New ASUS Laptop Features & HP BIOS Settings Driver For Linux 6.6

Merged a few days ago for the ongoing Linux 6.6 merge window were the x86 platform driver updates, which bring a few interesting Intel/AMD laptop improvements as well as a new driver to support altering select HP BIOS settings from within the confines of Linux.

New for Linux 6.6 is a HP BIOS management/configuration driver that is similar to the previously-merged Dell management driver and Lenovo Think-LMI driver. This HP-BIOSCFG driver allows for setting some BIOS tunables that end up being exposed under Linux via sysfs. This driver works with HP's commercial/business-focused devices that expose an appropriate Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interface. This driver has been undergoing review and testing the past few months and is now ready with Linux 6.6.

Also notable with the platform-drivers-x86 changes are for the ASUS WMI driver, which now allows showing/toggling the charger mode for supported laptops, middle fan control for its fan curve and showing the current RPM, and eGPU settings support under Linux. The ASUS WMI driver also now exposes dGPU and CPU tunables for ROG laptops, support for setting the mini-LED mode, and other changes.

Meanwhile the IdeaPad driver has added keyboard backlight control support to more Lenovo IdeaPad laptop models and the in-tree Intel Speed Select tool has received various updates like for handling more than eight CPU sockets.

The full list of x86 platform driver updates for the Linux 6.6 merge window can be found via this pull.