Asus seems to be supported by fwupd, at least they are listed on the vendors list, so I suppose (?) it can manage the update for you. Depending on your distro this might event be automatic by default, otherwise depending on your DE this might be available from the graphical software store or just from the cli.

So, folks who responded are conflating BIOS with UEFI. It's a common mistake - but they are very different things that serve the same purpose.

BIOS is older technology. It usually wasn't risky unless the board was somehow faulty, but there was always some risk because you were directly reflashing the CMOS.

UEFI is the current technology. If your board is less than 10 years old, you almost definitely have UEFI and not BIOS. It's stored in NOR flash memory on the motherboard.

UEFI's nature and design make it much simpler and safer to update. UEFI can be updated automatically within Linux; BIOS requires the board manufacturer's utility to reprogram the CMOS.

I'm simplifying some of this. But this should help explain the conflicting responses of what gets updated under Linux.

fwupdmgr get-devices --show-all

If you see your bios/uefi firmware, piece of cake.

fwupdmgr update [device]

However, fwupd generally runs at boot and as a daemon and will check automatically so you don't have to do this.

But, if you don't have it running for whatever reason, use those commands.

If that doesn't work, you might have to use a usb formatted to fat32 and have freedos installed on it along with your bios.exe file and boot to the usb to flash your bios.

I was genuinely surprised to see my Dell laptop get firmware updates thru fwupd

You just go to the support site and download and install them? Same as on Windows.

And no, you can get automatic firmware updates under Linux too, through fwupdmgr and similar tools.

Depending on your motherboard, a BIOS update could either be completely painless or very painful. You could probably live without updating at all on a home PC. If you're running a server with a WAN connection then you probably only need to look out for critical security updates, though I've never had anything pop up myself.

I... Haven't actually seen Windows ever push auto updates to my BIOS either except through enterprise utilities by companies like Dell. I have always had to manually update BIOS firmware.

Generally speaking though, BIOS is one of those things where if it is working, you don't mess with it. Occasionally chipset security patches get pushed in BIOS updates but that's about the only reason to update.

Search for your specific model, it may or may not be this link, but for a Zenbook 14 this came up after searching "ASUS Zenbook 14 support".

https://www.asus.com/supportonly/ux3402za/helpdesk_bios/

You'll need to format a flash drive and save the BIOS update to it, then boot into BIOS and run the update. For many laptops, instead of saving a BIOS update to the drive you may need to run a setup tool (usually a .exe, so may need compatibility tool) and boot to the USB.

As for frequency, just periodically check the notes for the BIOS releases and determine whether to update based on the features or patches in it. Not necessary to update for everyone one, and many security updates will be more for servers than general purpose personal computers, but that's up to your own risk analysis.

Google something like "BIOS update Asus" plus your computer model, then download the file from the official Asus site if out of date.

You don't need anything but a USB with the update files downloaded to them. Boot to BIOS, choose update, point to USB, done.

Definitely don't reset or power off while it's updating itself, though.

ASUS will have the steps and files for your mobo model on their site. It's very simple.