For a machine being sold with Ubuntu pre-installed, I find it surprising that Dell doesn't have a utility to make BIOS updates easy on Ubuntu.

Dell's BIOS update utility only runs on Windows or DOS.  So for us Ubuntu users, we'll need a way to run DOS on our machines and execute their update utility there.  Luckily, there's FreeDOS.

If you're having stability or performance issues, updating the BIOS is always worth a try.  I have the L322X model and my machine came with version A04, the latest version is now A10. To find out which version you currently have, you can run this command:

sudo lshw | grep -A 4 BIOS

To upgrade your BIOS, all you need is an empty USB drive (a 64MB drive will do) which we'll use to boot to FreeDOS.  

Here are the steps (which I completely ripped off from this site):

1. Insert the blank USB drive.

2. Install unetbootin and run it.

sudo apt-get install unetbootin

3. Select Distribution: 'FreeDOS 1.0' , Type: 'USB Drive'. This will create a bootable FreeDOS LiveCD on the USB drive.

4. Download the BIOS executable file from Dell's website and save it to the root of your USB drive.

5. Reboot your machine and press F12 to see the boot options. Select the USB boot option.

6. In the UNetbootin boot menu, select Default and press enter.

7. In the FreeDOS boot menu, select the option '5. FreeDOS Live CD Only.'

8. Type 'c:' and press enter to switch to the C:\ drive (the root of the USB drive).

9. Type 'dir' to see the contents of that path.  You should see the BIOS executable file here.

10. Run the BIOS update utility by typing in the executable file's name and press enter. Your machine will automatically reboot and the BIOS update utility will flash your BIOS. It will automatically reboot your machine when finished.

11. Once you're back in Ubuntu, you can run this command again to confirm that your BIOS was updated.

sudo lshw | grep -A 4 BIOS