Intel wireless firmware updates for Ubuntu LTS

[Juerg Haefliger]

On Wed, 6 Aug 2025 20:09:55 +0000
"Grumbach, Emmanuel" <emmanuel.grumbach at intel.com> wrote:

> Hi Ubuntu kernel team,
> 
> I am reaching out to you about the way to update the firmware for Intel
> wireless device in Ubuntu and more especially in Ubuntu LTS.
> 
> We maintain branches internally for the firmware in a way that is very
> similar to how linux-stable works.
> iwlwifi-cc-a0-77.ucode for example is getting bug fixes that are
> backward compatible towards the kernel: any kernel that worked with the
> old version can work with the new one.
> This is why we'd be interested in Ubuntu LTS getting those updates.
> 
> Same is true for all the other files as well of course.
> It makes total sense _not_ no include firmware files that cannot be
> supported by the kernel being shipper in Ubuntu LTS, for example
> iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-89.ucode is supported only starting from kernel
> 6.10. But we can still safely update -83.ucode which is supported by
> kernel 6.6.
> 
> Is there a way we could make this happen?
> 
> Maybe it already happens and I missed something?
> 
> Any help I can provide?
> 
> Thank your for your time!

Thanks for reaching out but I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. We try to
update our linux-firmware package to latest upstream as close to a new
Ubuntu release as possible. From that point on we only update firmwares if
there's a bug reported against it. We don't proactively update firmwares
because a) we cannot test it and b) it could introduce regressions.

Ubuntu LTS is a little special because it comes with 2 different kernels. The
GA kernel and a rolling HWE kernel that will eventually settle on the version
of the next LTS. So in Noble 24.04 we currently have 6.8 (the GA kernel) and
HWE 6.14 (the version from Plucky). Later we will replace 6.14 with 6.17 from
Questing [1] and then 6.20 (?) from R 26.04 which is the next LTS hence that
kernel version will be the last to reach 24.04. If that makes sense :-)

Obviously we need to add firmwares for those rolling HWE kernels which we
tend to do in a bulk update before a point release (which is when new HWE
kernel are introduced). As a matter of fact, today is 24.04.3 release date
which introduces 6.14 in 24.04. Here's the bug [2] that adds missing
firmwares for that kernel (and yes, we probably missed a few which we'll add
over time as bug reports come in).

The whole firmware update story is not great, mainly because they're binary
blobs with no changelogs so no way for us to know what we're getting. We have
to trust the firmware vendors to not introduce regressions with older kernels
but it's not always working...

iwlwifi is also a little special in that it supports a range of versions and
walks from newest to oldest until it finds one. That's great but hard to
figure out what exact versions the kernel supports. It only advertises the
max API but not the min and also some firmware names are dynamically
generated and not advertised at all (via modinfo/MODILE_FIRMWARE). If I
remember correctly, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Hope that helps.

...Juerg


[1]
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/announcing-6-17-kernel-for-ubuntu-25-10-questing-quokka/61484
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2116729
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