Linux 5.14 Staging Drops A Set Of Drivers For The Second Time, Intel QEP Added

The staging changes were submitted on Monday for the ongoing Linux 5.14 for this area of the kernel where immature / yet-to-be-cleaned-up code lives to prove itself before being ready to graduate to the proper mainline kernel area.

Greg Kroah-Hartman sent in all of the staging updates on Monday along with the IIO driver work. Among the staging/IIO work for Linux 5.14 includes:

- The KPC2000 drivers were (again) removed. These were the drivers added two years ago as A Set Of Obscure Drivers Out-Of-Tree Since Linux 2.x Will See Mainline For Linux 5.2. The KPC2000 drivers were for supporting Daktronics scoreboards, video displays, and digital billboards. Well, two years after being re-mainlined, the former developer is no longer working on it nor anyone else so the drivers once again are being removed from the kernel.

- The Linux counter framework has added support for the Intel Quadrature Encoder Peripheral. The Intel Quadrature Encoder Peripheral is found with Elkhart Lake so far and now supported by the intel-qep driver under Linux.

- Continued work on the Realtek rtl8723bs driver for that 802.11bgn 2.4G WiFi/Bluetooth adapter.

- Also a lot of work on the Realtek rtl8188eu 802.11n driver.

- Many IIO driver update.

In total this time around the staging/IIO changes have 12.9k lines of new code while removing 19.9k lines of code, thanks in part to the KPC2000 drivers again being removed.

See the full list of staging/IIO changes this kernel cycle via the LKML pull request.