Re: Debian GNU/Linux on tablet hardware
On Oct 28, 2011, at 17:39, Zygmunt Bazyli Krynicki wrote:
> Wysłane z iPhone'a
^^ heh
>>
>> Android's Linux kernels are supported (maintained?) by Linaro.
>
> With my Linaro hat on I must object. Depending on what you meant the statement above is either highly inaccurate or simply untrue.
Hence the question mark. :)
>
> Android kernel situation is complicated and varies per board/SoC. What Linaro does is try to upstream and unify the kernel for Linaro member companies SoCs.
What does that mean in practice?
> This is far from finished and uniform. The "BSP" kernel that hardware vendors provide is not supported by Linaro and in fact often contains code that cannot go upstream.
What does it use this proprietary code for? To know the APIs or to get other hardware interface info? Isn't that a little risky? Won't proprietary, and potentially patented IP leak into the Linaro work? (Not that I believe in IP.)
> Linaro has several trees, including a grand unification tree that tries to support all the member companies chips in one tree (and one binary, thanks to device trees) but this effort is years away (my personal estimate, I don't speak for the organization). In addition we have several trees for normal/androidized kernel for each board. In the latest 2011.10 release hardware was not supported in 100% on any board that I'm aware of.
>
> Having said that the term "supported" seems inappropriate to me. We do work on those boards though.
How would you define it?
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>> Anything that runs Android can run GNU/Linux.
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> This is a gross oversimplification IMHO. You usually get androidized BSP kernel from a few months/years ago with binary parts that have no corresponding source code. Good luck booting vanilla kernel there.
But it appears to me that all the official boards that are targets for Linaro can run a vanilla kernel, is that not the case? If not, what BSP stuff are you referring to - graphics acceleration?
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