Linux 5.4 To Support The Buttons On Newer Microsoft Surface Laptops

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 28 July 2019 at 09:16 AM EDT. 4 Comments
HARDWARE
Coming for the Linux 5.4 cycle later this year will be support for the buttons on newer Microsoft Surface devices.

Queued into the input-next's Git tree already is support for newer Surface devices within the soc_button_array driver. In particular, the power and volume buttons are now supported by the Microsoft 5th and 6th generation Surface devices.

There is also a fix to the surfacepro3_button driver that is needed so that driver is only used on the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 and 4 models, not binding to the newer models as that cause issues and instead the buttons get claimed by the now-supported soc_button_array driver.

Still a bit silly and unfortunate in 2019 the Linux kernel needs to be battling laptop vendors for supporting items as mundane as power and volume buttons, but it is what it is, especially with Microsoft.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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