Hardware News Archives

For those striving for a quiet PC while having high-end specs, ASRock today announced passively-cooled Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards.

The x86 platform driver updates were merged last week for the Linux 6.11 merge window. The x86 platform drivers predominantly benefit Intel/AMD laptops on Linux but also some other x86 non-laptop hardware and then more recently also some ARM64 laptop drivers appearing in this area of the kernel.

The HID subsystem updates recently landed into the mainline Linux 6.11 kernel codebase.

This weekend the ASUS ROG Ally X began shipping as an upgraded version of the ASUS ROG Ally handheld gaming console that launched last year. The ASUS ROG Ally X is still powered by the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC and for the most part similar to the original model but now with 24GB of LPDDR5X-7500 memory up from 16GB of LPDDR5-6400, twice as large battery capacity, 1TB of NVMe storage rather than 512GB, improved input controls, improved cooling, and other refinements. But it still is running Microsoft Windows 11 out-of-the-box.

It's not too often that the ATA pull request for a new Linux kernel merge window has much worth mentioning. With Linux 6.11 there is a change to the kernel defaults worth noting over the default SATA link power management policy. In this case most Linux distributions have been setting a better default themselves and is now a case of the upstream kernel defaults catching up.

DRM subsystem lead maintainer David Airlie recently submitted the DRM-Next pull request for merging into Linux 6.11. All of that Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) feature code has landed for the many kernel graphics/display driver updates along with changes to the few AI accelerator "accel" drivers also part of the tree. As usual, the Intel Xe/i915 and AMD AMDGPU/AMDKFD kernel drivers see a bulk of the upstream open-source graphics improvements.

Greg Kroah-Hartman described the char/misc pull request for the Linux 6.11 merge window as having "just loads of new drivers and updates." Among the new drivers is beginning to enable support for the KEBA CP500 as the latest FPGA seeing upstream kernel support.

The LoongArch CPU architecture changes were submitted and subsequently merged on Monday for the ongoing Linux 6.11 merge window. With the new kernel these Chinese processors support more kernel features for this MIPS-derived and RISC-V-inspired architecture.

Way back at the start of 2023, French fabless semiconductor company Kalray posted Linux kernel patches for a "KVX" Linux kernel port to get Linux up and running on their MPPA3-80 "Coolidge" DPU SoC with the KV3-1 CPU architecture. A year and a half later this work still is outside the Linux kernel but finally a third iteration of the KVX Linux kernel port has been posted for review.

Greg Kroah-Hartman on Friday sent out all of the USB/Thunderbolt subsystem feature updates destined for the Linux 6.11 kernel of which there are many different patches across the board.

With Linux 6.11 support for the Lenovo Yoga Slim7x and ASUS Vivobook S15 are upstreamed for some of the first Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 Elite powered laptops. But for follow-on kernel cycles you can expect yet more Snapdragon X1 Elite/Plus powered laptop support to appear with new DeviceTree additions. On Friday, Linaro engineer Konrad Dybcio sent out the patches for enabling the X1 Elite powered Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 laptop.

With Linux 6.11 over on the Arm-focused SoC side there were three new SoCs and 59 new machines/boards added for Arm and RISC-V. The MIPS pull request was submitted overnight for this next kernel version and there is just two new SoCs being introduced.

All of the SoC and platform updates slated for the Linux 6.11 kernel have been merged including new SoCs and adding DeviceTree files for a number of new systems, including some of the first Qualcomm Snapdragon X1 powered laptops.

Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai has sent out all of the sound driver patches for the in-development Linux 6.11 kernel.

The power management updates have been merged for Linux 6.11 that include some nice improvements for Intel and AMD processors.

For those running the popular, modular/upgradeable Framework Laptops, the Linux 6.11 kernel is bringing some nice driver additions for enhancing the support on the recent models.

