I’ve published firmware-tools deb packages, and the latest system BIOS images for 223 Dell system types, into a new repository on linux.dell.com. Please see the instructions for how to use them. In a nutshell, for Ubuntu systems with 7.04 Feisty, 7.10 Gutsy, or Hardy, be sure the Universe section is enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list, then run as root:
wget -q -O – http://linux.dell.com/repo/firmware/bootstrap.cgi | bash
aptitude install firmware-addon-dell
aptitude install $(bootstrap_firmware -a)
update_firmware
The bootstrap command downloads a GPG key for use in validating the linux.dell.com repository, and sets up the dell-firmware and dell-software sections for use by apt.
A reboot is required for the flash to actually happen.
There are two packages, firmware-tools and firmware-addon-dell, needed for this which are currently under review by the MOTU team. I hope to have these included in Hardy.
We have had this service available for quite a while for several RPM-based distributions including Fedora, RHEL, CentOS, and SLES. We’re pleased to be able to bring this to the dpkg-based distributions now as well. If you’re interested in helping maintain these packages in other distributions, please join us on the firmware-tools-devel mailing list (subscribe and read archives).