Almost a month after the previous 2.0.17 release, fwupd, an open-source tool designed to simplify firmware updates on Linux-based systems, has reached version 2.0.18.
The release introduces a new MOTD message that appears when a staged update requires a reboot, along with the automatic creation of a reboot-required file. Additionally, the new version also records the system state for each composite emulation and allows USI docking stations to update without requiring a manual replug.
On the bug fixes side, firmware operations now properly detect Intel SPI BIOS lock issues on MTD devices, and systems without SecureBoot support can use UpdateCapsule more reliably. Parsing of UEFI capsule result headers and USB BOS descriptors has been corrected, and firmware deployment on x86_64 systems now uses the appropriate capsule flags.
On top of that, BIOS MTD devices fall back to the SMBIOS version when needed, improving compatibility. A crash related to recording i2c emulation has been resolved, and previous issues with Huddly device upgrades involving major version changes have been fixed. Additional corrections improve man page compatibility, device version handling for UEFI hardware, and SIGINT behavior in fwupdtool.
Search performance for firmware streams has been significantly improved, reducing overhead when matching devices with available updates. Hypervisor and container detection have been refactored so that plugins can use them, and RISC-V systems now report PlatformArchitecture correctly. The update also sets more practical timeouts for qc-s5gen2 HID requests.
Lastly, hardware support expands with this release, too, adding compatibility for the HP Portable USB-C 4K HDMI Hub, the Lenovo Legion Go 2 as a HID device, and the Synaptics HapticsPad.
For more information, see the changelog.
