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This blogpost has waaaay too much assumptions. When reading about this it seems easy to rip out Kernels, OS & Software and put it like a layer on a cake on top

This blogpost has waaaay too much assumptions. When reading about this it seems easy to rip out Kernels, OS & Software and put it like a layer on a cake on top of a new OS. Even for Google this is crazy complicated. It will not be that easy. For sure not... and I also see no clear strategy WHY somebody should do that. It's like baking the cake with too much ingredients. ;)

djsumdog 10y ago
I can see the kernel thing happening. Just the licensing and breaking ABI is one of the biggest factors in not being able to have an easily upgradable android. I only see this as a good thing if this ensures an easier upgrade path than in Android; and if vendor ROMs can easily be replaced by a stock OS (like on Windows).
- therealmarv 10y ago
  I definitely can not see the Kernel thing happen. Ever thought of power management and keeping the whole system fluent? This are all not easy problems which you solve in 1 or 2 years. It may only work for very specialized hardware... speaking of hardware. Hardware driver support is also something most other Kernels suffer from in comparison to e.g. Linux.
  - Roy0 10y ago
    > Hardware driver support is also something most other Kernels suffer from in comparison to e.g. Linux. So? Google doesn't have to support all hardware, they can pick to support only the hardware they want. That's what they already do with ChromeOS. Installing ChromiumOS on unsupported hardware can have its issues. The reverse is true too, installing not-ChromeOS Linux or another OS on Chromebook does not always work well, although it's fine on some specific models. Android is like that too, and in a much worse way than for Chromebooks. We're not talking about stellar linux kernel support for all the custom ARM SOC that are out there. All manufacturers write their own closed source hardware support for android and this is how android ends up having issues with updating, since whenever Google updates the linux kernel it breaks the ABI and all the support manufacturers wrote for the previous version, and manufacturers do not want to spend so much time on needless busywork such as keeping up with kernel API churn that exists just to satisfy the dev team sense of perfection.

djsumdog 10y ago

I can see the kernel thing happening. Just the licensing and breaking ABI is one of the biggest factors in not being able to have an easily upgradable android. I only see this as a good thing if this ensures an easier upgrade path than in Android; and if vendor ROMs can easily be replaced by a stock OS (like on Windows).

therealmarv 10y ago
I definitely can not see the Kernel thing happen. Ever thought of power management and keeping the whole system fluent? This are all not easy problems which you solve in 1 or 2 years. It may only work for very specialized hardware... speaking of hardware. Hardware driver support is also something most other Kernels suffer from in comparison to e.g. Linux.
- Roy0 10y ago
  > Hardware driver support is also something most other Kernels suffer from in comparison to e.g. Linux. So? Google doesn't have to support all hardware, they can pick to support only the hardware they want. That's what they already do with ChromeOS. Installing ChromiumOS on unsupported hardware can have its issues. The reverse is true too, installing not-ChromeOS Linux or another OS on Chromebook does not always work well, although it's fine on some specific models. Android is like that too, and in a much worse way than for Chromebooks. We're not talking about stellar linux kernel support for all the custom ARM SOC that are out there. All manufacturers write their own closed source hardware support for android and this is how android ends up having issues with updating, since whenever Google updates the linux kernel it breaks the ABI and all the support manufacturers wrote for the previous version, and manufacturers do not want to spend so much time on needless busywork such as keeping up with kernel API churn that exists just to satisfy the dev team sense of perfection.