The "Intel Virtual Button" Driver Is Coming For Linux 4.8

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 27 July 2016 at 07:36 AM EDT. 15 Comments
INTEL
Already sent in less than half-way into the two week merge window for Linux 4.8 were all of the platform-drivers-x86 updates for enhancing Intel laptop support under Linux. This time around there's the new intel-vbtn driver.

The new Intel Virtual Button driver (intel-vbtn) is needed for supporting power button events on some newer laptop models. Without this driver, the power button doesn't work correctly. One of the first laptops to need this 200 lines of code driver is the new Dell XPS 13.

The platform-drivers-x86 update also has changes to the dell keymap in the dell-wmi driver, adding an IIO interface for accelerometer data to the Toshiba ACPI driver, support for the Eco LED on the Fujitsu laptops, support for the touchpad toggle hotkey on Fujitsu Skylake laptops, the asus-wireless driver can now toggle the airplane mode LED, and various other quirks and fixes were added.

More details on all of that x86 platform driver work for Linux 4.8 via this PR.
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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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