[clug] can upgrading ubuntu kill your bios?

[Bob Edwards]

I have a colleague who recently upgraded his Dell XPS13 laptop from
Ubuntu 18.04 to 18.10 and, as part of the process, it seemed to
attempt to update the BIOS.

I have never heard of a Linux distro, let alone Ubuntu, wanting to
update the BIOS. Further, if this was thing, I would have expected
it to ask first, possibly more than once.

Something apparently went wrong during the BIOS flashing and now the
laptop is a brick.

I have looked around on the web, but I can't see any evidence that
Ubuntu would pre-emptively update the BIOS during an O/S upgrade.

Is this a thing, or has the laptop been infected with some sort of
malware?

cheers,
Bob Edwards.