Hardware News Archives

The original DisplayLink USB display adapters were great for working with an upstream, open-source driver while sadly the newer DisplayLink tech has been limited to an out-of-tree driver and proprietary user-space daemon. But posted today is an experimental "Vino" driver that is a clean-room, reverse-engineered driver for newer DisplayLink hardware.

The power management changes merged for the Linux 7.2 kernel are aplenty as usual. New hardware support, dropping obsolete hardware support, and various bug fixes and other enhancements throughout this important area of the kernel.

After Linux 7.1 dropped support for old i486 CPUs and also began removing some old ISA and PCMCIA device drivers, there is some additional old hardware relics being cleared out of the in-development Linux 7.2 driver... The frame-buffer device driver for the old Hercules Monochrome ISA graphics card is now removed from the Linux kernel after decades at play.

Framework Computer began informing those that pre-ordered the new Framework Laptop 13 Pro that it will begin shipping in July rather than their original June target. The setback is coming to address two issues that came up in their testing process that delayed the start of mass production.

The cros_ec Linux kernel driver is used for supporting the ChromeOS Embedded Controller "EC" used by Chromebooks and various other laptops like Framework Laptops. With patches pending to cros_ec, support for custom fan curves is being introduced.

The open-source developers at Georgia Tech working on Vortex as an OpenCL-compatible RISC-V GPGPU implementation are out with their next major release for this open-source GPU design.

Broadcom V3D 3.3 and V3D 4.1 graphics IP is set to be deprecated and removed from the V3D kernel graphics/display driver after the Mesa driver support was removed two years ago already. The situation in both cases amount to lack of hardware by developers for testing and with that likely no other known users of these particular Broadcom graphics in selects SoCs.

ASUS ZenVision is a feature of some ASUS laptops like the Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition where there is a 3.5-inch monochrome screen embedded into the top lid of the laptop. From this mini display embedded into the top lid of the laptop it's possible to display animated themes, show the current date/time, battery status, or customized messages and the like. The practicality is rather limited as primarily it's for showing off to people around you besides when your laptop lid is closed, but now with experimental code it's now possible to use ZenVision on Linux.

Dell is using Computex to announce their new XPS 13 that comes at their lowest price ever of $599 USD for students and $699 for everyone else. The new Dell XPS 13 aims to compete directly with the Apple MacBook Neo while leveraging the new Intel Wildcat Lake processors as cut-down from Panther Lake.

Ahead of the Linux 7.1-rc6 test kernel due out later today, this week's batch of input subsystem fixes have been sent out that includes enabling a few newer input devices.

For competing with the Apple MacBook Neo, Google Chromebooks, and other entry-level laptops, Qualcomm today announced the Snapdragon C series SoCs.

GlobalPlatform announced today the launch of Pavona as an open-source silicon ecosystem backed by founding members such as Meta, Qualcomm, Tenstorrent, Winbond, and the University of Oxford, among others.

Following the process of phasing out Intel 486 CPU support and other old hardware drivers that were dropped in the Linux 7.1 kernel cycle for reducing the kernel maintenance burden, the upcoming Linux 7.2 cycle is continuing the trend of phasing out some of the old hardware support that is very obsolete, likely having no users on the latest upstream kernels, and no one formally maintaining the obsolete drivers.

This week's x86 platform driver fixes include not only a handful of bug fixes but also enabling some additional laptops within existing drivers for HP and ASUS devices.

For those with a new Core Ultra Series 3 "Panther Lake" laptop from HP or considering one of these new systems, the Intel ISH firmware has now been upstreamed to linux-firmware.git for enhancing the out-of-the-box support.

CHUWI this week announced their UniBook laptop as a ~$449 USD laptop that aims to compete with Apple's MacBook Neo. While shipping with Microsoft Windows 11, it should be Linux-friendly and we'll soon be putting it to the test at Phoronix.

Ahead of the new Framework Laptop 13 Pro laptops beginning to ship in June, an audio microphone fix was merged this weekend to the mainline Linux kernel for these new Intel Panther Lake powered devices.

Ahead of the Linux 7.1-rc4 kernel test release due out on Sunday, a new round of x86 platform driver fixes were submitted for the week.

Ahead of the Linux 7.1-rc4 release due out on Sunday, a variety of HID subsystem patches were merged overnight to Linux Git.

One of the latest Linux gaming handheld drivers being worked on is the MSI Claw Configuration Driver for controller configuration.

Today's Patch Tuesday is a busier one than normal for the quarter. Both AMD and Intel have rolled out new updates for Linux customers among other security disclosures today. Thankfully though the vulnerabilities don't appear to be too widespread or impactful.

An IBM engineer posted the first set of patches enabling the Rust programming language support for the Linux kernel to be built on the s390 architecture.

A new driver expected to land in the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel is the ARCTIC Fan Controller driver to allow fan speed monitoring and PWM controls for this upcoming ARCTIC product. Making this new driver all the more exciting is that it was worked on by ARCTIC directly compared to the typical workflow for such desktop/consumer hardware peripherals often being left up to the reverse-engineering, open-source community.

The upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel will be adding support for Microchip's Switchtec PCIe Gen6 switches.

Last week's drm-misc-next pull request of new Direct Rendering Manager and accelerator driver feature material destined for Linux 7.2 include some new power management control features both for the AMD Ryzen AI and Intel NPU drivers.

Merged for the nearly-over Linux 7.1 merge window are a number of enhancements to the LoongArch architecture support for that Chinese CPU architecture inspired by MIPS and RISC-V.

As usual in recent years, there were many x86 platform driver changes merged this cycle for benefiting modern AMD Ryzen and Intel Core (Ultra) laptops. A variety of new features and laptop hardware support additions were merged for Linux 7.1.

Beyond Linux looking to remove old drivers due to the surge of AI/LLM bug reports, the Linux 7.1 kernel is also removing some old hardware drivers simply on the basis of long obsolete hardware. The input subsystem saw several drivers removed this week for decades old hardware.

Following the recently-launched Thelio Mira redesign, System76 today announced the new Thelio Major workstation with improved thermals and more performance.

Ready to go ahead of the Linux 7.1 merge window closing at week's end are numerous new USB device support additions and other USB subsystem enhancements.

All of the SoC updates were recently merged for the ongoing Linux 7.1 kernel cycle. Most of the activity as usual is on the Arm side but also with some RISC-V additions too for the Linux 7.1 kernel.

At Framework Computer's next-gen hardware launch event today they announced the Framework Laptop 13 Pro as a ground-up redesign of their 13-inch modular laptop.

In addition to announcing the Framework Laptop 13 Pro today, Framework Computer at their next-gen hardware event also previewed the OCuLink Dev Kit for attaching high throughput peripherals like external GPUs (eGPUs) to Framework Laptops.

Recently sent out on the Linux kernel mailing list was the initial patches for implementing the Smart Data Accelerator Interface (SDXI) as a vendor-neutral architecture for memory-to-memory data movement offload.

The HID subsystem updates landed this week for the in-development Linux 7.1 kernel that includes new hardware support and other changes.

The PCI subsystem updates were merged this week for the Linux 7.1 kernel with a wide assortment of PCI(e) changes from new to old hardware.

Loongson's LoongArch processors are running decent in our recent Loongson 3B6000 benchmarks but even better performance is on the way with the next GNU C Library "glibc" release.

With the vast majority of x86/x86_64 systems supporting restarting the system using ACPi, BIOS, or even the KBD keyboard controller, with Linux 7.1 is now support in place for using custom restart handlers registered by drivers, such as in place for other CPU architectures.

All of the hardware monitoring "HWMON" subsystem updates were merged this week for the Linux 7.1 kernel.

The media subsystem updates have been merged for the ongoing Linux 7.1 merge window and includes new hardware support.

Beyond Linux 7.1 beginning to phase out Intel 486 CPU support, this next Linux kernel version is also beginning to remove driver code for supporting Russia's Baikal CPUs.

The Error Detection And Correction "EDAC" subsystem updates have been merged for Linux 7.1 that deal with reporting of ECC memory errors and the like from various hardware drivers.

Merged for the Linux 7.0 kernel was a power sequencing driver for PCIe M.2 connectors as part of an effort to allow describing PCIe M.2 connectors in Device Tree files. For Linux 7.1, that driver is extending support for PCIe M.2 Key E connectors.

Bitland, the Chinese OEM that manufactured systems for Lenovo and other companies until being added to the US Entity List due to being accused of using Uyghur forced labor, is expected to see a WMI driver added to the Linux 7.1 kernel for better supporting Bitland laptops.

Linux-friendly hardware vendor Framework Computer sent out a notice this morning that they will be announcing their new 2026 hardware products later this month.

TUXEDO Computers' laptops received some heat in the past from upstream Linux kernel developers over their out-of-tree kernel drivers but fortunately that situation has been improving. The Uniwill driver premiered in the Linux 6.19 kernel with that OEM manufacturing many of the TUXEDO Computers laptop models. That Uniwill x86 platform driver enabled more functionality for TUXEDO hardware in the mainline kernel and has continued improving since its upstreaming. More features are on the way for Linux 7.1.

Merged back in Linux 6.19 was the ASUS Armoury driver to enhance support for the ROG Ally gaming handhelds and modern ASUS laptops. The ASUS Armoury driver enables various laptop features to be toggled under Linux and since its introduction it has continued expanding support for more ASUS devices. Ahead of Linux 7.0 coming out on Sunday, a few more devices are now supported by this upstream driver.

Set to be merged for the upcoming Linux 7.1 merge window is the "Yogafan" hardware monitoring driver to provide fan speed monitoring not only for Lenovo Yoga laptops but also various Legion and IdeaPad laptops too.

Framework Computer on Monday issued their latest update concerning the ongoing price increases for memory and solid state drives affecting the industry. There has been some more price increases, signs of some temporary reprieve, and then a bit of good news on pricing for select Framework hardware.

Zubeyr Almaho has been leading work on a new HID driver named hid-omg-detect with an intent on passive monitoring to watch out for any malicious HID devices being connected to the system.