Release of Linux 6.1.19 Long Term Support and 6.2.6, Including Fix for AMD Systems’ Stuttering

After the release of Linux 6.3-rc2 yesterday evening, which includes a fix for the system stuttering that occurs on some AMD Ryzen computers, the workaround was swiftly back-ported to the Linux 6.1 LTS and 6.2 stable series and spun into new versions for Monday morning. This allowed the system to function normally. The most recent versions of Linux, 6.1.19 and 6.2.6, both provide only a handful of minor bug fixes and feature enhancements. The most notable modification brought about by the updates made this morning is the back-port for the stuttering that occurs on AMD Ryzen-based systems.

Since Linux 6.1, there have been reports of “system stuttering” on some AMD Ryzen systems with obsolete fTPM firmware. This was mentioned in the article that was published on Sunday, and it was also brought up when the Linux issue was discussed the previous month. That was a known issue on Windows a year ago, but it didn’t become a problem on Linux until 6.1, when the hardware random number generator (HWRNG) from the AMD ftPM began being used by default. Previously, it had only been a problem on Windows. Last year, AMD released updated firmware to prevent the issue, but not all Ryzen systems or motherboards have received the new software.

In some circumstances, customers merely haven’t implemented the upgrades yet, so it’s possible that some of those systems haven’t received the updated firmware. Disabling the hardware random number generator on versions of fTPM that are known to be affected by this problem is the fix that is available in Linux 6.3-rc2 and is now included in the 6.1 and 6.2 series of distributions. If you have been experiencing issues with your system stuttering intermittently and are running Linux 6.1 or later, you should go ahead and update to the most recent point release for this remedy if you do not have any system firmware updates available otherwise.