Linux 6.9 arrives, plus Torvalds indicates Arm64 will get a bit more love

Linux kernel 6.9 is here, with many under-the-covers improvements that won't be very visible to users, but which tidy things up, fix bugs, and pave the way for future changes. Linus Torvalds' release announcement summarizes what's new, with the man himself commenting that "last week has looked quite stable (and the whole …

[captain veg]

cheeky appeal for advice

I just bought an ASUS Zenbook Pro 14 and installed Mint on it. Everything works fine except the speakers. I can get sound out via, say, bluetooth, but not the built-in audio, which is slightly annoying, but no great shakes.

The internet suggests that this was addressed in kernel 6.8. My Mint 21.3 Edge installation has 6.5.

Should I install the later kernel, or just wait for it to be delivered by O/S updates?

Ta.

-A.

[botfap]

Re: cheeky appeal for advice

I have the same with the 13900H CPU variant that I use as my travelling device. If its the latest model (UX6404) then you can fix it by adding a quirk definition into Linux Mints 6.5 kernel config and rebuilding the CSC3551 module. Its simple enough but can feel a bit of a palava if you have never done it before

Full details here: https://github.com/rykdesjardins/fix-UX6404VI-audio-linux

The cause of the problem is not actually a kernel issue. Its a badly developed BIOS from ASUS which is missing parts of the ACPI/DSDT table. The kernel quirk just works around the ASUS error. Hopefully it will be fixed in a future ASUS BIOS update however this same problem is quite common on a lot of recent ASUS laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cheeky appeal for advice

... not actually a kernel issue. Its a badly developed BIOS ...

... missing parts of the ACPI/DSDT table.

This type of incompetence and lack of professionalism has been going on for decades.

But it is not just Asus: every other laptop/desktop/workstation/server/router OEM has been / is just as guilty.

... kernel quirk just works around the ASUS error.

Yes, thanks for that.

But the OP has no sound and won't have it until a new version of the BIOS comes around with a fix.

If ever.

My Sun Microsystems Ultra 24 workstation was released in 2007 with a hefty price tag and crappy BIOS which eventually saw three/four upgrades.

None of those upgrades solved the problem it still has. Then Oracle came around and the rest is history.

In Linux, at one time you could dump the original DSDT table, edit and recompile it but that possibility was nuked from the kernel long ago and the workaround is a real bother.

The necessary tools and (most of all) the bits of BIOS/DSDT information for doing that became somewhat available on-line from people who were keen on using Apple OSs in non-Apple hardware.

It was hit/miss all the way.

There are two reasons for this state of things: the first being that BIOSs have always been (and still are) proprietary assembly code and the second one is that BIOS slingers do not write a new BIOS for each machine/hardware comination: too expensive and OEMs probably refuse to pay for that.

So it end up being end users doing the testing for them.

I suspect that BIOS writing has, for the longest while, been more a cut and paste operation between sets of BIOS code for similar hardware.

The result of that (incompetence and lack of professionalism) is exactly what the OP suffers.

ie: it works and the hardware actually boots the OS but ...

To this state of things we have to add that, at least for x86 hardware, BIOS writers more than anything write code for hardware using Microsoft operating systems.

And their only goal is that it gets the coveted Microsoft Approved stamp so it will actually sell.

Hopefully it will be fixed in a future ASUS BIOS update ...

Good luck to you with that.

.

[botfap]

Re: cheeky appeal for advice

Harsh but mainly fair. You are correct in that its not just ASUS. Ive seen the same lazy stupidity with HP, Lenovo and pretty much every OEM. Even with Laptops that are sold as "Linux" laptops, especially from Dell

The linux side DSDT situation is actually quite good now. You can still dump, modify and recompile the DSDT. The live DSDT lives at /proc/acpi/dsdt or /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/DSDT. You can decompile, edit and recompile with iasl which is a standard tool in all distros Ive seen

None of that however helps a non technical user. Its a pretty simple process to dump, edit and re-create a DSDT if someone else has figured out the missing bit. However figuring out how to fix the DSDT itself can be a pretty daunting process, even for seasoned developers, if you dont have good references and documentation which the OEM's just dont provide

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cheeky appeal for advice

Harsh but ...

I beg to differ: I could have let down the hand-brake and spoken my mind.

Because ...

Is that not the least you can you say of reputed OEMs (a long list of first tier companies) that are quite willing to accept half cooked/badly written and untested BIOS code for the brand new hardware you have just put down your hard earned cash for?

... simple process to dump, edit and re-create a DSDT ...

Exactly.

If someone else has figured out WTF is wrong with the #$%&* code and published it.

Which is why I wrote that it was hit/miss all the way.

.

