today's howtos

• Hans de Goede: Changing hidden/locked BIOS settings under Linux

  This all started with a Mele PCG09 before testing Linux on this I took a quick look under Windows and the device-manager there showed an exclamation mark next to a Realtek 8723BS bluetooth device, so BT did not work. Under Linux I quickly found out why, the device actually uses a Broadcom Wifi/BT chipset attached over SDIO/an UART for the Wifi resp. BT parts. The UART connected BT part was described in the ACPI tables with a HID (Hardware-ID) of "OBDA8723", not good. Now I could have easily fixed this with an extra initrd with DSDT-overrride but that did not feel right. There was an option in the BIOS which actually controls what HID gets advertised for the Wifi/BT named "WIFI" which was set to "RTL8723" which obviously is wrong, but that option was grayed out. So instead of going for the DSDT-override I really want to be able to change that BIOS option and set it to the right value. Some duckduckgo-ing found this blogpost on changing locked BIOS settings.

• Test Day:2021-05-09 Kernel 5.12.2 on Fedora 34

  All logs report PASSED for each test done and uploaded as prompted at instruction page.

• James Hunt: Can you handle an argument?

  This post explores some of the darker corners of command-line parsing that some may be unaware of. [...] No, I’m not questioning your debating skills, I’m referring to parsing command-lines! Parsing command-line option is something most programmers need to deal with at some point. Every language of note provides some sort of facility for handling command-line options. All a programmer needs to do is skim read the docs or grab the sample code, tweak to taste, et voila! But is it that simple? Do you really understand what is going on? I would suggest that most programmers really don’t think that much about it. Handling the parsing of command-line options is just something you bolt on to your codebase. And then you move onto the more interesting stuff. Yes, it really does tend to be that easy and everything just works… most of the time. Most? I hit an interesting issue recently which expanded in scope somewhat. It might raise an eyebrow for some or be a minor bomb-shell for others.

• 10 Very Stupid Linux Commands [ Some Of Them Deadly ]

  If you are reading this page then you are like all of us a Linux fan, also you are using the command line every day and absolutely love Linux. But even in love and marriage there are things that make you just a little bit annoyed. Here in this article we are going to show you some of the most stupid Linux commands that a person can find.

China Is Launching A New Alternative To Google Summer of Code, Outreachy

The Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISCAS) in cooperation with the Chinese openEuler Linux distribution have been working on their own project akin to Google Summer of Code and Outreachy for paying university-aged students to become involved in open-source software development. "Summer 2021" as the initiative is simply called or "Summer 2021 of Open Source Promotion Plan" is providing university-aged students around the world funding by the Institute of Software Chinese Academy of Sciences to work on community open-source projects. It's just like Google Summer of Code but with offering different funding levels based upon the complexity of the project -- funding options are 12000 RMB, 9000 RMB, or 6000 RMB. That's roughly $932 to $1,865 USD for students to devote their summer to working on open-source. There are not any gender/nationality restrictions with this initative but students must be at least eighteen years old.

Kernel: Linux 5.10 and Linux 5.13

• Linux 5.10 LTS Will Be Maintained Through End Of Year 2026 - Phoronix

  Linux 5.10 as the latest Long Term Support release when announced was only going to be maintained until the end of 2022 but following enough companies stepping up to help with testing, Linux 5.10 LTS will now be maintained until the end of year 2026. Linux 5.10 LTS was originally just going to be maintained until the end of next year while prior kernels like Linux 5.4 LTS are being maintained until 2024 or even Linux 4.19 LTS and 4.14 LTS going into 2024. Linux 5.10 LTS was short to begin with due to the limited number of developers/organizations helping to test new point release candidates and/or committing resources to using this kernel LTS series. But now there are enough participants committing to it that Greg Kroah-Hartman confirmed he along with Sasha Levin will maintain the kernel through December 2026.

• Oracle Continues Working On The Maple Tree For The Linux Kernel

  Oracle engineers have continued working on the "Maple Tree" data structure for the Linux kernel as an RCU-safe, range-based B-tree designed to make efficient use of modern processor caches. Sent out last year was the RFC patch series of Maple Tree for the Linux kernel to introduce this new data structure and make initial use of it. Sent out last week was the latest 94 patches in a post-RFC state for introducing this data structure.

• Linux 5.13 Brings Simplified Retpolines Handling - Phoronix

  In addition to work like Linux 5.13 addressing some network overhead caused by Retpolines, this next kernel's return trampoline implementation itself is seeing a simplification. Merged as part of x86/core last week for the Linux 5.13 kernel were enabling PPIN support for Xeon Sapphire Rapids, KProbes improvements, and other minor changes plus simplifying the Retpolines implementation used by some CPUs as part of the Spectre V2 mitigations. The x86/core pull request for Linux 5.13 also re-sorts and better documents Intel's increasingly long list of different CPU cores/models.

• Linux 5.13 Adds Support For SPI NOR One-Time Programmable Memory Regions - Phoronix

  The Linux 5.13 kernel has initial support for dealing with SPI one-time programmable (OTP) flash memory regions. Linux 5.13 adds the new MTD OTP functions for accessing SPI one-time programmable data. The OTP are memory regions intended to be programmed once and can be used for permanent secure identification, immutable properties, and similar purposes. In addition to adding the core infrastructure support for OTP to the MTD SPI-NOR code in Linux 5.13, the functionality is wired up for Winbond and similar flash memory chips. The MTD subsystem has already supported OTP areas but not for SPI-NOR flash memory.

Why I Think Flutter Doesn’t Deserve a Place on the Linux Desktop

When Google announced that they were bringing their Flutter UI Toolkit to Linux, there were a lot of mixed reactions. Some thought this would revolutionize desktop Linux, others thought it would increase reliance on Google. But with the amount of fragmentation between different Linux projects (especially when it comes to the UI), do we really want or need another UI Toolkit?