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.

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...

but i dont do that automatically, as the parent described. as far as i am aware i need to manually issue a comand to perform the update, which is ok as far as i have that control

Distros prompt you when upgrading packages, not binaries. You get a prompt to update Firefox package, not for replacing the actual binary on disk.

Typically packages including microcode behave the same way - prompt to update the package, no prompt to implement that update (replace individual files).

"automatically" as in "automatically when you update the rest of your distro", not an extra step as the poster above clearly seemed to expect. That context also was clearly from the other comments already.

i dont seem to be able to reply directly. my question was meant as a clarification because simply saying something is "automatic" is very ambiguous. "automatic" to me means giving up control. to me whats being described is not "automatic"