Fwupd 1.8.1 Linux Firmware Updater Brings More Hardware Support and New Features

Fwupd 1.8.1

Mario Limonciello released today fwupd 1.8.1 as the first point release to the latest fwupd 1.8 series of this open-source and popular firmware updater utility for Linux-based operating systems.

Fwupd 1.8.1 comes a month after the release of the fwupd 1.8 series and introduces even more hardware support. More specifically, fwupd now supports firmware updating on Corsair KATAR PRO XT, Corsair SABRE PRO, and Corsair KATAR PRO wireless mice, HP Thunderbolt Dock G4, Lenovo ThinkPad Universal USB-C dock, as well as the Steelseries Aerox 3 and Steelseries Rival 3 wireless mice.

On top of that, fwupd 1.8.1 adds support for more PixArt wireless devices, more SunplusIT USB cameras, and some UFS devices. If you own any of these devices, you should install the new fwupd version on your GNU/Linux distribution to update the firmware to newer versions (if available).

Fwupd 1.8.1 also adds a few new features to make firmware updating more reliable, such as archive writing support for devices with composite firmware, a new way to read device composite firmware in fwupdtool, the ability to allow clients to opt-in to display firmware updates with user-solvable problems, as well as the ability to allow the device to pause polling when writing firmware.

In addition, fwupd now supports exporting of the system and device battery levels on the D-Bus interface and adds X-UsbReceiver as an “update” category, which is identifiable by the usb-receiver icon.

As expected with a point release, several issues were addressed. Fwupd 1.8.1 fixes a critical warning that occurred when the modem update failed, fixes a regression when probing PS175 devices, it’s more resilient when restarting the Redfish BMC, no longer marks all Redfish updates as “UPDATABLE”, and drops the ‘dongle’ term to describe USB receiver hardware.

It also displays more architecture explicit details when installing OS dependencies, allows post actions requests from fwupdtool, allows specifying of non-file D-Bus transport, hardcodes the Redfish filedata name to firmware.bin, more accurately returns the last set status to client tools, sets the Bluetooth version if “REV” has been set, and allows dumping the flashrom firmware and download in-process when using fwupdtool.

Fwupd 1.8.1 is available for download right now from the project’s GitHub page. However, this is the source tarball, which you’ll have to compile on your GNU/Linux distribution. If that’s not your cup of tea, wait for the new fwupd version to arrive in the stable software repositories of your distro to update.

Last updated 2 years ago

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