Immediately following Linus Torvalds' release on Sunday of Linux 4.13, the GNU Linux-libre 4.13-gnu was outted for those wanting a fully-free system with driver binary blob support removed and eliminating other code that could depend upon non-open microcode/firmware support or the loading of binary kernel drivers.

Alexandre Oliva wrote of the GNU Linux-libre 4.13-gnu update:

This release had a larger than usual assortment of new drivers dependent on blobs: Cavium Nitrox CNN55XX, Inside Secure's SafeXcel cryptographic engine, Qualcomm Venus V4L2 encoder/decoder, Mellanox Technologies Spectrum, Quantenna QSR10g, and Qualcomm ADSP and WCNSS.

Minor changes to the per-release deblobbing logic was required for AMDGPU, IWLWIFI, and Redpine Signals WLAN drivers, due to source code rearrangement. New blobs are required by them, and also by Adreno A5xx, Intel i915 CSR, ath10k, brcmfmac, wil6210 and Silead DMI.