Plenty of AMD news announced today during the digital CES event, with new CPUs and GPUs on the way for this year including the Ryzen 5000 Series Mobile CPUs and RDNA 2 GPUs.

Much like Intel with their newly announced 11th Gen Intel Core H-series mobile processors, a big focus for AMD is on notebooks as well as the desktop. AMD wants to take the performance crown here, with the Ryzen 5000 Series Mobile CPUs - this is Zen 3 going properly mobile. AMD are claiming an "up to" 16% increase in single-threaded performance and "up to" 14% for multi-threaded over the previous generation.

“As the PC becomes an even more essential part of how we work, play and connect, users demand more performance, security and connectivity,” said Saeid Moshkelani, senior vice president and general manager, Client business unit, AMD. “The new AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Desktop and Mobile Processors bring the best innovation AMD has to offer to consumers and professionals as we continue our commitment to delivering best-in-class experiences with instant responsiveness, incredible battery life and fantastic designs. With our PC partners, we are delivering top-quality performance and no-compromise solutions alongside our record-breaking growth in the notebook and desktop space in the previous year.”

Here's what was newly revealed today for mobile chips:

Coming along with that, AMD also announced some new desktop chips coming too, however these new reduced TDP models will only be available to system builders it seems:

Also very exciting is the upcoming RDNA 2, AMD's next-generation GPU architecture. AMD confirmed today that RDNA 2 will be coming to gaming notebooks next, with desktop GPUs based on RDNA 2 to follow along. Both of which are being targeted for a release in the first half of 2021. No real extra info was given out on RDNA 2 today though other than the vague window of when to expect them.

AMD also announced more monstrous server chips with 3rd Gen AMD EPYC.

You can watch the full event below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

While CES has moved online, many companies continue to make announcements and Intel decided to take the time to announce some fresh CPUs coming aimed at ultraportable gaming.

The ultraportable segment of the laptop market is aimed at those with plenty of spare monies, who want a reasonable gaming experience they can take with them. 11th Gen Intel Core H-series mobile processors will be launching in the first half of 2021 through many different vendors including Acer, ASUS, MSI and Vaio already confirmed to be readying devices with it. What's interesting is how they teamed up with NVIDIA for this ultraportable push and talked up about how they're designed for connecting with the "latest discrete graphics"

Also coming soon is an 8 core / 16 thread H-series, for those who want "desktop-caliber gaming and creation performance" which Intel said will be shipping sometime in Q1 2021 which sounds like it's going to be pretty darn powerful (and so expensive).

That's not all though. Intel also previewed and teased their next-gen Rocket Lake and Alder Lake platforms for both desktop and mobile including 11th Gen Intel Core S-series desktop processors being Rocket Lake-S, which feature a big "19% gen-over-gen instructions per cycle (IPC)" which will be headlined by the Intel Core i9-11900K.

Meanwhile Alder Lake gets a claim of being a "significant breakthrough in x86 architecture" with Intel saying it's their most scalable yet and this will be due in the second half of 2021. Alder Lake is interesting since it will combine together high-performance cores and high-efficiency cores into a single product, with it being their first processor family built on their new "enhanced version of 10nm SuperFin".

Intel also took the time to announce the Intel Evo vPro platform, which they claim is "the best laptop experience for business users" along with Intel Pentium Silver and Celeron processors "with an unmatched balance of performance, media and collaboration for education systems".

You can see their video about it all below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Asahi Linux is the name of a new project aiming to get Linux properly supported and working on Apple Silicon, the new ARM based chips designed by Apple like the Apple M1 found in their latest hardware.

This is being spearheaded by Hector Martin "marcan", who some will recognise due to their work involved in porting Linux to the Sony PlayStation 4. It's a crowdfunded effort, with Martin putting up a Patreon campaign which has now hit enough funding for the work to begin. Martin also has a GitHub Sponsor account, with plenty backing there too.

Their plan is to start with the 2020 M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro and they don't want to just get Linux running on them as they want to get it polished to a point where it can be used as your main daily operating system. It's a lot of work though, as they explained "this requires a huge amount of work to be done, as Apple Silicon is a completely undocumented platform" and "we will be reverse engineering the Apple GPU architecture and developing an open source driver for it".

