4 ms·

That's not true, really. Many vendors keep their own in-house patches to the mainline tree, that never make it upstream for various reasons(See Android's kerne

by zie 10y ago

That's not true, really. Many vendors keep their own in-house patches to the mainline tree, that never make it upstream for various reasons(See Android's kernel for instance). There is nothing stopping a vendor or anyone else, from publishing their own linux tree that is a fork of mainline with this AMD patch applied. Linus maintains the 'mainline' tree, just because of the history and because most kernel hackers believe in their ability to run with it, but if Linus and friends ever did something horrid, there is nothing to stop some other group of people from forking and everyone moving to said new fork. That's part of the whole point of the GPLv2 and other OSS licenses.

fapjacks 10y ago
Right. And this is an indicator that the Good King and his generals have done an exemplary job keeping it solid: Everyone uses their product.
- izacus 10y ago
  Except the largest deployment of Linux in the world: Android devices. Which are running a severely modified kernel because the process of going through mainline to get it mobile ready would be far too painful.
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    Not really severely. It has a few questionable tweaks here and there. The questionable part is CPU companies not pushing for upstream integration, so you get e.g. Qualcomm Linux. In fact, the process is not pushing, it is pulling. (some people have started working on it, still long way off) It can be done, as shown by efforts by TI, ARM and many more...
    - trome 10y ago
      Hell, even Rockchip, Allwinner and Sony can do it, Qualcomm, Mediatek, Google and Samsung are just not doing it because they are able to skate by without doing it. The funny part is on Windows Phone, Microsoft learned from the kernel development process and made Samsung, LG, HTC, et all upstream their drivers, whereas Google in the same position with the same vendors has not done this and thus Sony is the only OEM pushing drivers upstream.
      - makomk 10y ago
        Upstream Allwinner support is a community effort, and it takes so long to convince the kernel developers to merge code that parts are generally years obsolete by the time they're fully supported. I think the upstream support may almost be at the point that C.H.I.P could use it - but they're using a single-core SoC from early 2012. I've seen patches for basic functionality like clock controllers (without which nothing works) get stuck in endless mailing list arguments about the most elegant approach, contradictory requirements from different maintainers, all sorts. It's not working. The kernels used by actual Allwinner-based Android devices have almost nothing in common with the upstream support. They use a completely different mechanism for describing the hardware configuration, a completely different set of drivers, and are based on a kernel that predates upstream support.
        trome 10y ago
        True, but what has been accomplished with the Linux Sunxi community is a shortening of that loop to bring up new boards with modern kernels, the Pine A64 for example took only a year to gain support[1], and that was around the time they actually started shipping in quantity. Additionally, many of the ethernet drivers, HDMI PHY drivers, Cedrus (provides H.264 & H.265 decoding @ 10bit) are reusable on new chips like the H5[2]. I would not expect much from Allwinner directly, but at this point there is a sizable ecosystem and mainline support for most of their chips, which can't be said for most other ARM vendors. Another aspect of this is Allwinner sells most of their chips thru multiple business units, with the silicon being exactly the same, just what is silkscreened on the top of the package being different[3]. 1 - http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/11/10/allwinner-a64-datasheet-and-user-manual-released/ http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/11/10/allwinner-a64-datashe... and https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1917-armbian-running-on-pine64-and-other-a64h5-devices/ https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1917-armbian-runni... 2 - http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/08/17/allwinner-h5-is-a-quad-core-cortex-a53-processor-for-4k-ott-tv-boxes/ http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/08/17/allwinner-h5-is-a-qua... 3 - https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/2099-crypto-engine-openvpn-related-aes-ni/?hl=%2Ballwinner+%2Bbusiness+%2Bunit#entry16444 https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/2099-crypto-engine...

by zie 10y ago

fapjacks 10y ago

Right. And this is an indicator that the Good King and his generals have done an exemplary job keeping it solid: Everyone uses their product.

izacus 10y ago
Except the largest deployment of Linux in the world: Android devices. Which are running a severely modified kernel because the process of going through mainline to get it mobile ready would be far too painful.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  Not really severely. It has a few questionable tweaks here and there. The questionable part is CPU companies not pushing for upstream integration, so you get e.g. Qualcomm Linux. In fact, the process is not pushing, it is pulling. (some people have started working on it, still long way off) It can be done, as shown by efforts by TI, ARM and many more...
  - trome 10y ago
    Hell, even Rockchip, Allwinner and Sony can do it, Qualcomm, Mediatek, Google and Samsung are just not doing it because they are able to skate by without doing it. The funny part is on Windows Phone, Microsoft learned from the kernel development process and made Samsung, LG, HTC, et all upstream their drivers, whereas Google in the same position with the same vendors has not done this and thus Sony is the only OEM pushing drivers upstream.
    - makomk 10y ago
      Upstream Allwinner support is a community effort, and it takes so long to convince the kernel developers to merge code that parts are generally years obsolete by the time they're fully supported. I think the upstream support may almost be at the point that C.H.I.P could use it - but they're using a single-core SoC from early 2012. I've seen patches for basic functionality like clock controllers (without which nothing works) get stuck in endless mailing list arguments about the most elegant approach, contradictory requirements from different maintainers, all sorts. It's not working. The kernels used by actual Allwinner-based Android devices have almost nothing in common with the upstream support. They use a completely different mechanism for describing the hardware configuration, a completely different set of drivers, and are based on a kernel that predates upstream support.
      - trome 10y ago
        True, but what has been accomplished with the Linux Sunxi community is a shortening of that loop to bring up new boards with modern kernels, the Pine A64 for example took only a year to gain support[1], and that was around the time they actually started shipping in quantity. Additionally, many of the ethernet drivers, HDMI PHY drivers, Cedrus (provides H.264 & H.265 decoding @ 10bit) are reusable on new chips like the H5[2]. I would not expect much from Allwinner directly, but at this point there is a sizable ecosystem and mainline support for most of their chips, which can't be said for most other ARM vendors. Another aspect of this is Allwinner sells most of their chips thru multiple business units, with the silicon being exactly the same, just what is silkscreened on the top of the package being different[3]. 1 - http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/11/10/allwinner-a64-datasheet-and-user-manual-released/ http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/11/10/allwinner-a64-datashe... and https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1917-armbian-running-on-pine64-and-other-a64h5-devices/ https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/1917-armbian-runni... 2 - http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/08/17/allwinner-h5-is-a-quad-core-cortex-a53-processor-for-4k-ott-tv-boxes/ http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/08/17/allwinner-h5-is-a-qua... 3 - https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/2099-crypto-engine-openvpn-related-aes-ni/?hl=%2Ballwinner+%2Bbusiness+%2Bunit#entry16444 https://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/2099-crypto-engine...