Intel leaves Ubuntu and Debian without updates of some tools and drivers

In recent months, Intel is going through some not very good times in its history as one of the greats of computing. The manufacturer’s plans are recover numbers for what he has had to face division closurea restructuring of managers and many layoffs. Layoffs that are having their effects a few months later, since some Linux distributions are running out of new drivers, tool packages and their maintenance.

Intel leaves some Linux distributions without driver and tool updates

The first distribution that has fallen on networks with little support from Intel has been its own distribution, Clear Linux. The manufacturer has said that it will no longer be maintained, and unfortunately it is not the only Linux distribution affected by these layoffs. The known ones Ubuntu and Debian also they have been left without the developers who maintained the packages updates that are related to Intel technologies, as well as drivers and other software. The developers have been fired and according to what Phoronix tells us there is no one to replace them.

Intel seems not to replace the fired developers who maintained this software

In the case of Debian they have been marked until 12 packages that have been left without maintenanceincluding libraries and other tools for Intel Core and Xeon. Tools such as Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA), QuickAssist Technology (QAT), thermal management or cache monitoring among others. In total these are the tools that have been left without support:

• accel-config– Configures Intel Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA) accelerators on Xeon processors from user space.
• qatengine: Intel QuickAssist Technology engine for OpenSSL, accelerates encryption and compression operations using QAT hardware.
• qatlib: Library to take advantage of QAT hardware for security, authentication and compression tasks.
• qatzip: ZIP library that uses QAT to speed up file compression and decompression.
• intel-cmt-cat: Tools to monitor and configure Intel cache and memory technologies (CMT, MBM, CAT).
• intel-lpmd: Daemon that optimizes energy consumption at rest on Intel systems (Low Power Model Daemon).
• ipp-crypto: Intel-optimized cryptographic library for high-performance operations.
• intel-ipsec-mb: Multi-buffer encryption library for IPSec and TLS, optimized for modern Intel CPUs.
• numatop: Observation and analysis tool for systems with non-uniform access memory (NUMA).
• psst: Intel Power Stress and Shaping Tool utility for stress testing and power management.
• thermald: Daemon responsible for thermal management and temperature monitoring on Intel devices.
• thunderbolt-tools: Advanced Thunderbolt/USB4 diagnostic and debugging toolkit.

Among these are important packages for many users

This is a problem that may affect many users who need to use Linux daily for their projects, research or work. A problem that Intel has not spoken about it and that many have found this unpleasant surprise.