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I wonder what's the story for Linux here.

I don't think it is possible for OSS projects to utilize this big.little system: I tried to look at the instruction level details of the thread director but could find very little. If that's the case, the future of linux desktop/laptop is even dimmer than before.

Android has downstream (partially upstream?) EAS scheduler to handle this kind of architecture [1], but I'm not sure there is any move to take this up to the intel platform. As a linux laptop user, I hope someone does something.

  [1] https://developer.arm.com/tools-and-software/open-source-software/linux-kernel/energy-aware-scheduling

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Linux has supported big.LITTLE style systems for a long time, and has been improving scheduler support for them for about 10 years.

(The main gap you tend to see in the Linux world is integration further up the stack. For example, allowing app developers to nominate a core preference by configuration. That's partly due to the assumption of the distribution model.)

Would love to know more. Would you mind dropping some starting point? My viewpoint is heavily biased to Android so it's great if I can learn what more standard Linux is doing. Thanks!

You'll most likely find readably useful (historical) stuff in presentations at Linux conferences and articles in LWN.

https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/scheduler/sched-energ... & https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/scheduler/sched-capac... are some docs about this shpping with the current kernel.

Eneargy Aware Scheduler is from ARM/Android. I wasn't aware of Capacity Aware Scheduler, but it's also from ARM. I'm glad to see these being upstreamed. Thanks for the pointer!

Intel does a surprisingly fantastic job of open-sourcing things. They're one of the biggest contributors to the Linux kernel, and the official drivers for their integrated GPUs are in the mainline kernel. I wouldn't be surprised if we soon see patches submitted from Intel adding Alder Lake support to Linux's Capacity Aware Scheduling [1], or if there already have been patches submitted under the radar.

EDIT: Oh, and Linux support for their NICs is fantastic as well in my experience, both wired and wireless. That's something Broadcom can learn from - I end up replacing Broadcom wireless NICs in my laptops with Intel ones because it's such a pain to work with Broadcom on Linux.

    [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/scheduler/sched-capacity.html

Isn’t AMD’s graphics also in mainline? I’m very happy with using Intel support on Linux, the only reason I had seeked Broadcom was for the wireless injection intel couldn’t do.

It is, I was mostly just making a jab at NVIDIA.

Nvidia, fuck you! middle finger

They finally have some (nonstandard) Wayland support, after the standards were set and they had every chance to make changes, and its shitty that their open source linux drivers are locked at a low clock unless you have an old GPU. Horrible Linux experience, Linus needs to flip them off again. Its not bad with the propietary drivers, and its unfortunately the only way to run a CUDA for ML.

My next GPU won't be an Nvidia, because of the linux nonsupport.

Screw you, Nvidia.

As a Linux desktop user I am still a bit disappointed about AMD. My Ryzen 7 does not run 100% reliably (freezes many times a year, althoug typically not more than once a month. The net is full of similar stories, but nothing seems to help). Independently but equally annoying the temperature sensors are not well supported, obviously AMD does not share documentation or contribute to the kernel. Don't remember the details now. Gave up frustrated 2 years ago or so.

YMMV... I bought a 5950X in late January for my main workstation (Arch) and haven't had any problems with it at all. FWIW my last Intel CPU (2700k IIRC) crashed my machine regularly whenever the iGPU fired up for some tasks (e.g. I could crash Blender in < 10 seconds...)

Sounds like a motherboard issue. Never had that happen.

Possibly. How can a poor SW guy know, if the kernel just hangs and there is nothing in the log.

Have you tried upgrading the kernel?

Many times since the machine exists (> 3 years). But it's "only" Ubuntu HWE, not Arch or mainline.

In some phase I thought it happens mostly when there is "something big" happening on the screen. So I swapped the Nvidia GPU against an AMD one. But that did not change anything. And the last 1.5 years I have been using the machine mostly remotely over ssh and the freezes still occur occasionally.

So if it's not the CPU proper it could well be the motherboard. Memory tests have never shown anything, but of course I did not run them for 6-8 weeks what it takes at average to get the next freeze.

That sucks, you think its an ubuntu problem then? It sounds like a software issue, in my experience AMD's drivers in Linux are not as high quality as Intel's and if its not logged its hard to diagnose the issues. I wonder if debian would have the same issues.

FYI temperature sensors are fixed in the latest Linux kernel. The only occasional bug I get is from the amdgpu driver (I use an APU) but even that seems to have been resolved.

I would highly recommend making sure you are using the latest BIOS and kernel.

True, there are at least headlines in the yellow press :) https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5....

I remembered something like https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5....

This is a 3-4 year old machine, BIOS updates have become rare. In the beginning I followed the closely without ever seeing any improvement.

My Threadripper runs rock solid under Linux and freezes under Windows 10... The only time it was shutting down in Linux was when the famous Enermax water pump was failing...

Phoronix does a suite of benchmarks on Linux.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-12...

Intel is one of(possibly the biggest) the largest contributors to Linux. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

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