The Linux USB gadget kernel driver saw a patch published today for exposing of a device's landing page as part of the WebUSB specification. WebUSB as a reminder is the industry standard for providing a JavaScript API to securely access USB devices from web pages and is already supported by the likes of Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.
Hardware News Archives
2,112 Hardware open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.
For going along with the new keyboard driver and other upstreaming efforts around the PinePhone Pro, getting the display support mainlined has been the latest effort for enhancing this $399 Linux smartphone.
Prior to the holiday weekend Qualcomm engineers posted a set of "request for comments" Linux kernel patches to implement USB audio offloading support for Qualcomm SoCs with a dedicated audio DSP.
Over the past year we've seen a fair amount of work for enabling support for various Aquacomputer devices under Linux. The German parts vendor specializes in various PC cooling solutions and other cooling accessories that can be monitored and managed under Linux thanks to this open-source driver work.
As written about last month, Sony has been working on adding DualShock 4 controller support to their newer PlayStation HID driver in Linux. The DualShock 4 controller has long been supported under the older "hid-sony" driver but now with Linux 6.2 the support can also be found under "hid-playstation".
As expected, the Linux 6.2 kernel is introducing a lot more Compute Express Link (CXL) enablement code.
Last month I wrote about Intel having worked on USB4 wake-on-connect and wake-on-disconnect handling for the Linux kernel and those patches are indeed primed to be introduced next week with the Linux 6.2 merge window.
A new release of Polychromatic is now available, the open-source GUI front-end for managing Razer devices on Linux by way of the community-managed OpenRazer drivers.
Thanks to the ongoing work led by Intel's Linux engineers, the upcoming Linux 6.2 kernel will feature more feature work around enabling Compute Express Link (CXL) functionality.
One of the new hardware drivers set to be introduced in the upcoming Linux 6.2 kernel cycle is the OneXPlayer sensor driver for supporting hardware monitoring on the x86_64-based handheld gaming devices. While OneXPlayer devices ship with Windows by default, Linux is becoming an increasingly sought after target particularly with prospects for running SteamOS.
OpenRGB 0.8 was released on Sunday night as this project's largest release ever and coming after nearly one year in development. OpenRGB as a reminder is the open-source, cross-vendor and cross-platform software for RGB lighting control across many different devices from GPUs and motherboards to keyboards and other lighted peripherals.
At the start of the calendar year Samsung engineers posted Linux patches bringing to enable the Tesla full self-driving "FSD" SoC within the mainline Linux kernel. Linux 5.18 picked up the initial Tesla FSD SoC support and since then other support remnants have continued to be worked on like media functionality. The latest open-source, upstream-focused Tesla FSD SoC work is on enabling PCIe functionality.
This week's batch of platform-drivers-x86 "fixes" for the ongoing Linux 6.1 kernel is a bit more notable than usual. In particular, the Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 devices are now supported along with some other hardware support enablement.
With a new patch queued up in the hardware monitoring subsystem's hwmon-next branch, several more ASUS motherboards for Intel and AMD processors will enjoy working sensor monitoring support.
Adding to the growing list of changes expected to be sent in during the Linux 6.2 merge window next month is HID-BPF. This is the Red Hat led effort around using eBPF within the HID subsystem for input devices.
In addition to the previously-reported Ampere SMpro hardware monitoring "HWMON" driver coming for Linux 6.2, there are also at least two other drivers for Ampere's co-processor set to be introduced with this next kernel version.
To the USB4/Thunderbolt driver in the Linux kernel Intel is adding support for system wake on connect/disconnect.
Going back eight years to Linux 3.15 there has been Sony DualShock 4 controller support using the "hid-sony" driver thanks to work from the open-source community. But now Sony is adding DualShock 4 controller support to their newer "hid-playstation" driver that they started for PlayStation 5 controller support and are now extending it backwards for the PS4 controller.
Last month Red Hat engineer Hans de Goede warned that old and "weird" laptops could see broken backlight controls with the upcoming Linux 6.1 kernel. He issued a call for testing and as a result was provided valuable feedback that led to some new fixes now on the way. But there still is more work ahead and he's requested further testing by Linux laptop users to ensure the reworked backlight handling is in good shape.
As a warning and call for testing, old and "weird" laptops may broken backlight controls when moving to the Linux 6.1 kernel currently under development. Thus if invested in using an old laptop with a modern kernel version, it may be useful trying out a Linux 6.1 release candidate to help spot any regressions early.
Ampere Computing is mainlining a Linux kernel driver for accessing the sensors of their SMpro co-processor found with their current line of Ampere Altra server processors.
Memtest86+ v6.0 has been released for this open-source system memory (RAM) testing utility. Memtest86+ v6.0 is the first major release of this program in nearly a decade and comes as a complete rewrite to better deal with modern hardware.
Sony recently announced the DualSense Edge wireless controller for the PlayStation 5 as an "ultra-customizable controller". This $199 USD controller isn't even available for sale until the end of January while already Sony has contributed initial support to their "hid-playstation" open-source Linux kernel driver for supporting the DualSense Edge.
After last month launching the redesigned Thelio chassis, System76 today has rolled out their latest System76 Thelio desktop options with Intel 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" and AMD Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" processor options now available.
A first batch of "drm-misc-next" patches have been sent in for DRM-Next to queue until the Linux 6.2 merge window comes about in December. With this initial batch of new material for v6.2 is a new Direct Rendering Manager driver: OFDRM.
