Well, I just applied a firmware upgrade from A08 (very first firmware revision of the Dell Latitude E6420) to A25 (released just this year, 27 March 2018).
SOURCE: https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/drivers/driversdetails?driverId=JP0YK I am yet to see the results of the firmware upgrade. This download was marked: "Urgent" But I think it is leaning on the good side since this addresses: CVE-2017-5715 which says "Systems with microprocessors utilizing speculative execution and indirect branch prediction may allow unauthorized disclosure of information to an attacker with local user access via a side-channel analysis." SOURCE: https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2017-5715/ In other words, Spectre. This Spectre problem is being patched with this firmware. And as of this forum post, I typed this using my laptop keyboard. Thanks. ** CVE added: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2017-5715 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu-X, which is subscribed to xorg-server in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1775016 Title: [Dell Latitude E6420] Ubuntu/Xubuntu 18.04 bug: Keyboard stops working in the middle of typing when running firefox and when running the terminal (sudo su) and similar programs until reboot. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1775016/+subscriptions _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat Post to : ubuntu-x-swat@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp