0:02

Hello, and welcome to Liddick's action news

0:05

episode two hundred and sixty eight recorded

0:07

on November twenty third twenty twenty

0:09

two. I'm Chris,

0:10

and I'm Wes. Hello

0:11

Wes. Let's do the news.

0:13

We start this week

0:15

with a new framework for Linux.

0:18

Let's finally coming together

0:20

after years of discussion, code

0:22

prototypes, and even some specialized

0:25

drivers. It

0:26

seems that at this year's plumbers conference,

0:29

there

0:29

were some consensus reached among upstream

0:31

developers on how to handle an

0:33

accelerator subsystem for Linux.

0:35

Yeah.

0:36

And we've been kind of

0:37

watching this from afar, not really sure

0:39

what direction it was going to go

0:42

ultimately, and really not

0:44

sure how to communicate about it.

0:46

but it seems like the debate is beginning

0:48

to settle. So let's zoom out a bit here

0:50

and set some context, you know what we're talking about.

0:53

Over the years, kernel developers and

0:56

hardware developers have been

0:58

seen just a large increase in general

1:01

hardware accelerated workloads for all kinds

1:03

of various types of things from

1:05

AI and beyond. And

1:07

currently, the

1:09

drivers for those types of applications, for

1:11

those types to hardware, they live in a

1:13

catchall directory in the Linux tree. And

1:16

what's starting to come together now is

1:18

an overall compute accelerator framework

1:20

or which you might call a subsystem. And

1:23

this new subsystem will

1:25

leverage the existing direct rendering manager

1:27

infrastructure but will also

1:29

provide an official home for those

1:32

wayward drivers. And

1:34

really at the core of this ongoing debate

1:36

for the last few years was just

1:39

should we simply extend that direct rendering

1:41

manager or should we create

1:43

this whole new subsystem. But

1:45

After much discussion

1:48

at the most recent Lennox Palmer's conference,

1:50

it does seem that an agreement was finally reached,

1:53

and a complete subsystem should

1:55

be the way to go for the long term.

1:57

Of course, these kinds of choices are always a

1:59

bit easier when there's some code in

2:01

progress that you can take a look at. Odette

2:04

Gapey of Intel has been working on

2:06

just that with some patches for this

2:08

new, quote, excel subsystem.

2:12

This weekend marked the fourth iteration

2:14

of that patch set. And in the announcement,

2:16

Odette confirmed that it's hopefully

2:19

the last version of the batch set.

2:21

And then he believes it's ready to

2:23

be merged. And

2:24

if all goes as planned, That

2:27

means we could potentially see this hit Linux

2:29

six dot two.

2:34

sticking

2:34

with the colonel for just a bit

2:36

longer. Peter Robinson gave

2:38

a talk at that most recent Lenox Plumber's

2:41

conference. sounding the alarm

2:43

on the state of wireless on Linux.

2:46

He's not only a current maintainer,

2:49

but also a Linux user himself

2:51

since nineteen ninety six.

2:53

Hi, folks. My name is Ted Robinson.

2:56

A bit about me. I've been the next

2:58

user for some time. working on

3:00

ARM and sort of embedded

3:03

edge IoT devices since

3:05

around twenty ten, been employed by

3:07

Red Hat doing various different roles

3:10

since twenty twelve. And

3:12

for the last six years, I've been

3:14

the lead of DeviceEdge and IoT.

3:17

And Peter's talk is not

3:19

a rant. It's a discussion on

3:21

the state of WiFi. Let's talk. It's

3:23

not a rant. I wanna have a discussion.

3:27

but wireless experience. And

3:29

in this case, I'm mostly talking about

3:31

WiFi and Bluetooth. It's

3:34

generally just not pleasant. The

3:37

amount of regressions we get, the

3:39

amount of devices that just don't work

3:41

out of the box, is just

3:43

astounding. So

3:45

the main ones that I deal with, the

3:48

Intel WiFi

3:49

the Broadcom stack, which

3:52

is now a group of three different companies,

3:56

the Marvell One's Realtek Qualcomm

3:58

Media Tech. So

4:01

why? Why are they bad?

