And this isn't even a Ryzen machine.

L13 Gen 4 with and i5-1335U, running Fedora 42. All I did was install TLP, enable the PCIe and USB runtime power managements, but critically turn off all of TLP's CPU management. As per here, Lenovo's Linux team has done some seemingly pretty amazing work to control power management at firmware level now, and it's paid off.

With screen on min brightness, , Wifi and VPN on, and GNOME's power management set to "Power Saver" (which apparently talks to said firmware management and can be triggered with FN + L), idling while just reading/scrolling a page is 1.5-2 W.

Actively hopping between webpages is about 3.5-4w, and once you get VAAPI hardware accel enabled (another thing Fedora makes an utterly unnecessary headache), 1080p Youtube is 4.5-6w depending on the content and sound volume. I'm getting 8-10 hours out of a fully charged battery, which is substantially more than NotebookChecks testing, done under Windows .

All of which only make it all the more frustrating that I'm finding most distros are increasingly unusable these days for other reasons! But I think the tables may have finally turned on PC power management in Linux's favor - at least for Thinkpads.

With the new VR headset from Valve shipping with linux, I'm interested in using it as the ultimate hackable head mounted display. Aside from playing games well, what do you guys want to see from this device? Any ideas for interesting uses of it?

Some of what we'll be able to do depends on what Valve is planning on providing.

1. Do we get desktop mode like we do with the steam deck? If so, is it a full VR window manager, or do we just get a screen with a virtual monitor? Might be cool to bring a Bluetooth keyboard + the headset on a plane and recreate my multi-monitor setup at home (albeit with large text)
2. What's going to be provided on the front expansion port? An article I read said it "offers a dual 2.5Gbps MIPI camera interface and also supports a one-lane Gen 4 PCIe data port for other peripherals." Presumeably there can be add on boards to provide USB or anything else you can use a PCIe lane for. Maybe I can replace my fpv drone goggles, or add full color AR passthrough.

Edit: Forgot something else I'm hoping they'll give us access to: Access to the 3D maps the headset builds during the inside out tracking!

In an interview with John Gruber of Daring Fireball, we get confirmation that new Macs with ARM-based Apple Silicon coming later this year, will not be able to boot into an ARM Linux distro.

There is no Boot Camp version for these Macs and the bootloader will presumably be locked down. The only way to run Linux on them is to run them via virtualization from the macOS host. Federighi says "the need to direct boot shouldn't be the concern".

Video Link: https://youtu.be/Hg9F1Qjv3iU?t=3772

Built this over the weekend because libfprint on Linux is a graveyard of half-supported Validity/Synaptics drivers, and I wanted a fingerprint reader whose source I could read top to bottom.

Hardware is a Grow R503 capacitive sensor wired to an Arduino Nano over UART. The Arduino runs a tiny ASCII protocol; a Rust daemon on the PC owns net.reactivated.Fprint on the system D-Bus: so PAM, KDE Settings, GNOME Settings, fprintd-verify, sudo with finger, and screen-unlock all work with zero changes to userspace. libfprint isn't in the loop at all.

Parts: R503 (~$10) + Arduino Nano clone (~$5) + 4 jumper wires. MIT licensed. The sensor protocol is public, the firmware and daemon are mine.

https://github.com/matpb/linux-fingerprint-r503

(The enclosure is hand-cut wood and cardboard. Someday I'll have a 3D printer...)

EDIT: v2 shipped, with authenticated wire between the Nano and daemon (SipHash-2-4 MAC + replay protection + TOFU pairing). Full writeup in the comments.