Re: Debian on android Kernel with android driver use
On Sun, Jan 15, 2017 at 9:29 PM, JBB wrote:
> I found this (https://github.com/mickybart/gnulinux_support/) on Github a
> few days ago, and it sounded very interesting to me. The project uses
> libhybris and a few other tools to talk to the android parts in a chroot. It
> uses systemd for controlling the init process, and for starting the android
> chroot. The currently supported Linux distribution is Arch, but it shouldn't
> be to complicated to use debian with it. There would just be a lot of
> packaging work to be done like libhybris and some other tools.
This is the approach taken by Ubuntu Phone IIRC, they put the Android
parts in a container.
There is an article about this approach with Debian here:
http://whiteboard.ping.se/Android/Debian
libhybris is only useful for proprietary drivers that cannot be
recompiled. Most of the proprietary drivers also can't be distributed
in non-free so I'm not sure how much sense packaging it makes.
> And of course there would device specific android kernels and
> android-chroot-rootfs to package ...
These would not be accepted into the Debian archive but you could have
a script for downloading/installing them. The Android kernels could be
packaged outside of Debian (or just downloaded from an Android
distro). The parts of the rootfs that are Free Software could be
packaged by the Android Tools team. They have already packaged the adb
daemon for example.
https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools
> With my phone as example they could be called like this:
>
> - linux-image-3.18.24-1-chaozu
This needs to be merged into the Debian version of Linux before Debian
can properly support your device. First step would be to find the
source code for the Android version of Linux that is used on your
device. If the code isn't public you may need to get SFC or
gpl-violations.org involved. Second step is to rebase that tree onto
linux-next, rewrite the bad parts and try to upstream the code.
https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/
http://gpl-violations.org/
https://kernelnewbies.org/UpstreamMerge
> - firmware-android-nonfree-5.1-chaouzu
I expect most of this is not redistributable by Debian, even in
non-free. So we would need a script to extract the firmware from your
device (or download it) and then install it back into your Debian
install. There is one announced in this post, please contribute to it
if you have coding skills:
https://blog.fossencdi.org/nonfree-firmware-android.html
> And I would really like to see Plasma Mobile UI (original package name
> plasma-phone-components) in Debian.
I would encourage you to join the Debian Qt/KDE team and talk to them
about packaging this. You may also want to talk to the upstream Plasma
Mobile team, IIRC they have Ubuntu based images and might want to join
the packaging for Debian.
> I haven't understood this way of porting completely, but I wanted to know
> your opinion on it, and if you think it could be done for at least for one
> prototype phone and maybe not officially in debian, because there would be
> this non-free android firmware in many cases. But since there are some
> things already done, it would be a great achievement to bring a QML based UI
> and full Gnu/Linux to android phones.
It seems like a fairly good workaround for a crappy situation.
Workarounds aren't going to improve the situation though.
--
bye,
pabs
https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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