3 ms·

The canonical firmware is the BIOS, I was pleasantly surprised when Fedora updated the BIOS on my Dell XPS device by itself recently... historically that has be

The canonical firmware is the BIOS, I was pleasantly surprised when Fedora updated the BIOS on my Dell XPS device by itself recently... historically that has been somewhere between a nuisance (Reboot and then UEFI network update), a struggle (dig out the image from an EXE on a flash drive), or impossible (some windows-only app that doesn't work via a VM). And whatever the annoyance level, when done manually it was usually done months or years after the BIOS release. Other firmware the cpu microcode is handled via packaging. There has been a lot of work packaging peripheral firmware for things like mice... it's not like it is going to go away. This is also distributed in packaging in Fedora now. It's not ideal that these are proprietary blobs but some accommodation is needed I think.

pabs3 4y ago
That firmware update was made possible by the fwupd software project (containing various firmware updaters) and the LVFS project, a service for hardware vendors to upload their proprietary firmware updates for mice, the BIOS/UEFI and other devices to. https://fwupd.org/ https://fwupd.org/ While it is great, it doesn't solve the problem that this post is talking about; when devices have no pre-installed firmware and expect you to upload (proprietary) firmware on every boot. This is usually things like WiFi chips, GPUs, Ethernet etc.
- outsomnia 4y ago
  > it doesn't solve the problem that this post is talking about; when devices have no pre-installed firmware and expect you to upload (proprietary) firmware on every boot. This is usually things like WiFi chips, GPUs, Ethernet etc. Same as Fedora, Debian seems to package linux-firmware? https://packages.debian.org/sid/firmware-misc-nonfree https://packages.debian.org/sid/firmware-misc-nonfree
  - pabs3 4y ago
    Right, and linux-firmware contains mostly proprietary firmware. There is a small amount of libre firmware in it but that doesn't get built from source. The post is about directing users to an installer ISO that installs the proprietary firmware by default.
    - outsomnia 4y ago
      I see, thanks for explaining.

pabs3 4y ago

That firmware update was made possible by the fwupd software project (containing various firmware updaters) and the LVFS project, a service for hardware vendors to upload their proprietary firmware updates for mice, the BIOS/UEFI and other devices to. https://fwupd.org/ https://fwupd.org/ While it is great, it doesn't solve the problem that this post is talking about; when devices have no pre-installed firmware and expect you to upload (proprietary) firmware on every boot. This is usually things like WiFi chips, GPUs, Ethernet etc.

outsomnia 4y ago
> it doesn't solve the problem that this post is talking about; when devices have no pre-installed firmware and expect you to upload (proprietary) firmware on every boot. This is usually things like WiFi chips, GPUs, Ethernet etc. Same as Fedora, Debian seems to package linux-firmware? https://packages.debian.org/sid/firmware-misc-nonfree https://packages.debian.org/sid/firmware-misc-nonfree
- pabs3 4y ago
  Right, and linux-firmware contains mostly proprietary firmware. There is a small amount of libre firmware in it but that doesn't get built from source. The post is about directing users to an installer ISO that installs the proprietary firmware by default.
  - outsomnia 4y ago
    I see, thanks for explaining.