More high-end audio gear is finally transitioning from Firewire to USB-C and one of these new high-end audio interfaces will be supported by the Linux 5.7 kernel this spring.

Linux has supported the Apple Magic Keyboards since 2018 handling the Bluetooth connectivity and also needing some special handling for the numeric keypad. While that normally would be the end of the story, recent firmware updates to the Apple Magic Keyboard have caused problems.

The Linux 5.7 kernel that will be out in the late spring / early summer is poised to see support for USB fast charging support for Apple iOS devices.

Red Hat's Richard Hughes has released Fwupd 1.3.8 as the latest version of this Linux utility for performing firmware updates of various system components.

Last summer it was announced that IBM's POWER ISA would be open-source and the OpenPOWER Foundation joining the Linux Foundation. Finally we're getting a look at how the end-user license agreement (EULA) is looking for those wishing to make use of the POWER CPU instruction set architecture.

It looks like the Cavium/Marvell OCTEON MIPS-based processor support is being restored for Linux systems after some of its drivers were briefly removed.

RISC-V's Supervisor Binary Interface "SBI" is the interface between the platform-specific firmware and the running operating system or hypervisor for interacting with the supervisor execution environment in the higher privileged mode. The Linux kernel has been working to support a newer version of the SBI that is more extensible moving forward.

There is a lot of new Arm SoCs and boards/platforms to be supported by the Linux 5.6 kernel.

In recent Linux kernel releases we have seen a new gaming keyboard driver, better wireless device support, and a number of new device additions to the Logitech HID driver. With Linux 5.6, there is more Logitech work in tow but not quite as much as the recent kernels.

The new "cpuidle_cooling" thermal driver in Linux 5.6 is similar to Intel's PowerClamp driver and RAPL framework but is generic for working across CPUs/architectures as an idle cooling driver to cool down CPUs/SoCs by injecting idle cycles at run-time.

Adding to the Linux 5.6 excitement is the hardware enablement of the MIPS-based Ingenic X1000 SoC.

With the V3D Gallium3D driver hitting OpenGL ES 3.1 compliance, the Raspberry Pi Foundation and their partners have turned to focusing on getting their Vulkan driver off the ground for Raspberry Pi 4 and future SBCs.

Ahead of USB4 devices expected to begin appearing later this year, the Linux 5.6 kernel is wired up with initial USB4 support.

It turns out Sony is now maintaining the mainline Linux kernel's hid-sony input driver in an "official capacity now across various devices." This hid-sony driver is what traditionally has supported the various PlayStation controllers and other input devices for their hardware. But their newfound "official" support for this open-source input driver could lead to interesting predicaments.

As part of the Linux 5.6 development dance, Ingo Molnar began sending in all of the pull requests this morning for the different areas of the Linux kernel he oversees.

Linux sound subsystem maintainer Takashi Iwai of SUSE today sent in all of the sound driver updates for this next version of the Linux kernel.

Linux power management subsystem maintainer Rafael Wysocki is punctual as always in sending in his feature pull requests for the new merge window.

Chris Lattner, the founder of the LLVM compiler stack and sub-projects like the Clang C/C++ compiler front-end, has joined RISC-V firm SiFive.

More than a decade after Apple acquired the CUPS source-code and its lead developer, that developer, Michael Sweet, recently parted ways with Apple.

The MIPS-based SGI Octane IRIX workstations were first introduced in the late 90's while recently there has been a resurgence in the work on getting these vintage PCs running off a mainline Linux kernel.

Driven by curiosity sake, here is a look at how the total number of AMD and Intel developers contributed to the upstream Linux kernel during the 2010s as well as the total number of commits each year from the respective hardware vendors.

When it comes to the Zhaoxin x86-compatible processors coming out of VIA's joint venture in Shanghai, their forthcoming 7-series (KX-7000) has hardware mitigations in place for some CPU vulnerabilities.

Here is another long overdue kernel change... For more than a decade there have been patches trying to get SATA/SCSI drive temperature monitoring working nicely within the Linux kernel but none of that work ever made it through for mainlining. That has left various user-space tools to provide the functionality, but in doing so that has required root access and not to mention the need to first install said utilities. Well, with Linux 5.6 in 2020, there is finally a proper drive temperature driver for disks and solid-state drives with temperature sensors.

One of the many devices being pursued by the PINE64 crew is the PineTab open-source ARM 64-bit tablet. Thanks to being another Allwinner A64 product and not using any too bleeding edge tech, the PineTab has patches available to get it running off a mainline Linux kernel.

Adding to the many changes on the way with Linux 5.6 is the Rockchip DRM display driver supporting the PX30 SoC.

While still a draft standard, support for the RISC-V "V" Vector Extension support for the Linux kernel is currently being prepared.

Ahead of this week's Consumer Electronics Show, the Wi-Fi Alliance has announced WiFi 6E.

Up to now the most recent Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop with Ubuntu Linux has been using Comet Lake processors while now the 10th Generation XPS 13 Developer Edition has been announced with Ice Lake processors.

For those interested in benchmarks of the $99+ PineBook ARM Linux laptop, more results continue to be uploaded on OpenBenchmarking.org.

Fwupd 1.3.6 was released today for ending out a very successful year for this firmware updating utility that works in-step with the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) for allowing hardware firmware/BIOS updating on Linux systems.