5 ms·

It will increase stability in a very important way because they apparently want stability of drivers, which Linux does not offer.

yc12340 8y ago
> they apparently want stability of drivers Strangely, the only Android drivers, that can be trivially ported between Android version, are those "unstable" bits in Linux kernel. Take any postmarket smartphone firmware — if something does not work after porting to new Android version, you can bet, that it is a proprietary userspace blob. Who develops HAL for those blobs? — Google. Who controls it's API? — Google. What "stability of drivers" are we talking about here? Certainly not the kind, helpful to users.
- ebg13 8y ago
  > Strangely, the only Android drivers, that can be trivially ported between Android version, are those "unstable" bits in Linux kernel. That's only because the Linux kernel is actively hostile to the idea of maintaining a stable driver interface. Windows 7 drivers from 10 years ago still work in Windows 10.
imtringued 8y ago
ARM and the SoC Vendors don't like open sourcing their drivers. They prefer to just dump binary blobs and stop support after 2 years. The users couldn't care less because they buy a new phone anyway. (except me)
- phkahler 8y ago
  If the OS and APIs were stable, nobody would ever need to update a driver unless they wanted a bug fix.
  - ufo 8y ago
    Even Windows has a hard time keeping their OS APIs stable. Drivers written for Vista didn't necessarily work on Windows 7 and so on. This is one of the reasons why Linux highly encourages open sourcing the things so that the driver code can be updated when an API needs to change.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - nicoburns 8y ago
      My understanding is that this is something that a microkernel design ought to be able to improve upon...
    - lbenes 8y ago
      > Drivers written for Vista didn't necessarily work on Windows 7 This is patently, provably FALSE[1] MS goes out of their way to NOT to break APIs. My ancient ATI netbook can run Windows Vista graphics drivers on Win 10. MS only breaks driver API when massive kernel/underlying APIs demand it. ex. 98->NT, XP->Visa. Now contrast that with Linux. Linux kernel devs are openly hostile to binary blob drivers so they make no attempt to preserve ABI stability. I've see this happen multiple times with ATI binary drivers in GNU/Linux and when I was running cyanogenmod on my phone. [1] https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-get-drivers-for-windows-10-3620841/ https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-get-drivers...

yc12340 8y ago

> they apparently want stability of drivers Strangely, the only Android drivers, that can be trivially ported between Android version, are those "unstable" bits in Linux kernel. Take any postmarket smartphone firmware — if something does not work after porting to new Android version, you can bet, that it is a proprietary userspace blob. Who develops HAL for those blobs? — Google. Who controls it's API? — Google. What "stability of drivers" are we talking about here? Certainly not the kind, helpful to users.

ebg13 8y ago
> Strangely, the only Android drivers, that can be trivially ported between Android version, are those "unstable" bits in Linux kernel. That's only because the Linux kernel is actively hostile to the idea of maintaining a stable driver interface. Windows 7 drivers from 10 years ago still work in Windows 10.

imtringued 8y ago

ARM and the SoC Vendors don't like open sourcing their drivers. They prefer to just dump binary blobs and stop support after 2 years. The users couldn't care less because they buy a new phone anyway. (except me)

phkahler 8y ago
If the OS and APIs were stable, nobody would ever need to update a driver unless they wanted a bug fix.
- ufo 8y ago
  Even Windows has a hard time keeping their OS APIs stable. Drivers written for Vista didn't necessarily work on Windows 7 and so on. This is one of the reasons why Linux highly encourages open sourcing the things so that the driver code can be updated when an API needs to change.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    My understanding is that this is something that a microkernel design ought to be able to improve upon...
  - lbenes 8y ago
    > Drivers written for Vista didn't necessarily work on Windows 7 This is patently, provably FALSE[1] MS goes out of their way to NOT to break APIs. My ancient ATI netbook can run Windows Vista graphics drivers on Win 10. MS only breaks driver API when massive kernel/underlying APIs demand it. ex. 98->NT, XP->Visa. Now contrast that with Linux. Linux kernel devs are openly hostile to binary blob drivers so they make no attempt to preserve ABI stability. I've see this happen multiple times with ATI binary drivers in GNU/Linux and when I was running cyanogenmod on my phone. [1] https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-get-drivers-for-windows-10-3620841/ https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/how-get-drivers...