Upgrade BIOS ?

[Robert Heller]

At Mon, 24 Aug 2020 20:42:37 -0400 bstanle at wowway.com, "Ubuntu user technical support,  not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> On 8/24/20 6:11 PM, Chris Green wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 10:39:23AM -0400, Bill wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> Are there any side effects of upgrading the BIOS on my computer? The
> >> computer is quite old but it is arguably still a good machine (i7 with 12 GB
> >> ram but it still has the original BIOS - circa 2010).  Is Linux affected in
> >> any way (both positive or negative)?
> >>
> > Is there any particular reason that you want to upgrade the BIOS?  If
> > there isn't then I think I'd leave well alone, it's unlikely to give
> > you any useful new facilities or speed anything up at all.
> >
> WS=> That is what I think as well!  I just wanted to know what the 
> opinion of others was.

Generally with the BIOS it is often a case of "If it ain't broke, don't fix 
it." 

Linux actually makes very little use of the BIOS, once the kernel starts up.
Messing with the BIOS is mostly a matter of what happens between applying
power and the kernel start. The usual reasons for upgrading the BIOS might
relate to dealing hardware that the BIOS needs to initialize and the usual
hardware that might get added is a newer processor or newer (bigger) disk
drives, since these are really the only hardware that you can add that the
BIOS needs to know how to deal with -- things like PCI cards usually provide
their own firmware ROMs. Oh, there might be issues like memory size limits --
I guess it is possible that a newer BIOS might be needed if you install larger
RAM sticks than the original BIOS supported -- I'm not totally sure about
that.

> 
> 

-- 
Robert Heller             -- Cell: 413-658-7953 GV: 978-633-5364
Deepwoods Software        -- Custom Software Services
http://www.deepsoft.com/  -- Linux Administration Services
heller at deepsoft.com       -- Webhosting Services