> I have an unusual situation. My Dell laptop has Linux on it, I want to > use VirtuaBox (a tool I have used many times before on other laptops and > PCs) but the BIOS does not support Virtualisation. An upgrade to the > BIOS might so I want to upgrade the BIOS. Dell supply the BIOS upgrade > in the form of an .EXE file. If I had Windows on the laptop I could > just execute the file and follow instructions, says Dell.
If it's a Dell laptop, have you tried following Dell's instructions for updating the BIOS under Linux? They cover newer machines that let you update from within Linux itself, as well as older machines that require a FreeDOS boot disk. https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-au/000131486/update-the-dell-bios-in-a-linux-or-ubuntu-environment However for most of their machines (as per their instructions) the easiest way is to copy the BIOS .EXE file onto a USB disk, leave the USB stick inserted, reboot the machine, press F12 at the Dell logo and select the menu option to update the BIOS. This way you don't need any special programs or operating systems and the whole process only takes a few minutes. I have done it a number of times on Dell machines over the last 10 years and it works very smoothly. On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 21:37:15 +0200 tom ehlert <t...@drivesnapshot.de> wrote: > It is safe but will not solve your problem. The BIOS updater .EXE is a > Windows program, and will only run on Windows. Actually most of Dell's updates are internally ZIP files or similar, so if you want to extract the BIOS files you just unzip them as if they are a zip file. Most manufacturers do this so that their in-BIOS update can easily extract the actual image to flash without needing to run the .exe itself. But you only need to do this if you want to manually flash the file from within Linux via the command line - the BIOS-based updating program is smart enough to do this extraction itself. > >> get a copy of RUFUS for Linux. > > There is no such thing. > > https://www.how2shout.com/tools/rufus-for-linux-not-available-use-these-best-alternatives.html > > > > Sorry, I had assumed this. But for some reasons I'm a Windows person. > > Is there a reason why no such almost trivial thing exists? > both for windows and linux, less then 500 MB? Yes, because copying the data onto the device is only 20% of the application. The majority of it is dealing with the OS interface to the hardware which is 100% different between Windows and Linux, so you would need two entirely separate applications anyway, even if they were written by the same person and called the same name. You can't share much code between the two programs which is why it's not trivial and nobody has done it, but they have created entirely separate applications with the same functionality, like UNetbootin. Cheers, Adam. _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
