Linux Kernel Mitigated For "Zenbleed" Vulnerability Affecting AMD Zen 2 CPUs

[ssokolow]

Is this a new issue ? We have always (at least for several years) published packaged drivers with amdgpu bundled up for DKMS installation on a variety of kernels.

I think it's most commonly of the form "My card model X has been affected by regression Y since kernel Z, it's been reported for ages, and AMD seems to have already lost interest in supporting it".

All I know is that I've seen multiple posts over the years where people are complaining about having to upgrade/downgrade their entire kernel to work around an issue with their AMD card while I've been using nVidia for 20 years, only needed to install something other than the Canonical-selected driver version three times (one for a memory leak, one for an X11 crash, and one when the GeForce GTX 750 was too new for it), and, despite still being on the GeForce GTX 750 I bought last time prices were sane, I still get a driver that Just Works™ as long as I don't care about Wayland.

I went from a GeForce 7600 to a GeForce 430 to a GeForce 750 and I've never had nVidia drop support for a piece of hardware or lazy out on it before the capacitor plague got to it. (Yes, I ran the 7600 and 430 until they died.)

That said, I was unaware of the DKMS support, so that does make me feel somwhat better about the possibility of buying an AMD card from the nearest brick-and-mortar next time I upgrade, so I don't have to pay return shipping if I decide I need to swap it out for nVidia.

(Though, partly for cost-reduction reasons, I'm currently considering slapping my brother's old GeForce GTX 760 into my next PC build. What with the "games generally list 1GB less VRAM in their system requirements for nVidia than for AMD" and with my "built from scraps at no cost" secondary gaming PC already running 99% of the things I want on a Radeon HD 5870 because the UEFI in it never got an update to support the GTX 760, I don't see much need for state-of-the-art graphics.)

[RealNC]

AMD is so nice about that! I cannot upgrade my kernel due to a bug in amdgpu which makes my computer fail to boot, and nobody wants to fix this. Thank you, AMD!

Stuff like this one of the reasons I stick to LTS kernels. The security updates and bugfixes they get usually don't break anything I depend on.