[amelius]

The question is still: are "magic incantations" in packages ok, considering that they allow the issuer to control your hardware more than if the code was baked into firmware just once?

Also, these packages allow vendors to keep quiet about security issues, because they can silently fix them in the next update.

[seoaeu]

Is it any more of a "magic incantation" than the linux-image-XYZ package which controls which OS kernel is installed? Or the linux-firmware package which controls what firmware gets loaded on various devices?

If you want to see when Intel issues new microcode updates, it is all available on their GitHub: https://github.com/intel/Intel-Linux-Processor-Microcode-Dat...