reached 4.10 and I know that will never get fixed. If I had a $1500 HP Elite Book and Linux refused to boot or had a lot of panics, I would probably see it differently or buy something else.
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Originally posted by edwaleni View PostI didn't see boot alerts on it until the kernel reached 4.10 and I know that will never get fixed.
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Originally posted by edwaleni View Post
Very good. That is exactly what I see. ACPI alerts.
As long as it isn't totally "panics on boot"-grade fucked up, anyway.
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Originally posted by starshipeleven View PostAs all things opensource, this happens mostly when someone actually posts a bug report and/or contributes code, I'm sure that for a random cheap device you probably won't do that, but people trying to get powerful or decent laptops to work with Linux will want to do that. https://01.org/linux-acpi/documentation/patch-flow
As long as it isn't totally "panics on boot"-grade fucked up, anyway.
Effect? The ACPI boot errors are now gone. I am stunned.
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