While many have been excited around the prospects of laptops powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC, the Linux support so far still leaves a lot to be desired... The initial Snapdragon X Elite laptops aren't utilizing ACPI standards and the bring-up under Linux has been slow, but patches have begun appearing for some models. But even with patches, the Adreno GPU remains a big obstacle still being tackled along with other features like web camera, USB4, Bluetooth, etc. With a new kernel patch, the GPU for the Snapdragon X Elite (X1E80100) is being disabled by default.

There's a new driver subsystem being introduced in the Linux 6.11 kernel for power sequencing.

Among the flurry of pull requests submitted now that the Linux 6.11 merge window is open are the hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem updates.

Patches have been posted to the Linux kernel mailing list for getting various Lenovo devices supported by the mainline Linux kernel that rely on the Qualcomm MSM8916 and MSM8939 platforms.

The I2C host changes are ready for the upcoming Linux 6.11 merge window.

While Loongson's LoongArch processors have been supported under Linux from the start, there remain some missing/late elements still being pursued by Loongson engineers for better upstream support. One of the areas being worked on recently is a proper CPUFreq driver for Loongson 3 series processors for CPU frequency scaling for better performance and power management.

For those with an ASUS ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI motherboard or thinking of getting one for this high-end AMD Ryzen 7000 series platform, the Linux support is taking another small step forward.

Upstreamed to the mainline Linux kernel last year was HID BPF as a means of more easily shipping new drivers and in particular quirks/workarounds for different HID devices. This allows for some nice continued innovations around (e)BPF within the Linux kernel. With Linux 6.11 there is yet more HID BPF capabilities to be upstreamed as well as new drivers.

When it comes to (non-Apple) ARM laptops all the excitement these days is around the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite SoC. But for those that happen to have a 5+ year old Lenovo Yoga C630 WOS laptop or come across one in a bargain bin, the Linux kernel is seeing improved support for this older ARM laptop powered by an aging Snadragon 850 SoC.

Back in Linux 6.9 the Mobileye EyeQ5 SoC support was upstreamed for that MIPS-based platform powering Mobileye's level-5 autonomous driving system. With the upcoming Linux 6.11 kernel, support for the newer Mobileye EyeQ6 is being upstreamed.

Patches have been posted for enabling the ROCK 5 ITX board for working with the mainline Linux kernel.

For those interested in laptops powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite SoC, it's looking like the ASUS Vivobook S15 model could be one of the first devices with decent Linux support. There are patches undergoing review for upstreaming the ASUS Vivobook S 15 DeviceTree support so that much of the basic functionality is working under Linux but various features are known to be broken.

The Etnaviv kernel graphics driver that provides reverse-engineered open-source support for Vivante graphics (and NPU) IP has seen a fresh round of patches ready to go for queuing in DRM-Next ahead of the Linux 6.11 cycle kicking off in mid-July.

Merged on Saturday ahead of today's Linux 6.10-rc6 release is the latest batch of x86 platform driver changes. Notable as part of this week's fixes is improving support for the very latest (2024) LG laptop models.

Open-source developer Tomeu Vizoso had been doing a lot of work on the Etnaviv driver stack for open-source, reverse-engineered Vivante driver support that began with the 3D graphics support but Vizoso tackled enabling the Vivante NPU IP as well. After all the successes with the Etnaviv NPU support, he turned his attention to creating an open-source driver stack for the Rockchip NPUs. Now thanks to a new sponsorship deal, he's back to making more Etnaviv improvements.

Qualcomm engineers on Sunday posted patches for enabling the Adreno X1-85 GPU within the MSM DRM driver. The Adreno X1-85 GPU is what's found within the Snapdragon X Elite SoC powering various new Windows ARM laptops although the Linux support continues maturing too for these platforms.

Back during the Linux 6.9 kernel cycle support was added for the ASUS ROG Raikiri as a newer gaming controller. Now on its way for landing in Linux 6.10 is support for the ASUS ROG Raikiri Pro.

