Linux Firmware Updating Growth Continues Amid Security Updates

The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) for delivering firmware updates with the fwupd client for system and component firmware updates from Linux continues experiencing massive growth. Q4'2021 by far saw the most usage ever and that has continued into 2022 with serving more than two million firmware downloads the past month.

LVFS/fwupd lead developer Richard Hughes of Red Hat tweeted out a look at the LVFS usage for prior months (embedded below).

Richard Hughes provided this graphic showing the growth of LVFS over time.

LVFS in January saw more than two million firmware downloads from LVFS, its second highest month ever and only behind November 2021 when it served more than 2.5 million firmware images while dipping to below the 2M mark in December.

The organic growth is certainly great but sadly not as a result of just more hardware vendors beginning to support Linux firmware updates via LVFS/fwupd... While there are more vendors backing LVFS, much of the downloads in recent months have been as a result of delivering updated UEFI / system firmware for mitigating security issues. Lenovo and Dell continue leading that push in publishing firmware updates on LVFS and the recent slew of updates have been driven in the name of security. Hopefully though in 2022 we see more OEMs/ODMs supporting LVFS for satisfying their Linux customers.

LVFS could also experience more growth in the months ahead if they move forward with their plans for offering Coreboot and other firmware alternatives for end-of-life devices.