4:04

The Intel stuff used to be the best WiFi

4:06

for Linux. might

4:08

still be, but we end

4:10

up in situations where they'll

4:13

ship a Bluetooth firmware update

4:16

And suddenly, like hundreds of people in

4:18

fedora

4:19

can't connect to WiFi anymore.

4:21

We'll have the full talk links in

4:23

the notes. but what Peter outlined

4:25

in that talk means more

4:27

attention. We were

4:29

pleased at least to see some

4:31

small Park from the Linux Wireless Tech.

4:33

Get some attention this week though. Intel

4:36

released IWD two

4:38

point o. Okay.

4:39

So for just like a quick refresher,

4:42

if you don't remember, IWD is

4:44

Intel's wireless, Damon.

4:46

and the project summarizes itself as

4:48

the IWD project aims to provide

4:50

a comprehensive Wi Fi connectivity

4:53

solution for Linux based devices.

4:55

And it's got a goal of it says optimize

4:57

resources, reduce memory,

4:59

and all that. It says it accomplishes

5:01

those goals by quote, not

5:03

depending on any external libraries

5:05

and utilizing features provided

5:07

by the Linux kernel itself to

5:09

the maximum extent possible. The

5:12

result they say is a, quote, self

5:14

contained environment that only depends

5:16

on the Linux kernel and the runtime

5:19

c library.

5:20

Now, we should be honest here, IWD two

5:23

point o probably won't blow you

5:25

away, but it does have

5:27

some nice new features. like being

5:29

smarter about handling ciphers sent

5:31

over p to p arrangements, and

5:33

it had support for MAC address

5:35

changes while the adapter is

5:38

powered. I think

5:39

this is why I am an ideal Linux

5:41

desktop user because I'm the kind of

5:43

geek does get excited about upgrading his

5:45

wireless statement while also being very skeptical,

5:48

and then I'm drawn in by

5:50

the temptations of changing

5:52

my MAC address while the power while

5:54

the adapter is powered. That actually sounds sweet from a

5:56

security perspective, assuming, I guess,

5:58

your hardware supported it. It's

5:59

that kind of stuff that

6:01

I love about being a Linux user and just being able to

6:03

see this stuff as it begins

6:05

to land. And honestly, the updates

6:07

in IWD two point o, they're

6:09

decent. It's good. but they're

6:11

mostly just low level stuff that

6:13

just makes your thing connect to the other

6:15

thing, and that good, that

6:17

very good.

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The

10:25

Asahi

10:25

Linux team released a progress report

10:28

on getting Linux up and running on

10:30

the Apple Silicon Hardware this

10:32

week. And first up, in that update is

10:34

some improvements that take Asahi from.

10:36

Well,

10:36

it just barely

10:38

works. to now

10:40

it works as you would expect.

10:43

Yeah,

10:43

real, genuine, USB,

10:46

thirty. Previously, SAE systems

10:48

were limited to USB two

10:50

speeds on the max Thunderbolt four

10:52

ports, but with some recent work

10:54

done on the five driver, you

10:56

must be three speeds. It should be in

10:58

pretty good shape. Though the project

11:00

does suggest that some

11:02

glitches should still be expected.

11:05

That's

11:05

gonna be even more useful for reasons

11:07

that will be revealed momentarily. But

11:09

overall, there's something you need to know. It's

11:12

not there yet. I think that's

11:14

the high level takeaway. It's getting close, but

11:16

there's still things that don't work properly.

11:18

The project, for example, is still working on getting the

11:20

entire MacBook line of integrated speakers

11:23

functioning. Right now, they're being

11:25

just turned off by default because

11:27

it's possible with software on

11:29

Linux to drive the speakers hard enough that

11:31

they can be damaged. Seems that

11:33

Apple sets that limited software

11:35

apparently. But the good news

11:37

is, with most recent updates and

11:39

work done, The headphone jack is

11:41

now working across the full line of

11:43

devices, thanks to a little bit of

11:45

codec reverse engineering.