[Dostoevsky]

Re: cheeky appeal for advice

Cheeky response: you should use Arch, by the way. Latest versions, no problems, maximal hassle; it's the life. :)

[Peter Mount]

Re: cheeky appeal for advice

I got the ZenBook Duo Pro 14 last July and it's got Mint on it, but there's a couple of tricks I had to do get both touch screens working and the power management - both of which I solved thanks to entries in the Arch wiki ;-)

There was an issue originally with the audio but turned out it defaulted to having the volume down too far initially rather than a kernel issue

Touch screen: https://area-51.blog/2023/07/01/linux-on-the-asus-zenbook-duo-pro-14/

Power Management: https://area-51.blog/2023/07/04/limiting-battery-charge-to-improve-lifetime/

[Liam Proven]

Re: cheeky appeal for advice

[Author here]

> Should I install the later kernel

No harm in trying. I think you won't get kernel 6.8 until Mint 22, though.

You could use the Ubuntu mainline kernels tool:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds

Or Liquorix will do it for you. I have written about that before:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/25/friday_foss_fest_liquorix_kernel/

[ChrisElvidge]

Re: cheeky appeal for advice

Roll your own kernel? version here would be (say) 6.8.9 (This works with LMDE6 here.)

Download source (https://www.kernel.org). Switch to /usr/src/ and untar. Switch to /usr/src/linux-version.

'zcat /proc/config.gz > .config' and then 'make olddefconfig' and then 'make'; 'make modules_install'; 'make install';

'find /lib/modules/version -iname "*.ko" -exec strip --strip-unneeded {} \;'

'update-initramfs -c -k version'

'update-grub'

And reboot.

OK, it takes some time.

[Steve Graham]

Re: cheeky appeal for advice

I don't have a /proc/config.gz but then I always copy the .config from the previous kernel and do yes "" | make oldconfig (not make olddefconfig). If you have no previous source tree, you'll usually find a copy of the config file in /boot.

I've stopped using an initrd. They only exist to hold a shedload of drivers that distros need to support diverse hardware, so I only compile drivers which my machine actually requires. I suppose there might be a call for an initrd in some circumstances, like encryption.

(I won't be building 6.9 until they find some bugs in it and release 6.9.1).

[captain veg]

Re: cheeky appeal for advice

Thanks everyone!

-A.

[IGnatius T Foobar !]

In-kernel dedupe?

I am experiencing "pure" joy, if you know what I mean. :)

[DaveLE]

bring back microkernels

de-duplication in the kernel?

2002 Venti: a new approach to archival storage

http://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/venti/

Unix has retarded OS research by 10 years and linux has retarded it by 20.

— Dennis Ritchie

[botfap]

Re: bring back microkernels

If only Linux would have re-implemented Plan9 instead of Unix

[EvaQ]

Ampere machine

"I now have a more powerful arm64 machine (thanks to Ampere)":

1) why only now? Why not 1 or 2 years ago when they were released? If I were the Ampere product manager, I would have given Linus such a machine ASAP

2) any guesses what kind of box? A rack machine (2U, 4U), or a desktop?

[botfap]

Re: Ampere machine

He was previously using Apple devices for the ARM side but Im fairly certain that he would have been offered an Ampere Developer Platform Desktop. Even we got one of them and we are just a smallish sized dev house doing mainly embedded and optimised cloud images

These are the systems they were giving out, which anyone can also buy:

https://amperecomputing.com/systems/altra/kraken-comhpc-WS

Geoff Greeling did a review if you have interest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl5H5rT87JE

[EvaQ]

Re: Ampere machine

Ah, just $3250, for 80 cores? Nice. Thank you.

[botfap]

Re: Ampere machine

Yeah they are pretty good value. It doesnt show it on that page but there are 128 core variants available now. We bought 5 more in February and the 128 core / 192GB RAM variant was a little over £3600 (ex-vat) per unit with the 4x10GB network upgrades. About the same as high end gaming rig or top specced Apple laptop with 12 cores. Of course grpahics is handled by the BMC and they are terrible but fine for development work as long as you are not doing 3D stuff but you can add pretty much any consumer or professional AMD or NVidia card if you need that

You can but single unit quantities of the 32-128 core variants from i-Pi for not much more:

https://www.ipi.wiki/products/ampere-altra-developer-platform?variant=42970872053922

[joespeed]

Re: Ampere machine

lots of options https://amperecomputing.com/solutions/edge including click-to-buy bundles https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=8000%204808&d=Ampere+Altra

[Simplicity is good]

Issuing from my HP EliteDesk 705 G3 SFF PC the command lspci -v produces the following messages:

-----BEGIN-----

00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Wani [Radeon R5/R6/R7 Graphics] (rev e1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

DeviceName: Onboard IGD

Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Wani [Radeon R5/R6/R7 Graphics]

Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 44, IOMMU group 0

Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]

Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=8M]

I/O ports at 2000 [size=256]

Memory at e0c00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]

Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]

Capabilities: <access denied>

Kernel driver in use: amdgpu

Kernel modules: amdgpu

-----END-----

After I had upgraded from kernel 6.7.5 to kernel 6.8.8, Linux randomly crashed causing my monitor to black out and CPU fan to turn at highest possible speed. The only way I could cool down my CPU was turning off its power.

I choose to stay with kernel 6.7.5 becasue I guess the problem lies in the video card driver in newer kernels.