I’m unable to get the BIOS to update. Since I’m running Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon, I downloaded the “BIOS 3.03 (EFI Shell update)” and put it on the flash drive that I formated to FAT32 like the instructions said. But when I followed the instructions Framework has listed, I can’t get it to initiate. The instructions said "startup.nsh should run automatically but nothing happens. I even downloaded the other BIOS update file to see if that’ll work. Does anyone have any ideas I can try? I thought I had Secure Boot off unless I had it mixed up with a different setting in the BIOS before I installed the OS.
The reason I’m trying to update the BIOS is because I can’t seem to get games to run off the dGPU. I started up Minecraft yesterday and when I brought up the info screen (F3), It said I was getting 17-20 FPS with dips under 10 FPS and it said it was running off the iGPU. I was hoping the BIOS update would help the system switch between the two.
Are you specifying the game to run with the dGPU with launch parameters? Iirc it’s possible to set it via DRI_PRIME=1 (rest of command here), although I have heard the Minecraft launcher is quite picky with this stuff.
I’ll see if I can find more information to help, but I don’t have the dGPU so it’ll be pretty difficult for me to test.
In the meantime, try confirming that secure boot is in fact off. Note: it’s found under a separate area of the BIOS main menu (accessed via escape during boot) named “Administer Secure Boot”
I can double check secure boot when I get home from work. Before I installed the OS I went though every BIOS menu to set everything and get familiar with it.
I mostly used Minecraft Java edition as a kind of sudo benchmark since that’s the only game I really play with friends and you can bring up metric data. Most of the games I play through Steam is solo.
Also I’m still kinda new to Linux (and I’m enjoying it so far) so I’m still getting a grasp on using the terminal.
I finally got the BIOS to update. I wiped the flash drive and formatted it again as FAT32. I then re-download the BIOS update files and extracted them the “Linux” way instead of the “Windows” way that i did before and it seemed to work. I also moved the USB A from slot 5 to slot 4 just incase as slots 1 and 5 seems to be the first ones on the USB controllers if that makes sense.
Based on what I am reading, this appears to be for a Framework Laptop 16. You do not want to use Mint on this as it’s very untested. Best case, maybe Linux Mint Edge, maybe.
You will want to be on Ubuntu 22.04 (OEM kernel as described in guide) or better yet, Ubuntu 24.04.
Setting that aside for others reading this (less for you, just do not want the flood of Mint folks opening tickets).