Linux kernel 6.12.12 configured without AVS and Xe

I have compiled the 6.12.12 kernel with these disabled:

Device Drivers -> Sound card support -> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture -> ALSA for SoC audio support
    < > Intel AVS driver (CONFIG_SND_SOC_INTEL_AVS, snd_soc_avs.ko)
Device Drivers -> Graphics support -> Direct rendering manager
    < > Intel Xe graphics (CONFIG_DRM_XE, xe.ko)

This is a retrograde direction, so I need to justify it...

The 6.12 kernel has (apparently) dropped support for some legacy audio drivers, replaced with the AVS driver. However, AVS is still immature and doesn't work for me. See blog post yesterday:

• Intel sound avs driver still too immature — February 02, 2025

By removing some legacy drivers, the kernel developers are trying to force us to use AVS (which doesn't work). This is most unfortunate, but testing on a wide range of computers, so far they work fine without AVS. So, decided to go with that, remove AVS from the kernel.

This avoids conflict, so that audio will work "out of the box", without the user having to mess around, such as blacklist the snd_soc_avs module.

Then there is Xe; I can't get that to work either. The xe.ko kernel driver is supposed to be the replacement for i915.ko; however, i915.ko is still being developed, and still, apparently, works with recent Intel GPUs -- confirmed for me on my Asus Zenbook S13 with Ultra 7 CPU and GPU. Probably the time will come when i915 falls behind and we will be forced to use xe.ko, but for now, decided to disable Xe.

Intend that the next release of Easy Scarthgap will have this kernel, and I invite everyone to test, boot it from USB-stick on your collection of computers, report back any failure of audio or video.

just thinking... would be nice if someone could figure out a patch to restore the removed legacy audio drivers.    

Tags: easy