For the last week I’ve been working with Realtek engineers adding USB3 hub firmware support to fwupd. We’re still fleshing out all the details, as we also want to also update any devices attached to the hub using i2c – which is more important than it first seems. A lot of “multifunction” dongles or USB3 hubs are actually USB3 hubs with other hardware connected internally. We’re going to be working on updating the HDMI converter firmware next, probably just by dropping a quirk file and adding some standard keys to fwupd. This will let us use the same plugin for any hardware that uses the rts54xx chipset as the base.
Realtek have been really helpful and open about the hardware, which is a refreshing difference to a lot of other hardware companies. I’m hopeful we can get the new plugin in fwupd 1.1.2 although supported hardware won’t be available for a few months yet, which also means there’s no panic getting public firmware on the LVFS. It will mean we get a “works out of the box” experience when the new OEM branded dock/dongle hardware starts showing up.