All their work will be up on GitHub .

You might not like Apple or macOS but there's no denying the hardware is nice. Even our own Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, said in 2020 "I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux".

Martin is of course not the only one involved. Alyssa Rosenzweig, who works with Collabora on the Panfrost driver for ARM Mali GPUs, seems to also be involved. Rosenzweig wrote on their blog about work towards an open source Mesa driver that's hit the first milestone of understanding enough of the instruction set "to disassemble simple shaders with a free and open-source tool chain" and this work lives on the Asahi Linux GitHub here .

2020 was a really weird year with lots of surprises. Some good, plenty bad and Linux seeing a fresh port to the Nintendo 64 was also a thing that happened.

One we missed from late December while we took a short holiday: developer Lauri Kasanen put out an RFC (request for comments) noting that there have been other attempts in the past but this is not based on either. Kasanen also noted it's being sent as an RFC as they're "not sure if it's useful to have this merged" considering it's an "Old, niche, and limited platform". Fun for a day project perhaps? Not particularly useful for many uses though considering the power.

Answering the inevitable "but why?" questioning, Kasanen said "Having Linux available makes it easier to port emulators and fb or console games. www.linux-mips.org/wiki/Nintendo_64 can be edited to no longer say "vaporware". Most importantly, because I can".

This is not a special full distribution either, what they're providing simply allows the Linux Kernel to boot up on it and you can find their bootloader up on GitHub . Sounds like it's a bit rough too going by the readme . It's always amazing to see projects like this, even as just the for-fun part of hacking away at tech. The answer to "but will it run Linux?" is almost always a Yes if someone spends a few minutes looking into how.

Now that the Atari VCS is out in the wild for plenty of IndieGoGo backers, we've seen plenty of reports of how it works and one GamingOnLinux reader gave us plenty of info.

Currently, it seems like the whole thing is still in something of a Beta stage. The software seems a little on the buggy side, and there's still not much in the way of games available for it. However, it actually does sound like a reasonable good little device - which I am sure will surprise plenty of naysayers.

User slaapliedje in our Forum has been going through details including how, yes, you really can load a plain Linux distribution up with Debian Buster tested working (once you do a couple small tweaks). All very interesting but even more so is how their own Atari World OS is clearly a normal Linux distribution with a fancy console interface on top.

Pictured: Atari 5200, 7800 and the Jaguar+CD with the Atari VCS - credit to slaapliedje

Very interesting to know just how close the VCS really is to a traditional Linux box. I thought they would have customized it more, but they appear to have stuck to what they originally said about keeping it reasonably open to the point of not even protecting the games you get on it. In an email to us, user slaapliedje mentioned how they've been able to move games on their Atari VCS over to an external drive, and then launch those games on their normal Linux desktop.

You can connect another drive to it (I am currently using a Samsung USB 3 SSD drive) and hit ESC on a keyboard, boot to USB. I installed Debian on it, which you have to use a distro that has signed keys for secure boot (so my attempt with GamerOS failed). But with the drive connected, you can copy the games from within AtariOS to other storage.

Keeping in mind this is the backer release, not the retail release, they still have time to fix up lingering issues.

Roderick Colenbrander of Sony Interactive Entertainment has sent in a brand new and official Linux driver for the PS5 DualSense for even better out of the box support.

With the newly proposed driver , it enabled the DualSense to function in both Bluetooth and USD modes along with most other features working including LEDs, Touchpad, Motion Sensors and Rumble. However, they make it clear that the Adaptive Triggers and VCM-based Haptics are not yet supported but they hope to "have a dialog on how to expose these over time in a generic way".

Here's how the describe it will work:

DualSense supported is implemented in a new 'hid-playstation' driver, which will be used for peripherals by 'Sony Interactive Entertainment' (PlayStation). Hid-sony will be used for devices for the larger Sony Group. We intend to migrate existing devices over time gradually to hid-playstation. We do not want to cause any regressions and maintain quality. As such moving forward, unit tests are important and we started by providing these through 'hid-tools' including DualSense.

