It would seem that Gnome does something that I never expected. While there might be other desktops that manage updates for firmware, this is the first time that I have ever had a computer simply take care of firmware for me.
When I first installed Pop! OS to get the Gnome desktop, I did the obligatory look through the settings menu setting up my preferences.
Side note, in case you are wondering. My eyes have never been very good, and they have only gotten worse with age. One of the first things that I do is change the font scaling factor so that I can read the screen better. Accessibility features on Windows were never as good as they have been in the Linux ecosystem as far as I’m concerned. While I can’t say that is true for all distributions of Linux, it has been true for every one that I have tried.
Anyway, I noticed that there was a tab for firmware in the settings menu. I looked in it and there was nothing there. Now I never gave much thought to what firmware Gnome would be looking for. I assumed that it would primarily be interested in the computer’s bios and that was about it. I even considered whether it was something specific to Pop! OS being tightly integrated with their hardware. Essentially, I mentally shrugged and moved on with my life.
Gnome desktop automatically found updates for my keyboard and mouse
Yesterday a notification popped up telling me that there were two pieces of firmware on my system that could be upgraded. Surprised, I looked over the firmware to see what it was. The firmware showed two entries for “Unifying Receiver.”
Perhaps I should explain a little bit here. I have three little USB pimples plugged into my laptop. I have one for a Logitech wireless mouse, one for a Logitech wireless keyboard, and a third or a Logitech wireless touchpad/keyboard combination. I had manually updated the USB pimple for the Logitech wireless touchpad/keyboard combination when I was still using Windows. In fact, it was one of the final straws that finally motivated me to give Linux another try after trying it more than 20 years ago. But that’s another story.
The reason that I have so many USB pimples plugged into my laptop is because I have keyboards at both my home and office. Since I use keyboards extensively, I have purchased vastly superior keyboards to the built-in one. This isn’t a knock against the laptop’s built-in keyboard. In my opinion, a separate keyboard can always be superior to a built-in keyboard since they aren’t limited by the constraints of having to fit into a laptop housing. At the same time, I don’t want to lug those wonderful – yet huge! – keyboards from place to place. To solve that problem, I use one keyboard at home, one at the office, and the laptop’s built-in keyboard if I find myself working from someplace else.
So when Gnome found the updates to my “Unifying Receivers” firmware, I didn’t really know how to react. When I clicked on the notification Gnome opened up the settings menu and went to the firmware tab. There was a button beside the entries for the “Unifying Receivers” saying to click it to update the firmware.
Of course I clicked it.
Then I waited.
And waited.
It never showed a successful update
Previously I mentioned that I had updated one of the receivers under Windows. I had a problem between Windows 10 and the keyboard I used at home. After a ton of searching online, I found an entry on a random message board mentioning that there was updated firmware for the keyboard I used at my house.
I had to download the firmware updater and run it. It found all the different USB pimples on my machine and basically freaked out. It said that it could only update them one at a time. I removed the all the receivers from my USB ports except the one associated with the keyboard and tried again. It worked, and showed me great fanfare when it was finished about how it had successfully updated the firmware.
Since Gnome gave me no indications whether it was successful or not, I had no idea whether it worked or not. And since I didn’t bother to remove any of the USB pimples from my machine prior to initiating the firmware upgrade, I feared the worst.
I learned how to update firmware manually on Linux
I did a quick search on failed firmware updates using Gnome and found an article showing the kind of errors that Gnome displays if it fails in addition to instructions on how to manually update firmware on Linux.
Well, I didn’t get an error message. Still, after all the fanfare from the updater I had to download for Windows 10, I expected some kind of message telling me that everything was successful.
I followed the directions in the article. I checked for updates using the command line. Sure enough, it found the updates for my little USB pimples. I then told it to install them only to be told that the latest versions were already installed.
Too good to be true
What I discovered through this little adventure was that I was still expecting things to be done in the Windows way instead of the Linux way. I was expecting it to be complicated. I was expecting to have to jump through hoops and be rewarded by bells, whistles, and flashing lights telling me that my operating system had done something magnificent for me and that I should be eternally grateful. I never expected it to just quietly do what I told it to do and let me get on with my business.
It seems like even when the operating system is so powerful, or the user interface is so easy, I have still brought many expectations with me to Linux that I didn’t even realize that I had. These expectations aren’t show shopping expectation; instead, they show how simple things can be.
That said, I wouldn’t have minded a little notification telling me that the firmware had been flashed successfully.
Marisa Burnes (dot) com 