Although LVFS supports updating firmware using #fwupd on a huge number of devices right now, where should our main focus be for 2025?
If there's something specific you're thinking about, please reply with a link to the vendor product page. Thanks!
@krake @mkyral I asked them in 2020 and 2022. At this point, I have given up on them for getting LVFS support and upstreaming drivers to Linux right. Even if they do both things eventually, they certainly don't go back so many years, that my laptop will be covered.
Both criteria will be essential for my next buying decision.
It would be awesome if Tuxedo would upload their firmware to LVFS. Any specific reasons to not do this, @TUXEDOComputers?
@hughsie I voted laptops but want to give my reasoning:
- Servers: I don't really care about them personally. Plus servers are the kind of thing with a team managing them.
- Removable devices: Definitely helpful but not as critical as PC BIOS, IMO.
- Desktop w/ consumer MOBO: Important to get bios updates for security. But people building PCs know how to update BIOS, and you can w/o an OS.
- Laptops: Again important to get bios updates, and there's no external mechanism for it either!
(1) open source firmware and enabling that
(2) making it easier for others to sync and run an LVFS mirror
Thanks!
@hughsie @vathpela Managing and distributing firmware is so viciously important, that it's crucial to make it easier for others to clone the data and history.
Why? This lessens the risk that a bad actor might push a blob, and then push a subsequent copy thus hiding their tracks. By using standard protocols, it's less likely that this will go unnoticed, since others can snapshot and diff more easily.
This is important for your own reputation and for that of the excellent LVFS =D
I personally voted for desktop Mainboards but I also think that the three most voted for options are kinda all important, recently I installed the WD SN770 SSD on my Linux laptop, I found out it had an update, It wasn't on LVFS and to update it manually in the terminal was so hard I ended up booting Windows off a USB stick just to update my SSD.
LVFS is such a great concept and it makes me really sad that vendors aren't contributing to it more.
@hughsie From my own perspective, server is the less interesting option. Using the lights-out/BMC functionality you can already orchestrate firmware upgrades on a fleet of machines. fwupd support would be nice, but it's already something that can be automated without needing to wait on the vendor to adopt new firmware packaging and distribution channels.
Laptop is probably the most critical, as laptop BIOSes tend to often also lack support for doing a firmware upgrade (whereas desktop systems tend to have that built-in nowadays). You typically have to boot into Windows. With the recent Framework AMD launch for example, folks needed to get on BIOS 3.03 for things to work properly. Though @frameworkcomputer lets you do the firmware upgrade from a USB stick, the fact that it was available through fwupd was even nicer. But I have a Lenovo IdeaPad for example on which this is a real chore.
After that it's a toss-up between external peripherals and desktop for me. Though I did appreciate the ability to update the Logitech unifying receiver when some vulnerability came out a few years ago. That was great.
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