5 ms·

Far more interesting IMHO is whether the vendor publishes uefi updates and other low level firmware for the device in a way that doesn't require a running ms-wi

Far more interesting IMHO is whether the vendor publishes uefi updates and other low level firmware for the device in a way that doesn't require a running ms-windows to patch it. Dare i ask for open source firmware?

ahoya 4y ago
Star labs does this using fwupd
Jon_Lowtek 4y ago
Lenovo does this for their laptops, but struggles with peripherals. Story time: A while ago Lenovo had bugs in their thunderbolt and uefi firmware, with symptoms like glitches when the devices were plugged in a lenovo ultra docking station. They published the firmware to LVFS and thereby enabled linux devices to apply these patches with fwupd. However the dock, which is a device on its own, also has some glitches, little annoying stuff like certain monitors on the display ports not working every time when hot-docking. They made patches for that as well, because business hardware, but a microsoft operating system is needed to apply them to the dock. Sure one can say: that is a problem of the dock vendor, which just happens to make the laptops as well.
nsajko 4y ago
TBH requiring Windows isn't so bad as it seems, because Microsoft provides a very-lightweight version of Windows free-of-charge. Remove your storage drives just in case before booting, to prevent Windows messing with your data. This is a relevant link: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Windows_PE https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Windows_PE
- Jon_Lowtek 4y ago
  Honestly, i do not consider that "good enough". Applying updates by manually searching for them, building a boot system with a completely different tech stack, physically removing storage drives, ... i know people who couldn't be bothered to do that even if the update fixes an HCF error. Luckily the worst of the worst when it comes to firmware, the one on the wireless card that is reachable without direct physical access or a bridgehead on the system, is nowadays loaded by the driver and the binary blobs are updated by the package manager. At least for the most recent intel and qualcomm architectures (and maybe some other). However I am not entirely sure if they patch the device permanently or just load them for runtime. Relevant because there are wifi drivers embedded in UEFI (for example for WoWLAN), but who the heck has that enabled anyway.
nmstoker 4y ago
I get Dell updates under Linux from LVFS, works great https://fwupd.org/ https://fwupd.org/

ahoya 4y ago

Star labs does this using fwupd

Jon_Lowtek 4y ago

Lenovo does this for their laptops, but struggles with peripherals. Story time: A while ago Lenovo had bugs in their thunderbolt and uefi firmware, with symptoms like glitches when the devices were plugged in a lenovo ultra docking station. They published the firmware to LVFS and thereby enabled linux devices to apply these patches with fwupd. However the dock, which is a device on its own, also has some glitches, little annoying stuff like certain monitors on the display ports not working every time when hot-docking. They made patches for that as well, because business hardware, but a microsoft operating system is needed to apply them to the dock. Sure one can say: that is a problem of the dock vendor, which just happens to make the laptops as well.

nsajko 4y ago

TBH requiring Windows isn't so bad as it seems, because Microsoft provides a very-lightweight version of Windows free-of-charge. Remove your storage drives just in case before booting, to prevent Windows messing with your data. This is a relevant link: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Windows_PE https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Windows_PE

Jon_Lowtek 4y ago
Honestly, i do not consider that "good enough". Applying updates by manually searching for them, building a boot system with a completely different tech stack, physically removing storage drives, ... i know people who couldn't be bothered to do that even if the update fixes an HCF error. Luckily the worst of the worst when it comes to firmware, the one on the wireless card that is reachable without direct physical access or a bridgehead on the system, is nowadays loaded by the driver and the binary blobs are updated by the package manager. At least for the most recent intel and qualcomm architectures (and maybe some other). However I am not entirely sure if they patch the device permanently or just load them for runtime. Relevant because there are wifi drivers embedded in UEFI (for example for WoWLAN), but who the heck has that enabled anyway.

nmstoker 4y ago

I get Dell updates under Linux from LVFS, works great https://fwupd.org/ https://fwupd.org/