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Collabora informs 9to5Linux today about their contributions to the recently released Linux 5.11 kernel series, which will soon arrive in the stable software repositories of your favorite GNU/Linux distributions.
A new kernel is out the door, Linux 5.11, and it brings many goodies and better hardware support. Collabora is well known for their awesome contributions to the Linux kernel, and this cycle they continued to improve support for Chromebooks and modern Windows games.
First, the good news for Linux gamers as Collabora introduced a new interface that more efficiently intercepts, filters and emulates system calls in the Linux kernel, called Syscall User Dispatch. While all this might sound boring, it’s not, because once configured, Syscall User Dispatch is entirely controlled from user space to enable Windows compatibility layers like Wine or Valve’s Proton to better support modern Windows games in Linux.
Collabora’s contributions to Linux 5.11 to improve Chromebook support include a new power domain driver with support the MediaTek Helio P60T / MT8183 chip used in various Chromebook devices like the Chromebook IdeaPad Duet, and pushed the the rkisp1 Rockchip Image Signal Processor driver out of staging, which is used in the Acer Chromebook Tab 10, or PINE64’s Pinebook Pro laptop, or ROCK Pi 4 development board, adding support for capturing simultaneous streams and other improvements.
In addition, Collabora also implemented a new input inhibition feature for convertible (2-in-1) laptops and worked on integrating the libcamera open-source camera stack into Google’s Chrome OS to complete the full camera stack, which may soon (hopefully!) land in various Chromebooks with the next Linux kernel upgrade, providing out-of-the-box capturing capabilities.
“As Chromebook’s popularity continues to rise, these new MediaTek devices are playing an important role in the premium Chromebook scene,” said Ezequiel Garcia. “We are very excited to be part of the effort: coming up next in our roadmap is mainlining display panel support for the Chromebook IdeaPad Duet!”
During the Linux 5.11 development cycle, Collabora also worked on improving stateless hardware-accelerated decoding in V4L2 (Video4Linux2) API for the H.264 codec, while they continue to work hard in the background on completing V4L2 stateless decoding support for the HEVC, VP8 and VP9 codecs, which could land in the next major Linux kernel release.
Furthermore, they improved User Mode Linux support for Debos by fixing an ugly data-corruption bug, adding support for virtualized disks to have a label attached to them, and porting the guest’s random-number generator driver to the more generic hwrng framework.
In numbers, Collabora’s Linux kernel developers authored 99 patches, committed 47 patches, reviewed 16 patches, acked 45 patches, signed off 30 patches, tested 3 patches, reported 2 patches, and added 30 patches on behalf of others. To check their full Linux 5.11 kernel contributions, visit this blog post.
Image credits: Collabora
Last updated 3 years ago
