I’ve got to say, I’ve wanted to know this command for a good 3 years.
The ability to know what BIOS version you’re using without rebooting the computer is invaluable to the lazy — at last I’ve found my grail:
dmidecode -s bios-version
dmidecode appears to be a handy command for probing around in hardware, coupled with lshw, that’s all I use.
Hurrah!
