"With the exception of LM_Sensors providing some
sensors support, this is a grey area for Linux. Fortunately,
however, the folks working on the CoreBoot project have developed a
program that will near universally allow you to flash your
motherboard's BIOS from within the Linux desktop.
"The Flashrom utility is developed by the CoreBoot project
(formerly known as LinuxBIOS) as a way to read, write, erase, and
verify flash ROM chips. Flashrom has been in development for quite
a while (nearly a decade), but now they have finally come out with
a version 0.9.0 release and soon expect to reach a 1.0 status. This
utility supports nearly every x86 motherboard after having worked
on support for over 150 flash chip families (and many various for
each family), 75 different chipsets, workarounds for non-standard
motherboards, and there is no need for CD-ROM or floppy disk."
