Ahh okay, that description kinda sounds like floppy drive power, but it probably is a proprietary thing.

Most BIOS updates come with a firmware file and a .exe to flash it

Sadly in my case, iy doesn't.

I think they're saying the Windows update file will contain the firmware binary.

You can find Windows update files here: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=Acer

But you'll probably have to check each update and see if the "Supported Hardware IDs" match some sort of UUID in dmidecode. I'm not sure if those are supposed to match though.

Then there are some generic firmware update tools for Linux that might work, or might brick your laptop.

Not sure if it affects that, but you can disable Alcohol ads on the Google Ad center.

I've run kill -9 and similar heaps before, but weirdly this comment reminded me of this: https://youtu.be/Fow7iUaKrq4

I've had a similar issue with a monitor not properly supporting VRR, I ended up dumping the EDID and forcing Linux to use that instead of the monitor's.

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.

Haha I'm Aussie, but your drinks are pretty cool!

Just so you know IDCAC was bought by Avast, which is being bought by Norton/Symantec. There's "I still don't care about cookies" or the built in uBlock cookie banner options as a replacement.

There's Adobe creative cloud too

I don't have a Samsung, but I'm pretty sure that's still randomised per network, per connection can be enabled in the developer options somewhere.

I currently can't easily enable it because I'm on legacy BIOS for a reason I can't remember (and when I switch to UEFI, it can't see my windows installation).

Yeah that's because UEFI requries GPT partitioning, you can convert it by following this guide: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-move-bios-uefi-windows-10

Or like you said, a fresh install on a new SSD will work too (just enable UEFI beforehand).

I've heard log2ram can make the SD cards last much longer, I usually just make it read only though.