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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 21 2019, @04:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the Google-wants-less-forking dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 21 2019, @02:59PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 21 2019, @02:59PM (#922987) Journal

    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.

    So, basically, Google would mainline because the rush from doing so is bigger than the pain of not mainlining.

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