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by Brakenshire 3172 days ago
I don't think it's just that, the point is that under the current Android HW situation, phones are locked to kernel versions. Any necessary kernel updates after release are then manually back ported to that kernel version. So that means you won't be able to install any Linux system, you'll have to run that provided by Samsung, running their own custom kernel.

Although I agree we should be supportive.
1 comments
microcolonel 3172 days ago
The kernel sources are all out there, the kernel part of the BSP is GPL by necessity. Samsung actually makes some effort to upstream a certain amount of the kernel code coming from their chipset vendors (because Samsung uses entirely different chipsets for different markets, so it's more convenient to have fewer downstream patches).

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, to stop you from forward-porting any driver or device tree to a new kernel, except for the desire to do so. It would be nice if device vendors maintained trees continually rebased on Linus's tree , but I'm sure you know they don't see the point.

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jhasse 3172 days ago
The drivers are proprietary.
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microcolonel 3172 days ago
That only means that the matching kernel drivers can't be upstreamed, that doesn't mean you can't forward port the kernel drivers. The kernel drivers are open source.

I personally wouldn't settle for a system with a closed source userspace, but Brakenshire said that you're stuck with an old kernel, which is just not true.

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jhasse 3172 days ago
> The kernel drivers are open source.

Why does Replicant have so many problems getting Wifi, 3D acceleration, etc. running then?

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microcolonel 3172 days ago
The largest two components in 3D acceleration are the userspace shader compiler/GL library, and the display configuration code. The latter is in (usually) the kernel these days. They should have no particular issue forward porting the kernel side of the equation, but if they want full open source 3D acceleration, they are going to need to write the userspace part of the driver (or more likely, port Mesa to it).

As for WiFi, not sure. The drivers could be crappy in ways which don't cause problems on Android; or (rarely) could rely on a userspace component. Otherwise they just haven't gotten around to it.

Also, both of these problems would be specific to a given device (or at least a given chipset). Which device are you talking about that they are having these problems with?

As for Replicant specifically, they are only satisfied with free software, right? I don't think they would even want to forward port the graphics drivers, since unless there's already enough development on an open source driver to warrant upstreaming, there's probably not a workable open source userspace to match the driver anyway, so they wouldn't distribute it either way.

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