The Linux driver exposes DualSense functionality as a 'compositive device' similar to DualShock 4 in hid-sony, spanning multiple frameworks. First, it exposes 3 evdev nodes for respectively the 'gamepad', 'touchpad' and 'motion sensors'. The FF framework is used to provide basic rumble features. The leds-class is used to implement the Player indicator LEDs below the DualSense's touchpad, while the new 'leds-class-multicolor' is used for the lightbars next to the touchpad.

This will be really nice to make it into the Linux Kernel, as the more we have working out of the box the better. While Steam and SDL2 can already work with it, not everything goes through them of course and it would open up the DualSense to all sorts of other possibilities.

I'll eventually be grabbing myself a DualSense, so I'm keen to see how it feels.

Hat tip to MrPenguin.

Looking for a little gaming on the go or perhaps something in bed? The upcoming ODROID-Go Super announced recently sounds like quite a useful little Switch-styled device.

Going on sale in late January for $80, this is the next-generation of the ODROID-Go Advance which Hardkernel announced back in 2019. This time the ODROID-Go Super will feature a bigger 5 inch screen with tough tempered glass for protection, a higher resolution at 854x480 and also a bigger 4000mAh battery. On top of that a bunch of hardware design changes also went in including being pre-assembled instead of a kit, dedicated volume buttons, a second joystick and more smaller changes.

Seems it will have no wireless chips built in, but they did mention better support for USB Wifi and Bluetooth plus the micro-SD slot has been changed to the nicer spring-eject style rather than needing you to push and pull.

The question is: what are you going to use it for? The answer is of course - emulation.

As for the actual system specs compared with the older ODROID-Go Advance, they say it will have very similar specifications and performance so it seems it's mostly the new design you're getting here with the better screen and battery. This means Ubuntu 20.04 along with EmulationStation for the front-end.

$80 for a pre-made dedicated on-the-go emulation unit? Seems pretty sweet.

Is this actually seriously real? I still have some doubts but I am beginning to get hungry. KFC and Cooler Master have properly announced the KFConsole .

Going over the details of it, it's actually a custom-built PC case with a built-in "Chicken Chamber". Yeah, really. It mentions how it uses "the systems natural heat and airflow system you can now focus on your gameplay and enjoy hot, crispy chicken between rounds". Completely ridiculous of course but I've no doubt if it really becomes available, people will absolutely buy it.

It makes use of the Cooler Master NC100 with an Intel Nuc 9 Extreme Compute Element, meaning it's no slouch and will actually pack quite a performance punch. The KFConsole will also come with a "first-of-its-kind" hot-swappable GPU slot with "Asus-powered graphics" (they're not saying what GPU model it comes with yet). Plenty of storage space too with two 1TB Seagate BarraCuda SSDs. You won't be running out of space quickly, and it will make the entire thing feel quite snappy.

Taking all that together, the concerning point (apart from crumbs getting everywhere) is the price. Nothing about it sounds particularly affordable.

The real question is though: will it Linux? I'm sure it won't be long until someone installs it.

2020 continues being a very weird year.

With a rather unassuming and plain case that doesn't give much away, the new TUXEDO Book XP14 is their smallest and lightest gaming notebook now available.

Coming with Intel Tiger Lake processors with either the Core i5-1135G7 or the Core i7-1165G7 it's backed up by their new Xe graphics, you can also upgrade it to have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 if you want that extra bit of power for your gaming needs.

Not only does it have ample power, it also has a speedy 14" 120Hz screen along with a matte finish to help keep away as much glare as possible to be usable in various lighting conditions.

The included 49 Wh will give around 6 hours of usage according to what TUXEDO state, although that will obviously go down based on what you're doing with it. There's plenty more to appreciate with it, check out some specs:

As usual for this company it comes as standard with TUXEDO_OS, which is based on the latest Ubuntu release with the Budgie desktop as the default. They do also offer it with a standard Ubuntu install.

Quite an affordable notebook too starting at €865.50. For the specifications, the compact size and having full Linux support out of the box from a known company it seems like an ideal machine. TUXEDO stated in their email that shipping is expected to begin at the end of December 2020.

Check out the TUXEDO Book XP14 here .