System76 unveils graphical tool to update firmware in Ubuntu

Graphical tool to update the System76 firmware

This week I've been thinking about what to do if I want to update the BIOS on my new laptop in the future. It came with Windows and most BIOS update files are developed for the Microsoft system, although they can be used on Linux with the necessary knowledge. Although it seems that it has nothing to do with it, I could not stop thinking about it when I found out about the new graphical tool that System76 will launch in the future.

System76 releases its own computers and some of them use Pop! _OS, an operating system based on Ubuntu. The company has developed what is currently known as FirmwareManager, a plugin / app that will allow us to find and install new versions of the firmware in Ubuntu-based distributions. And best of all, a version will be integrated into the GNOME preferences, as you can see in the image that heads this article. The latter no longer looks so good for users of other graphic environments that we will have to access Firmware Manager through the other route, the app. A lesser evil.

System76 Firmware Manager will be integrated into GNOME preferences

This System76 Firmware Manager was originally only available for the command line utility system76-firmware of the company and only for their computers, but the Firmware Manager GTK application supports Find and Update Linux Vendor Firmware Service Firmware (LVFS), so other Linux distributions can be taken advantage of, especially those based on Ubuntu.

FirmwareManager is compatible with Wayland and, if this is of interest to non-GNOME users, it will be available both as an application and in the form of libraries that will allow it to be integrated into the GNOME preferences. It is open-source software, which means that you can download the code to make some changes, such as a new user interface that is better in any graphical environment.

If everything goes as expected, Firmware Manager will be available in different software centers Debian / Ubuntu-based operating systems, so updating the firmware will be much easier soon.


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