Comment by saidinesh5
1 day ago
Closed source firmware is one thing that actually runs outside the Linux system... but there's also the user space libraries that are needed to interact with the drivers (eg libgl etc... or the vendor partition in most Android phones)
I don't think anyone expects non specialized os images to run on this hardware. That would require a standardized userspace abstraction layer like the one Android has been building out. The kernel is just a tiny piece of what's necessary because drivers have effectively moved into userspace. Graphics is the only area that has embraced this properly in "desktop Linux"
>That would require a standardized userspace abstraction layer like the one Android has been building out Can you expound on this? And can desktop linux take advantage of it or do something similar?
The android hal situation is tied to binder and a lot of androidisms. It would be a pretty big shift in culture to adopt that stuff into desktop linux. ChromeOS is likely rebasing on top of android in part to take advantage of the bsp layer abstractions android provides. A proper organization needs to be formed to take on this challenge and I'm not sure any of the existing players are well equipped to lead the charge. Valve and other os distributors who want to ship arm products should be sufficiently motivated though. Most just end up choosing to build on top of Android though because it's easier.
The stability layer also doesn't actually let you seemlessly update the kernel. Those userspace binaries are coupled to specific kernel releases, and it requires work on the vendors part to facilitate new kernel version upgrades. Maybe being upstream will force them to actually take backwards comparability with older userspace binaries more seriously though.