As a lifelong Windows user I’ve just for the first time switched to Ubuntu and I’m learning how to navigate the system but I haven’t found an easy way to update my Carbon’s X1 Gen 6 BIOS from its hard disk and would appreciate any advice.
I’d be also happy to hear what I should do as a newcomer to Ubuntu to make my experience with it better and have an easier time overall.
Yes but they don’t have my laptop in the device list: no Carbon X1 Gen 6 (only Gen 9)
Honestly, given how annoying the alternatives are, I would say just buy a USB drive and put the bios file on there. You can get very good ones for under $20 and almost free ones if you don’t mind having an old tiny one.
This is the real answer. In this day and age where a 16gb USB stick can be had for literally $5usd on Amazon, it would be silly not to have a few kicking around. I don’t think any Linux distro live environment media requires more than 16gb, and it’s more than enough for updating a bios. I even used one to update the infotainment system in my vehicle last week. Kind of a necessary tool.
I just did this for the motherboard on my desktop PC (thanks Intel and your CPU update!) and it requires a clean boot device of some kind to boot into UEFI. It has nothing to do with the OS of the device.
In my case, yeah, I did it from a thumb drive, but I could see making a boot CD that has the bios files on it as well.
OTOH if you have the capability of burning and booting a boot CD it’s probably way easier to just use a thumb drive.
One thing I’ll note, on my motherboard, only using the keyboard to navigate the UEFI menu failed to update. :( I had to connect a physical mouse to run the menus.