floatboth

Qualcomm has several full time employees working on Mesa (Freedreno/Turnip). They probably must have access to some documentation now..

Yes. It is on the mailing list: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20251001-av1_irisdecoder-v1-0-9f...

It actually introduces new things into the UAPI because no one else did fully-stateful AV1 decode before.

Which ones, where? On X1 laptops that shipped with Windows, you can only escape into EL2 via Secure Launch: https://github.com/TravMurav/slbounce

Upstream would accept a patchset that exposed an independent Gunyah-specific UAPI (why not the same one as downstream — crosvm already supports that) instead of pretending to be KVM (it's not a "port", you can't port a hypervisor to a hypervisor).

KVM is available on current compute platforms (laptops) if you escape to EL2 via slbounce; and on Glymur (X2E) it will be available by default (yay!).

X1E laptops have fully working DisplayPort+USB3+USB2+PD over USB-C unlike Asahi Macbooks :p There really aren't that many gaps in X1E laptop support left.

EL2 is coming by default on Glymur (X2E) (yaaaay), can be enabled in config on some IoT platforms, and can be booted into via Secure Launch on previous compute platforms (Hamoa/Purwa aka X1E/X1P, SC8280XP), search for slbounce.

On phone platforms.. probably not? Or Android might want it for pKVM..

Mesa MR for a8xx is coming. It's just not done yet. But they have full time employees working on Mesa.

From a quick look, the patch doesn't seem to contain references to Metal, but just a lot of random updates—backports from upstream Wine to the CrossOver thing?—including an AMD ADL implementation that is clearly for Linux (using /sys/class/… stuff). Maybe the whole toolkit is… literally just CrossOver?

Thinkpad x13s is an okay option, but Qualcomm is IMO more cursed than Apple

Seeing "Sizzle" in that profile made me feel shocked. Uhhh Wikipedia actually still uses an ancient build of jQuery that does not take advantage of native querySelector at all?!?

Did you know that technologies such as Intel Boot Guard that have existed for the better part of a decade defend well against such attacks that might seek to overwrite flash memory?

It's rather funny to see Boot Guard as a "good" example here. Boot Guard is what's actually taking freedom away. With a vendor-locked Boot Guard configuration, you cannot replace the firmware with anything not signed by the vendor. Bye bye dreams of coreboot (until a private key leaks like it just did ha ha).

Netflix & co denying service to machines that don't pass Microsoft attestation? Literally who cares, just go to The Pirate Bay instead.

Wait so they… they have a hook in the mmap() equivalent that allows AV software to scan new pages mapped as executable? I see the reasoning but damn does that feel cursed.

Mostly laughing rather than offended :D

hi, author here!

And not giving website administrators the ability to GeoIP you.

Another really important aspect everyone is forgetting is the location privacy problem with being "naked" on a residential IP address. The best reason to relay your traffic through a provider like Mullvad is so that some random forum admin who disliked your posts doesn't GeoIP you down to your city district.

?? It's entirely identical to the desktop version. Desktop is just an electron wrapper that adds fancy integration like rich presence and in-game overlays and whatever else.

multifaceted approach is important here

Valve is pretty good at this, and they don't even use kernel level anti-tampering as a facet. Trust factor, VACnet (machine learning) and overwatch (community demo review) add up to a system that's pretty decent at not matching you with cheaters if you aren't one.

All of those are "general purpose". That phrase doesn't mean "perfect official support for whatever alternative OS you like", it usually means something closer to "you are not forbidden from running your own code, even at a high privilege (kernel) level".

You can, why would that be the case?

MrChromebox currently publishes only RW_LEGACY firmware (not full ROM, only replacing the stock SeaBIOS) for AMD Picasso/Dali and Intel Tiger Lake devices, but a) that's enough to boot whatever you want and b) you can build your own full ROM.

arm chromebooks usually run coreboot too; the utility of edk2 there would be questionable, as on none of them ACPI tables can cover all the HW, so u-boot would be good enough.

Put UEFI on the chromebook!! Argh don't write it off, chromebooks are the best x86 platform by far. MrChromebox provides pre-made coreboot+edk2 builds for a ton of chromebooks, but you can make your own too.

(err, tweet is https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1534825580801433600)

the M1 Ultra would surpass it by a wide margin

Well, in which tasks?

Comparing e.g. geekbench results for the M1 Ultra https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14664498 and a decent 5950X (PBO) result https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/14665931 it looks like a lot of Apple's multicore score is attributable to AES (which uses special fixed-function HW). And with other tests, different CPUs win different benchmarks. 5950X notably wins in clang :)

bring eGPU support to the M1 line

Probably not M1.

marcan tweeted recently that Apple's PCIe integration has been is broken in the same way as on Broadcom's RPi4 SoC — mapping PCIe BARs as normal memory (which allows unaligned access) doesn't work. I can't find the tweet (deleted??) but here's the RPi thread: https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/iss... Basically there's no quick kernel level workaround for this, if you really want a GPU to work on such a broken platform you need to patch every single thing in userspace to avoid unaligned access.

We'll see soon if that's fixed in M2, but I suspect they don't care…

"finger following" touchpad desktop switching gestures

Ha. I'm the author of the vswipe plugin, glad you like it :)

blur behind windows

KDE is ahead of everyone in blur tbh, they've had client-controlled blur for ages.

No, not yet (not without jailbreak, at least). https://worthdoingbadly.com/hv/ mentions that M1 iPads "already have Hypervisor support unlocked in the kernel" so they might be planning something for someday…

Well, realistically not all services will support WebAuthn… spending an hour to handle a dozen important ones doesn't sound like a big deal to me.

Just add more authenticators to every RP (site you auth into). From the point of view of an RP, "your account in the Apple ecosystem" here is the exact same thing as "one of your Yubikeys", basically.

As an RP, there is nothing Apple specific for you to do, just WebAuthn.

Yeah, since Apple's (and Google's) soft WebAuthn implementation is designed for syncing across devices, it should also work with many browsers on the same machine.