Many Laptop Improvements In Linux 6.9, Much Faster HP Performance At Higher TDP

All of the x86 platform driver updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 6.9 merge window. As usual, most of the x86 platform driver work is around better supporting various Intel Core and AMD Ryzen laptops under Linux.

Some of the x86 platform driver highlights for Linux 6.9 include:

- Support for the Acer Predator Helios 16 (Acer PH16-71)

- The ASUS WMI driver is updated to correct handle hardware without LEDs.

- The Fujitsu laptop driver now supports battery charge control support if wanting to limit the battery charge capacity for better battery conditioning.

- The HP driver now supports thermal profile handling for HP 88AD laptops like the HP OMEN 17. This work was previously covered on Phoronix back in January for allowing better HP laptop performance albeit consuming significantly more power. The performance can more than double but it means the TDP jumping from 47 to 131 Watts for the HP laptop tested:

- The Lenovo IdeaPad laptop driver now has Refresh Rate key support for the laptops having a designated key combination for changing the display's refresh rate.

- The Intel PMC driver puts the older GNA AI accelerator into D3 mode now if it has no driver loaded to allow for entry into low-power modes.

- The Microsoft Surface Linux driver now has fan speed control support.

- The ThinkPad ACPI driver now has support for more Fn keys, more ThinkPads added for non-standard register address for the fan, and other fixes.

- The Thouchscreen DMI driver added support for more hardware.

- The AMD HSMP driver adds non-ACPI support for AMD Zen 5 processors.

- Various other clean-ups and fixes.

See more details on the platform-drivers-x86 updates via this pull request that has since been merged to mainline.