Community developers are still working on Apple's Touch Bar driver upstream in the Linux kernel

CTOnews.com Feb. 11, Apple introduced Touch Bar in the MacBook Pro model five years ago, hoping to provide richer scene applications by replacing the function keys on the keyboard.

Apple has abandoned Touch Bar so far, but some community developers in the open source Linux community continue to work on upstream in the Linux kernel.

Linux developers proposed to integrate Touch Bar drivers in Linux two years ago, but it was shelved due to subsequent code problems and unmaintained updates.

The t2linux.org team, which provides Linux driver support for Apple devices with T2 security chips, has taken over the development. The team released a new patch today that is optimized for Touch Bar.

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In software development, upstream usually refers to the original author or maintainer who owns the software source code, and they are usually easier to find program errors and use Patch programs to fix them. For example, a patch sent upstream is provided to the original author or maintainer of the software.

If accepted, the author or maintainer will include this part of the patch in their software, which may be released immediately or included in a future version. If rejected, the person who submitted the patch will have to continue to maintain their own version.