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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Good news for AMD Linux users - fTPM RNG will soon be disabled (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2852886

For those out of the loop, some AMD users have been suffering from stuttering issues caused by the AMD fTPM random number generator. A firmware/BIOS update appears to fix the issue for some users, but not others, leading to more bug reports being sent in. Last week, Linus Torvalds said "let's just disable the stupid fTPM hwrnd thing", and, as of today the Linux kernel has gone ahead and blanket disabled RNG use for all current AMD fTPMs.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hard to say. It's a firmware problem so presumably it could be affecting all of them. The CPUs aren't involved. My guess given the details mentioned by Linus is that it could affect some boards and not others, depending on what else is going on in the boards' firmware at the time when the rand call to is made. In other words, there might be other bugs present in the firmware of say ASUS that trigger this, which aren't present on MSI. And then there might be bugs present in this or that particular model's firmware. It's a whackamole which is why they decided to disable it altogether.