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Linux users who have Secure Boot enabled on their systems knowingly or unknowingly rely on a key from Microsoft that is set to expire in September. After that point, Microsoft will no longer use that key to sign the shim first-stage UEFI bootloader that is used by Linux distributions to boot the kernel with Secure Boot. But the replacement key, which has been available since 2023, may not be installed on many systems; worse yet, it may require the hardware vendor to issue an update for the system firmware, which may or may not happen. It seems that the vast majority of systems will not be lost in the shuffle, but it may require extra work from distributors and users.

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From https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-AX370M-Gaming-3-rev-1x/support#support-dl-bios (manual contains the same, plus a recommendation to keep the default settings):

" Warning: Because BIOS flashing is potentially risky, if you do not encounter problems using the current version of BIOS, it is recommended that you not flash the BIOS. To flash the BIOS, do it with caution. Inadequate BIOS flashing may result in system malfunction."

[-] 9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

Its funny because the release notes for their December '21 BIOS update says:

Major vulnerabilities updates, customers are strongly encouraged to update to this release at the earliest.

And many of their release notes say that they fix security issues. I would say that supercedes the footnote at the bottom that says to update your BIOS only if you're having issues.

Plus, doesn't Gigabyte have A/B BIOS updates? So if you have a failed flash, you can switch to the previous BIOS that was working?

Most of the recent(ish) updates are vulnerability fixes (after all, the platform is over eight years old now), and they've removed various intermediate versions already or there'd be even more.

This board has a dual BIOS, the integrated flashing utility by default only flashes the main BIOS, and you have to enable the option to flash the backup explicitly. Never had to use the backup, afaik it activates automatically if booting the main BIOS fails several times.

My ASUS "only" has a recovery function (flash BIOS from USB stick automatically if bootup fails) and no warning that I could find.

this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
82 points (100.0% liked)

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