The Linux 5.6 x86 Platform Driver Changes Are Busy From Quirky Laptops To New Hardware Support

Intel's Andy Shevchenko sent in the x86 platform driver updates on Monday for the newly opened Linux 5.6 merge window. There is the never-ending work on dealing with quirky Windows-focused laptops to adding new Intel hardware support and other additions.

Highlights of the x86 platform driver work for Linux 5.6 includes:

- The fix for ASUS TUF laptops with AMD Ryzen laptops so they stop overheating so easily and leading to crippled performance. That is a very important fix for these ASUS TUF gaming laptops with Ryzen CPUs due to the thermal policy not being properly set otherwise on Linux.

- Another ASUS quirk is for the N56VB laptop's left round button not working without this quirk addition to asus-nb-wmi.

- The Intel PMC driver now supports Comet Lake, Tiger Lake, and Elkhart Lake. There's also been cleaning to the various Intel drivers in this tree.

- Intel SpeedSelect Core-Power support (SST-CP).

- Support for new Mellanox VMOD0009/VMOD0010 platforms.

- The Intel SCU IPC driver has dropped Lincroft support (the core of the Moorestown MID platform).

More details on these changes via the pull request.