Corsair this summer launched the HX1500i power supply as the latest in their HX series. The Corsair HX1500i provides three EPS12V connectors, a fully modular design, and as implied by the model is sized for providing 1500 Watts. This $399 USD power supply can now also interface with the Linux kernel for monitoring support.
Last year the OpenPOWER Foundation announced LibreBMC as a POWER-based open-source BMC and now they have progressed to the point of actually demoing this BMC backed by a fully open-source software stack.
While initial LoongArch CPU support merged in Linux 5.19, it was still in an immature state and since then missing features and functionality continue to be ironed out. With Linux 6.0 came LoongArch PCI support and other changes while for Linux 6.1 come additional features for this Chinese CPU architecture derived from MIPS64 and some elements of RISC-V.
The staging changes for Linux 6.1 aren't particularly notable but of the code churn is lightening the kernel a bit by dropping the old "fwserial" driver that allows for TTY support over IEEE-1394 Firewire connections.
Following the recent HID driver updates for Linux 6.1, the other input subsystem driver updates for this new kernel version have been submitted. The input driver updates this cycle range from supporting the optional PinePhone keyboard to a driver enabling the IBM Operation Panel used by some IBM servers.
The HID subsystem updates have been submitted for the ongoing linux 6.1 merge window of which there are several notable driver additions for bettering the hardware support on several fronts.
Currently Linux's Logitech HID++ driver "hid-logitech-hidpp" relies on a static list of device quirks for indicating which Logitech mice support high resolution scrolling. With the upcoming Linux 6.1 kernel, the plan is to change that list of devices/quirks and to automatically determine if a device supports high resolution scrolling.
Two new HID drivers are set to premiere with the upcoming Linux 6.1 merge window for car and flight simulators.
Sound Open Firmware is what started as an open-source Intel effort to push towards more open sound/DSP firmware and has grown since that point into a Linux Foundation project also supported by other vendors like Mediatek, AMD, Realtek, and others. Sound Open Firmware 2.3 was released on Tuesday as the latest advancement for this open-source audio DSP firmware stack.
Four years ago System76 launched their Thelio line of Linux desktop computers that are built from scratch and wonderfully by them in their Colorado facility. Today the Linux-focused vendor is announcing their most significant overhaul of the Thelio desktop chassis design to date.
A new open-source driver has been posted for supporting the WMI interface found with newer Dell systems. This platform driver allows for reading battery properties like the temperature and IDs as well as additional fan/thermal sensor information.
A number of improvements to the XPad input driver are slated to be included with the upcoming Linux 6.1 kernel to better handle the Microsoft Xbox controllers and other derivative designs.
Added to the mainline Linux kernel last year was a Aquacomputer HWMON driver for initially supporting the German company's water-cooling pump under Linux with access to the fan speed, power, voltage, current, and coolant temperature. Since then that open-source driver developed by the community has been extended to cover an Aquacomputer fan controller and different models. For the Linux 6.1 cycle coming up there are more additions to the Aquacomputer driver.
For those running the embedded OpenWrt Linux operating system for routers and other networking devices or just running a memory-constrained MIPS Linux system, the forthcoming Multi-Gen LRU "MGLRU" kernel feature is looking very good on that front.
Mainlined to the Linux kernel less than one year ago was the "asus_wmi_ec_sensors" for supporting temperature / fan speed / CPU current sensor reading on a variety of newer ASUS motherboards. That driver is now being removed as a superior driver is taking over the ASUS motherboard sensor reading duties.
The UEFI Forum has published the UEFI 2.10 and ACPI 6.5 specifications to make these standards more adaptable to IoT platforms and other new device support from the LoongArch processor architecture to CXL memory support.
A number of noteworthy changes have begun queuing for the Human Interface Devices (HID) subsystem ahead of the Linux 6.1 merge window opening up in just over one month.
Thanks to the work of independent developer Luke Jones and as part of his Asusctl Linux project, ASUS laptops continue seeing better feature support on Linux and with the v6.1 cycle kicking off in October are more ASUS ROG laptop enhancements that have been readied.
Sound Open Fimware is already four years old as what started out as Intel pushing for more open firmware around audio DSPs. Since then we've seen Mediatek begin to support "SOF" as well as some AMD hardware supporting Sound Open Firmware. Out today is SOF 2.2.1 as the latest from this open-source project under the Linux Foundation umbrella.
Canonical kernel engineer Kai-Heng Feng posted a patch on Tuesday for capable laptops to switch their external monitor connections to be routed through a laptop's discrete GPU rather than the integrated GPU. With select laptops this can be done with an ACPI call but raises questions among upstream developers rather this change is indeed desirable.
A number of TUXEDO Computers' Linux laptops and Clevo laptops that have had keyboard and/or touchpad issues after system suspend cycles should be properly working now with Linux 6.0.
The Linux kernel continues making preparations around the very exciting Compute Express Link (CXL) thanks to the work of Intel engineers.
The ACPI and power management changes for the in-development Linux 6.0 landed this week with continued preparations for upcoming Intel and AMD hardware as well as improving existing hardware support.
For those with a newer ASUS gaming laptop boasting RGB lighting for the keyboard, that functionality could soon be working nicely thanks to work happening within the Linux kernel and the open-source Asusctl project.
Greg Kroah-Hartman has submitted all of the USB and Thunderbolt driver changes targeting the Linux 6.0 kernel of which there is a lot of new hardware enablement and enhancements to existing driver support.
2112 Hardware news articles published on Phoronix.