While not talked about as much as the likes of the Intel Gaudi accelerators with their upstream Habana Labs kernel driver or the AMD Instinct MI300 series with their open-source upstream support too, back in 2022 Qualcomm did post an open-source kernel driver for their Cloud AI accelerator. That was followed by an open-source compiler and user-space stack and in turn the QAIC driver was upstreamed into the accelerator (accel) subsystem last year with Linux 6.4.

Framework Computer Inc announced today that they have been working with DeepComputing on a partner-developed RISC-V motherboard for the Framework Laptop 13.

For years there has been the RKVDEC Linux media driver to provide accelerated video decoding on Rockchip SoCs. Being worked on now is RKVDEC2 for providing video decoding on the newer Rockchip SoCs.

For those interested in running Linux on the Ayaneo Kun handheld gaming console alternative to Valve's Steam Deck and the ASUS ROG Ally, among others, a display quirk has been submitted ahead of the Linux 6.10-rc4 release this weekend to fix the display handling.

The past few months open-source developer Tomeu Vizoso has been developing an open-source accelerator driver for Rockchip's NPU. The experimental driver has shown the open-source code can compete with Rockchip's proprietary driver and Vizoso has been working to develop an upstream-minded driver for a kernel driver living within the "accel" subsystem and then leveraging Mesa's Teflon for the user-space component. Yesterday the "Rocket" accel kernel driver was posted for the Rockchip NPU.

In making the Framework 16 laptop even more appealing to open-source hardware enthusiasts and makers, Framework Computer has published the CAD design files as open-source.

Bavarian Linux PC vendor TUXEDO Computers is working on bringing a Snapdragon X Elite powered laptop to market.

Merged to the Linux kernel back in 2018 was an LG Gram laptop driver for supporting various hotkeys and extra functionality of these LG laptops. That driver is now being extended to support the latest LG Gram laptop models.

Red Hat's Peter Hutterer is out with two important updates to the Linux input stack: libinput 1.26 has released for this input handling library used both by X.Org and Wayland systems and then secondly he has announced the "gsetwacom" CLI program as a replacement to the "xsetwacom" program.

Queued into the x86 platform drivers' "for-next" branch ahead of the Linux 6.11 kernel cycle is the "Dell PC Extras" driver. Initially this new dell-pc driver is used for controlling fan modes via the Platform Profile setting on capable systems.

ASUS used Computex 2024 for announcing the ROG Ally X, the latest version of their handheld gaming console. The ASUS ROG Ally X continues to be powered by the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme SoC but now having more storage, faster RAM, a larger battery, updated controls, and other refinements.

Right now when dealing with quirky/buggy touchscreens a C file needs to be manually manipulated and the Linux kernel recompiled. With a new "i2c_touchscreen_props" kernel command line option on its way to the mainline kernel, the process of overriding touchscreen properties is dramatically easier for those dealing with Linux on touchscreen-enabled devices.

Building off the PowerVR kernel driver merged in Linux 6.8 and PowerVR Vulkan driver in Mesa 24.0 that are both focused on Imagination's newer PowerVR Rogue architecture, Google engineers are working on enabling open-source driver support for the PowerVR Rogue GX6250 as found within the MediaTek MT8173 SoC.

Framework is out today with some exciting announcements from lowering the price of the existing Framework 13 with AMD Ryzen 7040 series SoC to announcing a new Framework Laptop 13 powered by Intel Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) and having a new 2.8K display option for this modular/upgradeable laptop shipping this summer.

The ASUS WMI platform driver for Linux that is predominantly used by ASUS laptops for enabling more functionality under Linux has a new patch series available that is enabling yet more features for the latest ASUS hardware on Linux.

The hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem changes for the Linux 6.10 kernel include enabling monitoring of more all-in-one liquid coolers for CPUs, a new driver for exposing monitoring on Lenovo ThinkStation workstations, and other new monitoring capabilities.

The Framework 13 and Framework 16 AMD Ryzen powered laptops make use of an NPCX embedded controller that rely on the ChromeOS open-source embedded controller (EC) firmware. With the Linux 6.10 kernel the Chrome OS "cros_ec_lpc" driver is being extended to support these latest Framework upgradeable laptops.