1️⃣1️⃣ Here's the 11th post highlighting key new features of the just published v260 release of systemd. #systemd260 #systemd

ARM laptops have recently started moving from the fringes of the Linux world more towards the middle. In the ARM world the nice ACPI-based auto-discovery of devices that PCs have is not really that common, and Devicetree reigns instead. While ACPI is somewhat OS independent, and hence can easily be provided…

…by firmware, Devicetree is different there: it binds hardware to OS concepts, and hence is somewhat specific to both the system *and* the OS. And that makes things a lot harder in some ways, because it must be provided by the OS but is also device specific, and needs to be there in earliest boot, before the kernel initializes.

In systemd v260 there's now not only infrastructure in place to help with this, but we by default ship with a database that automatically selects the right Devicetree…

…for the system Linux is running on.

In v257 we added the general infrastructure to do such matching in systemd-stub (our EFI stub), based on "CHIDs" (which are hashes of certain SMBIOS identifiers). With v260 we now ship a database (contributed by Canonical, containing entries for various Snapdragon devices), that can be built into UKIs for suitable architectures that make them "just work", very similar to behaviour on PCs: the UKI contains both the Devicetree blobs, and this matching…

…database. systemd-stub then calculates the CHIDs of the local hardware, looks it up in this embedded database, picks the right Devicetree, and finally hands control to the Linux kernel, passing the Devicetree to it.

Or in other words: there's a good chance that in some regards these kinds of laptops can "just work" on Linux.

@pid_eins

Does this conflict in any way with what has been done with the m series macs?

@gabboman I have no experience with Macs, but my understanding is that by the time the EFI environment Asahi emulates is reached they already have chosen the DT, and hence systemd-stub wouldn't have to anymore. Moreover, I'd guess they don#t provide SMBIOS, hence this stuff in systemd-stub wouldn't apply anyway, since it uses SMBIOS-derived CHIDs as lookup keys.

i would have NOT expected lennart to ever say “i have no experience with macs” ngl

@snacks yea lol

@fiore IM SMARTER THAN MY OPPS

@fiore lennart confirmed as the linux messiah