How to update BIOS on a system that only use Linux as OS.
Asking this because some clowns at Acer decided that they will only provide BIOS updates through Windows Update.
Edit: I’m not talking about installing the BIOS file. They don’t even provide BIOS file in the first place.
There is no universal solution to this. Some vendors support fwupd (LVFS) on some hardware (Dell, Lenovo), some allow to update via a file on a USB stick (Asus).
Unless it is a system from Linux first company (Tuxedo, StarLabs, System76, Slimbook) expect to manually check what the specific model you are looking at supports.
I’m not talking about installing the BIOS file. They don’t even provide BIOS file in the first place.
Also, I don’t think fwupd has firmware for this particular laptop. ( Acer One 14 Z2-493 )
That’s the thing - there is no option to update BIOS on Linux then.
You must install Windows or maybe use one of those unofficial Windows Live USB images.
unofficial Windows Live USB images.
I just came to know about this
system from Linux first company (Tuxedo, StarLabs, System76, Slimbook)
Indeed that’s IMHO the solution, namely prioritizing ecosystem that genuinely see Linux as something valuable, with an addressable market, rather than a cost linked to annoying users.
it’s just sad that they are not selling on my country
you can always just put coreboot on a old thinkpad
I had an Acer laptop once. I had Ubuntu on it. I had problems with random crashing after a few minutes, I ran memtest, it took a few hours for a full test and came back with a whole slew of faults. I sent it to Acer under warranty and they told me that Linux was the problem and I should leave windows on it.
I called the “technical” support regarding this issue. And they said they’ll only support Windows.
Making your entire hardware reliant on particular proprietary software like Windows is just stupid.
Never buying Acer again.
At this point, I don’t even know which vendor to buy, when everybody is shit.
Tuxedo, Framework, Slimbook, System76, Starlabs are Linux-first vendors with an excellent track record.
I know and Framework is just mouth watering. And Chad76 created their own distro and DE.
it’s just sad that they are not selling on my country.
Framework uses proprietary BIOS. They ditched coreboot, which is pretty bad.
Afaik they were also a lot behind on updates.
3mdeb, Novacustom, Pine64
Minisforum is also said to work well.
Any of these European or (even better) UK based…?
Yes. Tuxedo is German, Slimbook Spanish, Starlabs British, NovaCustom Dutch… Framework is US/Taiwanese but sells within select EU countries and the UK. AFAIK S76 is US/Canada only.
Edit: most of these actually ship worldwide but won’t collect VAT and probably won’t honor warranty claims outside their territory.
Thank you!
Have a look at Starlabs. You can choose coreboot
reminder to myself to remove the ssd next time i need warranty repair
A 128 or 256 GB SSD or NVME drive costs £10 to £15 on eBay used. I would buy one and put Windows on it when sending back for warranty repair. OP should actually just do this for the BIOS update and then swap out the SSD back to the Linux one after.
Had something similar with ASUS…never again
Install windows on a second/spare drive. Boot PC from this and run their tool.
I know you’re trying to find a way around not using windows, but if the vendors only solution involves it, I wouldn’t trust any hacky workarounds when it comes to bios updates.
Thank you. Makes sense.
Is there an option to save the new bios update file to a USB stick, then enter bios and trigger an update manually that fetches the file from said USB stick?
I’ve done it this way with an Asrock motherboard for desktop running Bazzite.
They don’t even provide BIOS file in the first place.
And this is one more reason I will only buy a laptop from System76, Framework, or Tuxedo to run Linux.
All motherboard manufacturers irrespective of OEM should provider a firmware mode that can be boot to, allowing BIOS upgrades. But since they don’t seem to, especially with laptops, seems best to stick with known vendors whose primary OS they support is Linux.
Good luck, OP. Hope the live Windows USB thing works. Just be careful to not get infected with Recall or any other Microsoft nonsense :)
Razer was the worst. It had to be done thru a ‘legitimate’ copy of the latest full Microsoft Windows (no old Windows, Windows PE, FreeDOS, etc.) & the purpose was to give you a black+green GUI experience. After I emailed them about this several years ago when I had a Razer laptop, they put up a sign on the support page now saying installing Linux voids both you warranty & any support tickets.
Yeah, I’ve also found Razer to be quite bad both in quality of hardware and support.
Only thing I own now that is made by Razer is a mouse.
Funny is that they did a big push for a hot minute to be the next developer-friendly laptop goto as they had a lot of power & æsthetics that were slim & looked alright in an office compared to everything else at the time where gaming laptops needed RGB & a hood scoop while non-gaming laptop suffered massively in performance. I picked one up around that announcement, but a few years & they completetly doubled back.
Thank You.
All the security updates are in the microcode loaded by the bootloader even before the kernel is loaded, so unless there’s some new feature, bugfix, or hardware support you specifically know you need it’s not important to update your BIOS anyway. Which is good, because as far as I can tell you’re just screwed by a bad hardware vendor.
not important to update your BIOS
Not actually gonna update BIOS. but just curious.
bad hardware vendor.
