Good news for AMD Linux users - fTPM RNG will soon be disabled

Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca to Linux@lemmy.ml – 205 points –
Linux Decides To Disable RNG On All AMD fTPMs
phoronix.com

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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Just to add a perspective from the other side of the fence, I have a gaming laptop running Windows 11 (yes I know) where this (or a very similar) issue has been plaguing Ryzen users for at least a year and a half. The issue is that TPM per se is not causing issues if turned on, but if BitLocker encryption is on it will cause occasional audio stutters and intermittent complete system halts. The only thing that reliably helps is completely turning off Bitlocker, the TPM chip can stay on and is of course needed for W11. OEMs and AMD have been digging their heads in the sand like ostritches and they have released the odd fix that does nothing to fix the underlying issue. I can't see MS doing anything to reverse course on requirements and am getting a bit fed up with their BS lately, browsing what distro might suit me best and might pull the trigger and finally switch...

TPM is not necessary for Windows 11.

I have a Windows 11 partition and fTPM is disabled in UEFI. Windows complains that "My computer doesn't meet the requirements to update to Windows 11" on the update menu, but there's no issue.

Have a look at Tumbleweed with KDE.

Thanks for the heads up, I'm distro hopping these days and looking for options on where to settle