I have a system with an AMD Ryzen 9 CPU and AMD Radeon RX 6800 GPU running Debian 12. Today there is a security update recommended for the intel-microcode. Checking for updates reveals my system believes it needs the update, but I am not informed enough to understand why/if that is true. I managed to find a Debian article on microcode and it seems to indicate it is specific to either intel or AMD. Should I trust the system update and follow through? I’m hoping someone can shed some light on this. My proficiency with Debian is likely not where it needs to be it seems.

  • elmicha@feddit.orgEnglish
    25·
    2 days ago

    You can update and it won’t break anything, because Intel microcode won’t be loaded into AMD CPUs. If you run apt show intel-microcode it tells you that there is a amd64-microcode package as well. If it is not already installed, you can install it, and then try to remove intel-microcode. If it doesn’t want to remove anything else (e.g. the kernel), you can remove it. If not, just leave it installed.