Today marks the first time I’ve updated the BIOS in my Laptop since I bought it. When I initially powered it up, Windows 11 was “installed” (more like present, it took almost 2 hours for it to fully update itself before it was usable) so I used that to update the BIOS and various firmware the first time around. Shortly after that process was complete I formatted the drive and installed Arch Linux. Goodbye, Windoze!

The only problem with running Linux on a piece of hardware from Dell is that sometimes they don’t support anything other than crummy Windows BS.

This would typically leave users in a predicament when needing to do things like update their Firmware or BIOS with the latest versions. Luckily there’s a handy platform called Linux Vendor Firmware Service for things just like this! Most of the hardware in the machine supports being updated via this platform, but sadly, my system itself is not listed on the Device List. So while I can update my trackpad, fingerprint reader, USB hubs, and many other devices firmwares, I can not update the BIOS natively within Linux. This was disheartening, as I am not about to reinstall Windoze or make a DOS boot disk just to flash a BIOS update. While poking around on their support website, I came across this little gem:

All Dell systems from 2015 and later support flashing an updated BIOS from within the boot menu. Note: the BIOS flash ends in an .exe extension. Even though Linux cannot open it natively, the BIOS will deal with it properly.

Huzzah! Apparently, to update the BIOS, all you have to do is download the .exe file and stuff it onto a FAT32 formatted USB drive. Boot the computer while connected to power, mash F12 to get the One Time Boot menu, and leverage the handy option to Update BIOS. I can confirm this worked perfectly! Click for Detailed instructions