11:47

Work also continues to go into power

11:50

management. Then turns out the

11:52

project has a pretty practical approach

11:54

to handling power usage. The

11:56

game's been working on s two idle,

11:58

which should significantly improve

12:00

idle state power savings. Now,

12:03

Apple silicon max do support

12:05

a true s three like

12:07

suspend mode that puts the whole system

12:09

into a deeper sleep state, which of course, is

12:11

what macOS uses when it

12:13

suspends. Now, this would probably

12:15

give considerably more power

12:17

savings to Asani but it's

12:19

also more complex to implement

12:21

and it depends on a few things that the team

12:23

still needs to sort out.

12:25

So for now, since

12:26

there is still low hanging fruit on the

12:28

s two idle side. They're

12:30

gonna focus on that going forward.

12:32

But Perhaps

12:33

the most anticipated updates this

12:36

time around are the

12:37

work going

12:38

in to the installer.

12:40

Indeed,

12:40

of course. Right? Because that's what us non

12:43

Asahi developers need to get

12:45

Linux dual booting on these m

12:47

one and m two max. And

12:49

it seems impressively the project has

12:51

managed to stay in sync with Apple's

12:53

firmware releases because they do this

12:56

firmware release thing where it's in sync

12:58

with Mac OS and the

13:00

hardware, so you basically get the firmware

13:02

updates through the operating system.

13:04

And so for them, they have to really keep an eye

13:06

on that. So not only have they been able to

13:08

keep up with the firmware releases, but

13:10

they've managed to cram some new features into

13:12

their installer,

13:13

Now, the

13:14

installer can recover some broken installations.

13:17

It can also upgrade

13:19

some of the boot environment. And

13:21

when you put all of it together, Asahi

13:24

Linux users will also be able

13:26

to recover some broken Mac

13:28

OS installations, at least when all set

13:30

and done. And one

13:32

thing that could make it easy for Apple Silicon

13:34

owners to dip their toes

13:36

into Linux is along

13:38

with that improved USB three speeds

13:41

There is now what they say is

13:43

expert only experimental feature.

13:46

So keep that in mind, two in stall

13:48

their mini bootloader, that's the M1N1

13:51

bootloader in proxy mode

13:53

onto an external

13:55

USB drive. This is really

13:57

kind of an extra bit of impressive

13:59

here because to my knowledge,

14:01

the Apple SoC Max

14:03

Don't natively support

14:06

USB boot. Apple

14:08

pulls off a little bit of trickery at

14:10

the firmware level. and

14:12

it seems now the Asari installer can

14:14

take advantage of that same mechanism

14:16

even though it's a third party

14:18

OS and should be able to do a quote,

14:21

full USB install of the M1N1

14:24

boot loader. That could make it a lot

14:26

easier for users to just dip their

14:28

toes into a Sajid Linux. before

14:31

taking over the disk and repartitioning.

14:34

I'm hoping that one of our future updates will

14:36

include a link to getting Asahi installed

14:38

on your machine, In the meantime, we'll have a

14:40

link in the show notes that gives you an up

14:42

to date array of what features are

14:44

in which kernel and what stage they're at.

14:46

We'll have a link for that in the show notes

14:48

And of course, we're gonna keep an eye on this

14:50

and everything else going on in the world of

14:52

Linux and Open Source. So don't

14:54

miss a single episode. make sure you go to

14:56

lennox action news dot com slash

14:58

subscribe for all the ways to get new episodes.

15:00

And lennox action news dot com

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slash contact for ways to get

15:05

in touch.

15:05

And happy thanksgiving to those of you who

15:08

participate in the holiday, we of course

15:10

aren't grateful for all of you.

15:12

Thanks for listening. We'll be back

15:14

next week with our take on the latest

15:16

Linux, and open source

15:18

news. And as always, a big thank

15:20

you to everyone for joining us and

15:22

that's all the news for this

15:24

week.