Project Description
The Steam Deck is a portable gaming handheld built around platform technology similar to the one found in AMD mobile laptops. Vendor Valve ships a custom Linux distribution with downstream patches on this device, but booting into other distributions is possible. Connecting the Steam Deck to a dock can turn it into a compact workstation.
While a lot of patches have been upstreamed or rewritten for upstream, some upstream-only issues persist. Archlinux users work around this by just using Valve's downstream versions which is not the route I would like to take.
I already had a chance to explore these issues last year and got a lot of help from cool developers such as tiwai. But I did not get as far as I would have liked. I want to revisit these issues and learn more about kernel work. As a kernel newbie I am looking forward to learning more.
I appreciate help, pointers, tips and tricks from experienced maintainers. Kernel newbies such as myself are also very welcome to join, too. Some open issues already contain commands that you can use to collect information and help you learn, so make sure to take a look at the existing Bugzilla reports.
Goal for this Hackweek
- retest known issues with the latest Tumbleweed snapshot
- figure out how to collect useful information and research around drivers
- revive these open issues and hopefully come closer to finding a solution
- learn a bunch about the kernel, drivers and debugging (probably mostly ALSA ASoC, DRM, x86_64 ACPI)
- try patching the Tumbleweed kernel and see what happens
- write a small blog post about how it went including some photos
Resources
- Currently open issues: https://bugzilla.opensuse.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=steam+deck
- Valve hosts their source code as src.tar.gz containing bare git repos: https://steamdeck-packages.steamos.cloud/archlinux-mirror/sources/jupiter-main/
This project is part of:
Hack Week 22
Activity
Comments
Similar Projects
Modernize ocfs2 by goldwynr
Ocfs2 has gone into a stage of neglect and disrepair. Modernize the code to generate enough interest.
Goals: * Change the mount sequence to use fscontext * Move from using bufferhead to bio/folios * Use iomap * Run it through xfstests
Modularization and Modernization of cifs.ko for Enhanced SMB Protocol Support by hcarvalho
Creator:
Enzo Matsumiya ematsumiya@suse.de @ SUSE Samba team
Members:
Henrique Carvalho henrique.carvalho@suse.com @ SUSE Samba team
Description
Split cifs.ko in 2 separate modules; one for SMB 1.0 and 2.0.x, and another for SMB 2.1, 3.0, and 3.1.1.
Goals
Primary
Start phasing out/deprecation of older SMB versions
Secondary
- Clean up of the code (with focus on the newer versions)
- Update cifs-utils
- Update documentation
- Improve backport workflow (see below)
Technical details
Ideas for the implementation.
- fs/smb/client/{old,new}.c to generate the respective modules
- Maybe don't create separate folders? (re-evaluate as things progresses!)
- Remove server->{ops,vals} if possible
- Clean up fs_context.* -- merge duplicate options into one, handle them in userspace utils
- Reduce code in smb2pdu.c -- tons of functions with very similar init/setup -> send/recv -> handle/free flow
- Restructure multichannel
- Treat initial connection as "channel 0" regardless of multichannel enabled/negotiated status, proceed with extra channels accordingly
- Extra channel just point to "channel 0" as the primary server, no need to allocate an extra TCPServerInfo for each one
- Authentication mechanisms
- Modernize algorithms (references: himmelblau, IAKERB/Local KDC, SCRAM, oauth2 (Azure), etc.
FizzBuzz OS by mssola
Project Description
FizzBuzz OS (or just fbos
) is an idea I've had in order to better grasp the fundamentals of the low level of a RISC-V machine. In practice, I'd like to build a small Operating System kernel that is able to launch three processes: one that simply prints "Fizz", another that prints "Buzz", and the third which prints "FizzBuzz". These processes are unaware of each other and it's up to the kernel to schedule them by using the timer interrupts as given on openSBI (fizz on % 3 seconds, buzz on % 5 seconds, and fizzbuzz on % 15 seconds).
This kernel provides just one system call, write
, which allows any program to pass the string to be written into stdout.
This project is free software and you can find it here.
Goal for this Hackweek
- Better understand the RISC-V SBI interface.
- Better understand RISC-V in privileged mode.
- Have fun.
Resources
Results
The project was a resounding success Lots of learning, and the initial target was met.
Hacking on sched_ext by flonnegren
Description
Sched_ext upstream has some interesting issues open for grabs:
Goals
Send patches to sched_ext upstream
Also set up perfetto to trace some of the example schedulers.
Resources
https://github.com/sched-ext/scx
Create DRM drivers for VESA and EFI framebuffers by tdz
Description
We already have simpledrm for firmware framebuffers. But the driver is originally for ARM boards, not PCs. It is already overloaded with code to support both use cases. At the same time it is missing possible features for VESA and EFI, such as palette modes or EDID support. We should have DRM drivers for VESA and EFI interfaces. The infrastructure exists already and initial drivers can be forked from simpledrm.
Goals
- Initially, a bare driver for VESA or EFI should be created. It can take functionality from simpledrm.
- Then we can begin to add additional features. The boot loader can provide EDID data. With VGA hardware, VESA can support paletted modes or color management. Example code exists in vesafb.
Create DRM drivers for VESA and EFI framebuffers by tdz
Description
We already have simpledrm for firmware framebuffers. But the driver is originally for ARM boards, not PCs. It is already overloaded with code to support both use cases. At the same time it is missing possible features for VESA and EFI, such as palette modes or EDID support. We should have DRM drivers for VESA and EFI interfaces. The infrastructure exists already and initial drivers can be forked from simpledrm.
Goals
- Initially, a bare driver for VESA or EFI should be created. It can take functionality from simpledrm.
- Then we can begin to add additional features. The boot loader can provide EDID data. With VGA hardware, VESA can support paletted modes or color management. Example code exists in vesafb.
Create a DRM driver for VGA video cards by tdz
Yes, those VGA video cards. The goal of this project is to implement a DRM graphics driver for such devices. While actual hardware is hard to obtain or even run today, qemu emulates VGA output.
VGA has a number of limitations, which make this project interesting.
- There are only 640x480 pixels (or less) on the screen. That resolution is also a soft lower limit imposed by DRM. It's mostly a problem for desktop environments though.
- Desktop environments assume 16 million colors, but there are only 16 colors with VGA. VGA's 256 color palette is not available at 640x480. We can choose those 16 colors freely. The interesting part is how to choose them. We have to build a palette for the displayed frame and map each color to one of the palette's 16 entries. This is called dithering, and VGA's limitations are a good opportunity to learn about dithering algorithms.
- VGA has an interesting memory layout. Most graphics devices use linear framebuffers, which store the pixels byte by byte. VGA uses 4 bitplanes instead. Plane 0 holds all bits 0 of all pixels. Plane 1 holds all bits 1 of all pixels, and so on.
The driver will probably not be useful to many people. But, if finished, it can serve as test environment for low-level hardware. There's some interest in supporting old Amiga and Atari framebuffers in DRM. Those systems have similar limitations as VGA, but are harder to obtain and test with. With qemu, the VGA driver could fill this gap.
Apart from the Wikipedia entry, good resources on VGA are at osdev.net and FreeVGA