Building off yesterday’s release of Linux 6.17, the GNU Linux-libre 6.17-gnu kernel is now available for this downstream kernel variant that strips away support for loading non-free microcode and other elements not aligned with the Free Software Foundation principles. This ultimately ends up limiting the hardware support available with most of today’s modern hardware requiring microcode/firmware but alas here is the latest release with a fresh round of de-blobbing.
New to Linux 6.17 is the Intel IPU7 driver for supporting the web camera on some of the latest-generation Lunar Lake laptops and more with the upcoming Panther Lake laptops. There are firmware blobs involved there for the latest Intel web cam / image processing IP and thus action by GNU Linux-libre developers.
There are also adjustments for existing drivers such as the AMDGPU kernel graphics driver, Qualcomm Adreno, Nova as the open-source Rust driver for NVIDIA GPUs, Intel AVS audio, and numerous others.
The GNU Linux-libre 6.17-gnu highlights include:
“Adjusted deblobbing of amdgpu, prueth, iwlwifi, btusb, pci mhi host, adreno a6xx, nova-core, and Intel AVS.
Adjusted for pci hda drivers’ moving upstream.
Cleaned up Intel IPU7 and assorted aarch64 devicetree files.
Dropped deblobbing of QLogic infiniband, removed upstream.”
They also continue investing in new artwork for each GNU Linux-libre release:
More details on this GNU Linux-libre kernel 6.17 release via today’s announcement.
