Hi guys I just saw the announcement for the new release of Fedora 44, got excited, and made an account. I love Fedora, I have used it on and off for years, but usually, I tend to hang back with older versions, because every time I try to install the beta’s there are weird issues I just don’t have time to deal with.
My question to you guys, because I see that on other projects they are starting to incorporate lots of new features dealing with firmware, is
What’s New With Firmware On Fedora?
Are you guys doing anything exciting, which parts of Fedora deal with firmware now? I haven’t used it in years, but I know for example there is increasing support for secureboot on other distro’s, and this thing called fwupd or something, which I guess is supposed to update the firmware?
Maybe I’m an oldschool guy, that doesn’t understand all this new technology, but looking at the latest computers for sale online, there seems to be a lot of buzz surrounding firmware and new features for it, so I was just looking to get a rundown of the latest changes.
Are our posts, being edited like a cellphone now? Incorporating phrases in the middle of our typing?
Anyways I guess I can figure out how to turn it off, thanks for any help you guys can provide.
Well the reason I asked, as to whether or not it was automatic, is because I understand this new fwupd program is an automatic system service.
I don’t really understand how it works beyond that, it’s automated!
But anyways, I guess there are a lot of new changes with firmware, since I don’t even know, I think the last time I used Fedora was around version 40? Or Less? I can’t remember…
If there’s anything I should be aware of, by all means feel free to provide some help. I’m going to attempt the transition sometime later today, or maybe even tomorrow if I become busy.
Hello, I’m not looking to upgrade my firmware, I’m just curious to learn any general information, such as human-to-human conversation would imply
It interests me because I see that over the years, this type of support has been increasing across linux land, and I honestly just love computers, and love working with them, and I try my best to follow the latest changes, but it’s actually difficult to do so, just reading release notes, and the blog posts of various distro’s
That’s the purpose of this thread…
Anyways I also just got excited for Fedora 44, wanted to say hi to you guys, and this was the first question I could come up with. Just trying to be social here
From reading your post I’m not sure if you know what firmware actually is - how would you define it?
because I was just reading a kernel blog post (I like the kernel) that explained, from a kernel developers point of view, the meaning of the term is a little ambiguous!
But for me, I’m just talking about the metal. The stuff computers are made of, and not the external stuff like the harddrive, Fedora itself is installed onto. (the motherboard)
Firmware is the software running inside the hardware, directly on the hardware infrastructure - your BIOS for example is firmware, and there’s code running on your hard drives to control the head position on that 18TB spinning rust backup drive. It’s the code that makes the hardware operate.
Vendors supply updated firmware blobs to a central repository and the fwupdmgr software checks your kit, sees if there’s a newer version and can download and flash it to the correct piece of hardware.
In layman’s terms, the cool firmware stuff is just marketing, and you don’t have to do anything.
If you need a new pc, get what you need in a processor and RAM and you’ll be right.
┌─🎩 lurcher ~/env_trace_output
├─
└─➜ fwupdmgr refresh --force && fwupdmgr get-updates && fwupdmgr update
Updating lvfs
Downloading… [************************************** ]
Successfully downloaded new metadata:
• 6 devices are updatable
• 0 devices are supported in the enabled remotes (an update has been published)
Devices with no available firmware updates:
• CT1000BX500SSD1
• HDWD130
• KINGSTON SA400S37240G
• MQ04UBD200
• SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB
• SSDPEKNW010T8
No updatable devices
Devices with no available firmware updates:
• CT1000BX500SSD1
• HDWD130
• KINGSTON SA400S37240G
• MQ04UBD200
• SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB
• SSDPEKNW010T8
No updatable devices
See it throws me off every time I read fwupd, because I used clearlinux for awhile when it was around, and it reminds me of swupd
so every time I see fwupd, I think, swupd, is that what it was called? it was something like that…
So fwupd can update lots of different firmware it looks like, including on harddrives… That’s pretty cool, and I guess we can discover what devices it supports, as well as computers…
So wait a minute guys… there has to be more to this situation that you’re not representing, because flashing the firmware is a seriously invasive, and potentially dangerous procedure
You’re suggesting to me, that I don’t have to do anything, and Fedora, will flash my firmware automatically.
That sounds to me like a backgrounded automatic update procedure, but flashing the firmware is a very sensitive operation for computers
You must be leaving out a lot of information here!
So long as the vendor updates the firmware blob on LVS, which some do and some don’t, and the hardware is updatable in the first place, there’s a pretty good chance it’ll keep you up to date.
Everything barring the BIOS - for that you’ll have to download it and flash it yourself.
