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Lenovo To Make Its BIOS/UEFI Updates Easier For Linux Users Via LVFS (phoronix.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Lenovo is making it easier for their customers running Linux to update their firmware now on ThinkPad, ThinkStation, and ThinkCenter hardware. Lenovo has joined the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) and following collaboration with the upstream developers is beginning to roll-out support for offering their device firmware on this platform so it can be easily updated by users with the fwupd stack. Kudos to all involved especially with Lenovo ThinkPads being very popular among Linux users.

3 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Linux on Lenovo was always pretty easy. by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Informative

    And it makes it harder for you to explain why you want to pay more.

    It's really not that hard with a ThinkPad to explain why I am willing to pay more*. First, it is the only laptop that is standard with a usable pointing device; the trackpoint is orders of magnitude better than any touchpad ever created by anyone, ever. Second, even to this day Lenovo has continued the IBM tradition of always making the field manuals available for every laptop they make, and they continue to be excellent documents. If I need to replace some minor part it will tell me every screw I need to remove to get to it, how long it is, what kind of threads it has, and how much torque to apply to properly tighten it back down. ThinkPads are still made to be serviced by any reasonably competent person, as opposed to most other consumer (or even business) laptops that want customers to send them in instead. And of course, if I really don't want to do it myself, their on-site warranty is great too.

    *if you actually price them out, a ThinkPad is usually no more expensive than any other business caliber laptop. Toss out the junk that is sold at retail today as it isn't worth considering anyways.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  2. Suh-weet. by Tough+Love · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sweet. I also notice that many or most enthusiast motherboards are shipping with Windows-independent bios updaters now. This suggests the Linux component of the enthusiast segment is signifcant. Another motivation would be, you see no end of forum posts about people bricking their motherboard because of running the bios update with the Windows utility.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  3. Why does this need to be hard? by jonwil · · Score: 4, Informative

    On my Gigabyte motherboard, I download the new BIOS, stick it on a small FAT partition on an external drive I have for various things, boot into the BIOS and pick "upgrade". The BIOS will then read the firmware from the FAT partition in question, verify it then install it before rebooting automatically. I am sure if I stuck the BIOS on a thumb drive it would work as well (except that I would need to find a thumb drive whereas the extra partition on the existing external HDD is easy to work with)

    Why can't everyone make it that easy rather than needing to run a Windows exe or boot from a special DOS boot disk or something (or even this new Linux thing)