Dell & Alienware Laptop Improvements Coming For Linux 4.6

There are already many new features for the Linux 4.6 kernel but with the two week merge window not being over yet, new pull requests are still trickling in. The latest pull is the x86 platform driver updates that offer improvements to various Intel-powered laptops.

The x86 platform driver updates for Linux 4.6 feature a refactoring of Dell laptop drivers, new platform support for many of the popular laptop brands, and other changes.

Some of the laptop driver specifics for Linux 4.6 include supporting the radio toggle button with the Fujitsu driver, various laptop quirks, support for the Dell Inspiron M5110 in the Dell WMI driver, support for new hotkeys on the Dell XPS 13 Skylake (9350), a rework of the Dell SMBIOS code, a cooling method feature was added to the Toshiba ACPI driver, support for Alienware's ASM200 and ASM201 in the Alienware WMI driver, support for the new Alienware X51-R3 platform, support for deep sleep control with the Alienware WMI driver, and much more.

Those with newer Intel-powered laptops wondering if any of your hardware is affected by the platform driver updates, see this pull request for the full listing of changes.