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Switching from Android style Linux HAL to FreeDesktop style Linux HAL… I honestly think we need more Linux HAL options than just those two, when one is threaten

by remix2000 2mo ago

Switching from Android style Linux HAL to FreeDesktop style Linux HAL… I honestly think we need more Linux HAL options than just those two, when one is threatening to self-destruct and the other is arguably the single worst interface design ever conceived, by all measurements.

doublepg23 2mo ago
Can you expand on this? I did follow the “Moblin/Maemo/MeeGo” forks back in the day and it struck me as odd Android pulled off the HAL layer but “Linux” was unable to.
- remix2000 2mo ago
  Every [Linux based] OS usually needs some sort of HAL to wrap [ioctl] driver calls into APIs that can be consumed by more than one process at a time. Nokia/Moblin/Sailfish use Freedesktop style HALs, i.e. stuff like Wayland, Pipewire, anything accessible over DBus (which also implies extremely slow IPC by any standards; mach ipc on apple's darwins is probably faster [sobs]). Basically I'm suggesting that we might need a whole new OS on top of the Linux kernel.
  - thyristan 2mo ago
    I guess we just need the DBUS developers to get their heads out of their asses, that's all: https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/6/23/657 https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/6/23/657
    - remix2000 2mo ago
      Nah, DBus itself is plain bad interface design. Perhaps they could just piggyback off Binder if DBus itself weren't beyond saving. Also, despite a common sentiment online, it's not at all a complex process to implement a Binder userspace (given you have a sensible IDL in the first place, that is…) Wrt/ torvie's narcissistic snarks linked above, the most important task for a kernel is still to facilitate fast IPC. The only viable forms of IPC in Linux are UDS and Binder. The former is slow and clunky. The latter is not a valid choice for DBus. So DBus devs have to manage slow, clunky, ill-suited legacy IPC. When a kernel can't be bothered to accommodate one of the most important operating systems built upon it, that seems really bad.
nine_k 2mo ago
Since AOSP is open source, is it possible to reuse the Android HAL?
- MrDrMcCoy 2mo ago
  That's what the Halium project does, but it would be better to have an equivalent, independent alternative.

doublepg23 2mo ago

Can you expand on this? I did follow the “Moblin/Maemo/MeeGo” forks back in the day and it struck me as odd Android pulled off the HAL layer but “Linux” was unable to.

remix2000 2mo ago
Every [Linux based] OS usually needs some sort of HAL to wrap [ioctl] driver calls into APIs that can be consumed by more than one process at a time. Nokia/Moblin/Sailfish use Freedesktop style HALs, i.e. stuff like Wayland, Pipewire, anything accessible over DBus (which also implies extremely slow IPC by any standards; mach ipc on apple's darwins is probably faster [sobs]). Basically I'm suggesting that we might need a whole new OS on top of the Linux kernel.
- thyristan 2mo ago
  I guess we just need the DBUS developers to get their heads out of their asses, that's all: https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/6/23/657 https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/6/23/657
  - remix2000 2mo ago
    Nah, DBus itself is plain bad interface design. Perhaps they could just piggyback off Binder if DBus itself weren't beyond saving. Also, despite a common sentiment online, it's not at all a complex process to implement a Binder userspace (given you have a sensible IDL in the first place, that is…) Wrt/ torvie's narcissistic snarks linked above, the most important task for a kernel is still to facilitate fast IPC. The only viable forms of IPC in Linux are UDS and Binder. The former is slow and clunky. The latter is not a valid choice for DBus. So DBus devs have to manage slow, clunky, ill-suited legacy IPC. When a kernel can't be bothered to accommodate one of the most important operating systems built upon it, that seems really bad.

nine_k 2mo ago

Since AOSP is open source, is it possible to reuse the Android HAL?

MrDrMcCoy 2mo ago
That's what the Halium project does, but it would be better to have an equivalent, independent alternative.