I have been holding off installing this update because it mentions Intel firmware. Should I install it? running Cinnamon Mint.
No need install it in userland, because it already in rootland. Intel it good for driver, but bad in firmware.
Depends on whether it is “firmware” (your text) or “microcode” (your topic title).
Which update exactly? If it’s a Mint update, you really need to ask Mint. (If it’s something in common throughout the whole Debian family then, OK, but you still need to provide more information.)
And what are you running Mint on? Librem 14? Something else?
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Librem 14 running Cinnamon mint 20.
The package
"Intel-microcode Processor microcode firmware for intel CPUs Ver 3.2023214.Oubuntu0.20.04.1 "
This package contains updated system processor microcode for Intel i686 and Intel X86-64 processors. Intel releases microcode updates to correct processor behavior as documented in the respective processor specification updates.
For AMD processors, please refer to the amd64-microcode package.
Generally speaking it is good to have updated microcode for the CPU. It may be fixing (serious) errors. For example, back when Meltdown and/or Spectre were new, Intel updated the CPU microcode in order to introduce part of the mitigation for those problems.
So I would go ahead and install.
It is true that if you have in the meantime updated BIOS and/or Pureboot (whichever applies), you may have picked up the new CPU microcode anyway.
For the record, for the package intel-microcode I have version 3.20230214.0ubuntu0.22.04.1, which highlights that you have bigger upgrade issues pending than the Intel microcode. You are a whole Ubuntu LTS release behind. Granted that 20.04 is supported until April 2025 but I guess you should have some kind of plan to get to a version of Mint that is based on Ubuntu 22.04.
I experimenting freezen with Microcode downstreamed by rootland, so i suspect that it is because Linux OS(opensource oses) updated the sing without telling me. FU#K LINUX and x86
Blackboxes.
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