Kernel: Realtek Rant and DRM via HDMI 2.1

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 03, 2026

• Andrew Rowson ☛ Screw you Realtek

  So I’ve got three nodes in my homelab k8s cluster (celebrated its 7’th birthday the other day 🎈 ) that are lovely little lenovo M75 boxes. They’re cheap, reasonably powerful, not too old, and make great k8s nodes for light workloads. The big problem, however, is that they have Realtek RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 NICs in them, which are not good.

• AMD Readies Full Open-Source HDMI 2.1 Support for Linux | TechPowerUp

  If readers recall, AMD has been trying to get the HDMI Forum, the governing body behind the development of the HDMI standard, to approve open-source HDMI 2.1 support on Linux but faced strong rejection. However, today the situation appears to be different. An AMD Linux developer hinted that the company is preparing full HDMI 2.1 support for the AMDGPU driver, bringing a complete open-source implementation after years of work. Helping this effort is Valve, whose Steam Machine runs on the SteamOS Linux operating system and uses AMD graphics. Late last year, we reported that Valve was reportedly attempting to persuade the HDMI Forum to approve AMD's efforts to bring this implementation to the open-source Linux stack, but we haven't received an update since.

• AMD preps “full” HDMI 2.1 implementation for Linux

  In 2024, the HDMI Forum rejected AMD’s HDMI 2.1 driver support plans for Linux. Basically, the HDMI Forus doesn’t want open-source drivers revealing details about its HDMI IP that it doesn’t want to be public. This has prevented AMD from delivering HDMI 2.1 support on its GPUs, which is a massive annoyance for Linux gamers.

• WCCF Tech ☛ AMD Finally Cracks HDMI 2.1 On Linux After Years Of Forum Lockout, Thanks To Valve’s Quiet Push

  It appears that the HDMI 2.1 support is finally arriving to Linux as AMD has submitted the new Fixed Rate Link (FRL) patches for its AMDGPU driver. This has been one of the longest-standing limitations that affected Radeon GPUs on the platform. There have been years of restrictions tied to the HDMI Forum (Org behind the HDMI standard) policies that prevented upstream implementation of HDMI 2.1.