I have been racking my brain about this for a while now and now I just need some help because I can’t figure it out.

So I login to my dell account, punch in my service tag number and it brings up info regarding my specific laptop. There are TONS of firmware and drivers that I believe may be missing? But the issue is, all the files are .exe and thats clearly for windows. They have no fedora or rpm supported drivers or firmware that I could find.

Its crucial because I just got a dell wd19tbs docking station and as per the install instructions, there’s a set of firmware/drivers that must be installed prior to setting up the dock

I have lvfs repo enabled, I tried the whole fwupdmgr technique a million times though it never does shit. No firmware or drivers show up in yhe gnome store… So why is this so complicated? How do I install dell drivers and firmware on a fedora system?

  • @[email protected]
    6•1 year ago

    Actually I recall using a bootable USB from Dell I think… it might be on the firmware site. That will let you boot into an OS that can read the exe and update the firmware.

    This was for a dell wyse.

    I only did this once when I first got it. Since then I believe Ubuntu and Fedora gnome both update the firmware right in the software update app.

    • @[email protected]OP
      1•1 year ago

      Hmmm no recollection of yhe name of that program? Drivers and firmware for dell are only available for windows 10,11 and Ubuntu like 20.4 or something. Wtf! This shouldnt be so difficult

      • @[email protected]English
        2•1 year ago

        I’ve used a bootable Windows USB before to update firmware, so maybe you could try that, you don’t have to install just go to repair then CMD.

        If they offer debs, you might be able to extract them and run the updater manually, or maybe something like alien could convert it to an rpm.

        I’ve also seen FreeDOS exes, but I’ve only really seen that for BIOS updaters.

        • @[email protected]OP
          1•1 year ago

          Thanks, so how would that work? just launch the bootable usb and it takes you to an interface for the windows updates?

          • @[email protected]English
            1•1 year ago

            Oh no, you copy all the firmware updates onto the USB too (as well as Windows), then then run them from command prompt in the recovery menu.

        • @[email protected]OP
          1•1 year ago

          Thanks man. I don’t ever recall drivers and firmware being this difficult on debian based distros