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My computer is old and it sometimes will not power on. Is there a way to find its age, perhaps by looking at the BIOS installation date, in Ubuntu? I am running Ubuntu 14.04.

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    Hey, I think I found it on my own (hurray!) dmidecode –  Apr 30 '20 at 19:22
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    Why not write up an answer to your own question? Might help the next person with the same issue. – Jos Apr 30 '20 at 19:30
  • Wow, thanks, everyone! I did think of writing up an answer myself but I feel like I get much better answers from the gurus who reply to my questions. I built the computer myself from components so it has no brand name or model. I will post an answer per your suggestion, though. –  Apr 30 '20 at 19:36
  • Please note Ubuntu 14.04 has reached the end of its life (EOL). It is not updated any more. Questions about older versions of Ubuntu are off-topic here. Consider upgrading to a supported LTS version. – user68186 Apr 30 '20 at 19:43
  • Yes, 14.04 is past its end of life. I was unable to upgrade to 16.04 a few years ago because my video card is not supported by newer kernels. Hence, the old age. :( –  Apr 30 '20 at 19:47
  • Will entering the BIOS allow you to see the information you need? – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen May 01 '20 at 09:35
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    If you never changed disk, you can guesstimate total uptime form SMART: https://superuser.com/questions/686570/how-to-get-total-running-time-of-a-hard-disk – PTwr May 01 '20 at 12:42

1 Answers1

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Here is how I found the BIOS date on my computer in Ubuntu 14.04. It requires root privileges to use this command.

sudo dmidecode -s bios-release-date

04/18/2011

If you want more information than just the BIOS date, this command will give you lots of information:

sudo dmidecode | more

# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.5 present.
68 structures occupying 2501 bytes.
Table at 0x0009F000.

Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
    Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
    Version: 0402   
    Release Date: 04/18/2011
    Address: 0xF0000
    Runtime Size: 64 kB
    ROM Size: 2048 kB
Raffa
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    This also will work on newer versions of Ubuntu up to the latest 20.04 – Raffa Apr 30 '20 at 19:50
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    Beware of some (all?) mainboard manufacturers leaving lots of DMI fields in the state of "To Be Filled By O.E.M." (literally—for text fields, and possibly similar junk for some non-textual ones). See e.g. the relevant parts of output on my ZenBook UX333F: https://pastebin.com/raw/CNp47GNE . – Ruslan May 01 '20 at 12:10