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Google outlines plans for mainline Linux kernel support in Android
It seems like Google is working hard to update and upstream the Linux kernel that sits at the heart of every Android phone. The company was a big participant in this year's Linux Plumbers Conference, a yearly meeting of the top Linux developers, and Google spent a lot of time talking about getting Android to work with a generic Linux kernel instead of the highly customized version it uses now. It even showed an Android phone running a mainline Linux kernel.
But first, some background on Android's current kernel mess.Currently, three major forks happen in between the "mainline" Linux kernel and a shipping Android device (note that "mainline" here has no relation to Google's own "Project Mainline"). First, Google takes the LTS (Long Term Support) Linux kernel and turns it into the "Android Common kernel"—the Linux kernel with all the Android OS-specific patches applied. Android Common is shipped to the SoC vendor (usually Qualcomm) where it gets its first round of hardware-specific additions, first focusing on a particular model of SoC. This "SoC Kernel" then gets sent to a device manufacturer for even more hardware-specific code that supports every other piece of hardware, like the display, camera, speakers, usb ports, and any extra hardware. This is the "Device Kernel," and it's what actually ships on a device.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday November 21 2019, @09:43AM (2 children)
You mainline because you want the FOSS guys to keep your software in shape, instead of having to devote resource to chase whatever the FOSS devs implement. But the big sw makers/hw makers duopoly will continue shitting on the principle of free software because they prefer to control the stack some way. So don't expect drivers to become open because android is mainlined. So, what's the advantage for Free software? More problem because, by mainlining and adding your guys to the kernel dev team you might effectively hamper some new developments because you don't like the direction they are taking?
The only silver lining is that some chinese mediumweight vendor might decide to cater to the FOSS crowd with a device based on mainlined android with free drivers. You still can have a backdoored modem chip to spy on them but at least those devices are fun to own.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 21 2019, @02:59PM
So, basically, Google would mainline because the rush from doing so is bigger than the pain of not mainlining.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:02PM
Hopefully the rest of the devs are significantly larger in number and can bring sanity.
It seems a long, difficult battle to ever get back to completely open hardware combined with completely open software.
I see how, over a very long time, Linux is now in everything and even Microsoft has had to embrace Linux and open source.
RISC-V gives me hope that we might possibly get enough commercial players that see the value of truly open systems, that we'll eventually get there.
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