Over the past year there has been an uptick in Linux developers from different vendors working on laptop privacy screen support under Linux. When it comes to the support with newer Lenovo ThinkPad laptops, it looks like that kernel support could soon land and the GNOME desktop is already preparing to support this feature.

Earlier this month I reported on a WMI temperature driver for Gigabyte motherboards being worked on by an independent developer. That "gigabyte-wmi" driver is now slated for inclusion in the upcoming Linux 5.13 cycle.

The Linux Foundation's OpenBMC project to provide an open-source BMC firmware stack is quite exciting for freeing this low-level aspect of servers, but finding a supported motherboard that works well with OpenBMC can be a challenge at this stage. Fortunately, Linux 5.13 is set to support a lower-cost motherboard option in hopes of boosting OpenBMC development/usage.

The MSM DRM driver changes have been sent to DRM-Next for this Freedreno aligned project providing open-source graphics/display driver support for Qualcomm SoCs.

While the independent effort to get the Apple M1 ARM-based SoC working under Linux has just been happening for a few months, with the upcoming Linux 5.13 cycle the very preliminary support for Apple's M1 and initial M1-powered devices looks to land.

Newer Gigabyte motherboards may soon enjoy a new Linux driver for exposing component temperatures.

For older Logitech keyboards that operate on a 27MHz radio frequency they may have a new lease on life as well as being more secure thanks to a new Linux utility.

For those that happen to be running FSP/3Y-Power hot-swappable power supplies, a Linux driver is en route.

Standard mouse functionality of Apple's Magic Mouse 2 works currently under Linux but the "hid-magicmouse" mainline driver might finally be extended to fully support the Magic Mouse 2.

Earlier this month I mentioned Loongson 2K1000 Linux patches were published with an effort now to upstream them some four years after these 40nm dual-core MIPS-based hardware launched. That Loongson-2K1000 support is now queued in MIPS-next ahead of the Linux 5.13 cycle.

Last week we noted how a kernel driver for NZXT's Kraken AIO liquid cooling devices was under review for the mainline kernel. Shortly after that point the driver did get successfully picked up for hwmon-next and thus should be appearing in the upcoming Linux 5.13 cycle.

Two fixes were queued this week into the Linux kernel's power management "linux-next" branch that could help improve the power management behavior for some devices as up to now the Linux kernel was not properly following the ACPI specification.

The Generic USB Display Driver "GUD" has just been sent in as part of the latest DRM-Misc-Next material to DRM-Next which in turn will land for Linux 5.13. The Generic USB Display Driver is nifty and allows for opening up possibilities like turning a Raspberry Pi Zero into a USB to HDMI display adapter among other fun use-cases.

Announced back in 2019 was the OpenPOWER Microwatt FPGA Soft CPU Core. OpenPOWER's Microwatt is a VHDL-based design for an open-source POWER ISA processor. core. The Microwatt is a basic 64-bit POWER core that can be run for software simulations or on FPGA hardware. But now Microwatt will actually see chip fabrication thanks to a program sponsored by Google.

It's looking like the Linux 5.13 kernel will better support some Thrustmaster wheels due to new driver code providing for proper USB device initialization.

While Razer has talked up Linux support in the past, so far they have not officially offered Linux support for their range of wares popular with gamers. However, thanks to the open-source community there has been the likes of OpenRazer offering up support for the company's keyboards, mice, and other peripherals under Linux thanks to reverse engineering. Today marks the release of OpenRazer 3.0 for furthering this effort.

While NZXT does not provide any official Linux software support for their products like their all-in-one liquid coolers, the open-source community for years has worked to fill that void thanks to reverse-engineering. The latest work when it comes to the NZXT Kraken AIO liquid coolers is a proposed HWMON driver for the mainline kernel.

Going back to last December System76 had been teasing a new Pangolin laptop that would be AMD powered. Finally their new laptop has launched with Ryzen 4000 series mobile processors and making use of the integrated Radeon graphics.

Siemens has recently been engaging directly with the upstream Linux kernel developers in aiming to mainline various drivers for benefiting their industrial PC platforms.

Complementing today's AMD EPYC 7003 series review with the initial testing on the EPYC 7F53, 7713, and 7763 processors, here are some additional raw data points in full for those interested in an even more diverse look at the performance.

One of the great Linux hardware milestones of 2020 was Lenovo beginning to offer Linux pre-loads on their desktops/laptops with the likes of Fedora and Ubuntu. But it's been great just not for having another major OEM offering Linux pre-loads but because they have also been engaging directly on Linux support improvements both through their engineers and at partners like Red Hat. That upstream support work has continued nicely.

Added for Linux 5.11 was an independently-developed, reverse-engineered Corsair power supply driver for the company's desktop PSUs supporting their USB-based "LINK" interface for exposing voltage, temperature, current, and Wattage under Linux. This open-source "corsair-psu" driver has continued maturing as well since being mainlined.

System76 today introduced the Thelio Mira as their nwest desktop computer offering that is sized between the Thelio and Thelio Major while still packing quite a bit of compute potential.

Chinese MIPS64 vendor Loongson announced the 2K1000 back in 2017 and while it has already been succeeded by more advanced chips in the Loongson 3 series, the Linux driver support for the 2K1000 is still coming together.

If it wasn't odd enough during these pandemic times seeing Nintendo 64 support upstreamed into the Linux 5.12 kernel a few weeks back, the latest vintage hardware seeing open-source support still going on is the Motorola 68000 series 32-bit processors. LLVM/Clang today merged the "m68k" target for these three decade old processors.

Hector Martin, who has been working on the crowd-funded effort to bring Linux up on the Apple M1 SoC and the modern Apple devices using that in-house silicon, has sent out the third iteration of his kernel patches.

While the 5.12 merge window hasn't even been closed for a full week yet, there is already the first DRM-Misc-Next pull request heading into DRM-Next with the first batch of feature material aiming for the Linux 5.13 kernel cycle.

It was just this past September that LVFS served its 20 millionth firmware file to Linux users updating their system BIOS or device firmware using Fwupd while this week the Linux Vendor Firmware Service crossed the 25 million milestone!

Back in March 2019 Xilinx announced they were looking to upstream their Alveo FPGA accelerator drivers into the mainline kernel code. They followed through with posting the initial kernel patches and then fast forward to the end of 2020 they posted a new iteration of the patches. This month the company, which is in the process of being acquired by AMD, posted the third iteration of their open-source Linux kernel driver patches.

For more than four years Apple's MacBook Pro has featured the Touch Bar as a display / control bar input device above the keyboard on these laptops. While there have been reports of Apple potentially phasing out the Touch Bar in future models, an open-source Linux driver for the component is still working its way toward the mainline kernel.