Which accurately translates to Acer.
Frankly in my opinion, bios should only be updatable from the bios itself. No matter which os we talk about, it can always get in the way.
Thank you sane person.
Depends on the exact model. The usual way on Linux is via
fwupdmgr.I’m not talking about installing the BIOS file. They don’t even provide BIOS file in the first place.
Also, I don’t think fwupd has firmware for this particular laptop. ( Acer One 14 Z2-493 )
Try it out. I was often pleasantly surprised by the things provided by fwupd.
if the provide and exe, You can always create a bootable usb stick of freedos or another dos tool. Copy the file onto the stick. boot to it and cd to where the file is and issue filename.exe
I feel your pain. I’ve searched a bit online and found several different methods (not for Acer though) that all go way over my head. I just leave the BIOS to deprecate on its own by now.
As someone who’s built his own PCs for years, I’ve never really bothered with a BIOS update.
Then again, one of the main reasons to update BIOS is to gain support for new CPUs, but I’ve been using Intel which switches to a new socket or chipset every other generation anyway. I’ve almost always had to buy a new motherboard alongside a new CPU.
I don’t have reason to update BIOS either. But just in case.
Then why are you making such a huge stink over it?
Just learning bro.
🫂
If you go onto the Acer forums, it looks like those super helpful forum members will tell you that you don’t need BIOS updates anyway, they don’t seem to be of much help.
If you can get your hands on the Windows Update, you can probably extract the BIOS file from there and load it into the BIOS manually. If you can’t load it into the BIOS, make a Windows installer drive from the ISO you can find on MS’ website and also copy the update .exe over. Boot it, pick a language, hit shift+f10, and run the update from the command prompt.
HOWEVER: based on the information at the bottom of this page, it looks like this laptop is just a Clevo that Acer stuck their logo on. Maybe you can ask Clevo if they can provide you with update files? I can’t find the exact model on their website, it seems like Acer produced this device as a low-cost deal specifically for the Indian market and decided to just… not support it?.
they don’t seem to be of much help.
Classic corporate tech forum behaviour.
If you can get your hands on the Windows Update, you can probably extract the BIOS
How?
I can’t find the exact model on their website, it seems like Acer produced this device as a low-cost deal specifically for the Indian market and decided to just… not support it?.
Which is very dumb.
update .exe
What .exe are talking about exactly? Is there some exe inside windows iso?
And idk what clevo is. Maybe a mass manufacturer of low quality computers (from my low effort search)
How?
It’s been a while since I’ve needed to do this, but back in my Windows days you could look up a Windows update by its KB number and download a file you could use to install locally. Those files are weirdly structured archives (I think CAB files with a different extension).
Which is very dumb.
Agreed. Feels borderline illegal where I live.
What .exe are talking about exactly? Is there some exe inside windows iso?
Most BIOS updates come with a firmware file and a .exe to flash it. You’d need to extract those from the Windows Update file if you can find it.
Clevo is a company that designs and builds laptops. They generally don’t sell directly to consumers. Many Linux friendly laptop resellers use Clevo to get the basic laptop down and then modify the base model to be Linux friendly. Cheap laptop companies all over the world also have Clevo produce laptops for them. Some Clevos are quite nice, but a lot of them are built as cheaply as possible, like for instance your laptop. Normally the base model can be found back on their website, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for your model.
Looks to me like Acer took a standard Clevo device, put a slower AMD CPU into it, and now you end up with a laptop where neither party seems to be willing to have anything to do with it. It’s still possible that Acer has Clevo make the device for them with their spec, but that’d still leave Acer responsible for updates usually.
You say there are supposed to be BIOS updates on Windows Update, how do you know they exist? Did you find anyone mentioning the updates anywhere? With how little support Acer is willing to provide, I sort of doubt that there are any updates at all…
Most BIOS updates come with a firmware file and a .exe to flash it
Sadly in my case, iy doesn’t.
how do you know they exist?
Sorry, I wrongly remembered. It’s my other laptop which has a new bios update.
Most BIOS updates come with a firmware file and a .exe to flash it
Sadly in my case, iy doesn’t.
I think they’re saying the Windows update file will contain the firmware binary.
You can find Windows update files here: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=Acer
But you’ll probably have to check each update and see if the “Supported Hardware IDs” match some sort of UUID in
dmidecode. I’m not sure if those are supposed to match though.Then there are some generic firmware update tools for Linux that might work, or might brick your laptop.
Thank you.
Acer has had this policy for over 20 years. I bought a laptop long ago from a vendor and had issues with and they refused to give me support because I was running Linux at the time. (I forget what distro. Probably either Mandrake or early Ubuntu.) That laptop went right back to the vendor.
Never bought anything from them since.
What a joke they are.
Acer supports 2 of their devices on Linux
Thank you. Sadly mine is different.
Usually you can extract the windows updater exe and use the bios/bin/upd file via mainboard bios update mechanisms
They don’t even provide BIOS file in the first place. So no exe to extract.
Thank You.
