Greg Kroah-Hartman sent in the big set of USB/Thunderbolt updates already for the ongoing Linux 5.12 merge window.

As has been the case for the recent Linux kernel cycles, USB4 bring-up remains ongoing and a big area of focus in fleshing out all of the features for this latest USB standard. Some of the Linux 5.12 highlights in the USB/Thunderbolt subsystem include:

- Security Level 5 to disable PCIe tunneling with USB4 / Thunderbolt 4 devices are now supported.

Consulting firm 3mdeb that specializes in embedded systems with an emphasis on open-source firmware solutions like Coreboot is hosting an interesting virtual event later today.

Engineers with 3mdeb have worked on open-source AMD firmware efforts , porting FWUPD from Linux to BSDs , Coreboot POWER activities , and more .

The EU-based consulting firm has worked for various organizations on open-source software/hardware primarily around firmware and other low-level bits and is one of the well known names when it comes to Coreboot-related work

Oracle today released their Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5 Update 5 intended for use on their RHEL-based Oracle Linux. Oracle's "Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel" tends to be a newer Linux LTS kernel with extra features compared to what is found in the current RHEL / Red Hat Compatible Kernel builds.

Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 5 is a super-set of features for what is offered by the Red Hat Compatible Kernel "RHCK". With UEK Release 5 Update 5 there are several features back-ported.

The UEK

David Sterba on Tuesday submitted the Btrfs file-system updates for the Linux 5.12 kernel, which once again include more performance optimizations and notable new features.

Some of the performance enhancements for Btrfs with this next Linux kernel version includes improved flushing that can lead to better throughput for random write loads, preemptive background flushing, less locking contention, avoiding some possible long stalls on deletes, and improvements targeting Dbench that can lead to ~7% higher throughput and 20% lower latency.

Btrfs in Linux 5.

XWayland 21.1 is moving forward as a standalone XWayland release separated from the X.Org Server. Given that X.Org Server 1.21 isn't moving toward release with no one stepping up to oversee that long overdue update, Red Hat engineers have devised the plan for standalone XWayland releases that are separated from the rest of the xorg-server code-base to at least get the updated X11 client on Wayland support out to users.

The XWayland code within the X.Org Server

Ingo Molnar sent in the scheduler updates for Linux 5.12 today and it includes some notable additions, including PREEMPT_DYNAMIC, which allows changing the kernel's preemption mode at boot/run-time.

The CONFIG_PREEMPT_DYNAMIC option when enabled allows setting preempt= at boot time to either none/voluntary/full with full preemption being the default. Distributions can still set the standard PREEMPT controls but this dynamic option allows changing it at boot time without rebuilding the kernel or even at run-time

The open-source, cross-platform Phoronix Test Suite 10.2.2 is out today as the newest version of our automated, production-ready benchmarking software framework.

Building off last month's Phoronix Test Suite 10.2 quarterly feature release, Phoronix Test Suite 10.2.2 ships a few fixes and minor improvements before switching focus to Phoronix Test Suite 10.4 that is due out in Q2.

The key highlights with Phoronix Test Suite 10.2.2

Intel on Tuesday night released the "microcode-20210216" package as the latest update to their collection of CPU microcode binaries. This time around the only changes to the Intel CPU microcode binaries are for Skylake server CPUs and Cascade Lake B-0/B-1 processors in order to address two vulnerabilities that came to light last year.

The updated Intel microcode-20210216 package that was made public on Tuesday is for addressing the security advisory INTEL-