Google outlines plans for mainline Linux kernel support in Android

guest · Nov 19, 2019

Google outlines plans for mainline Linux kernel support in Android
Google wants less forking, more modularization for Android's Linux kernel
November 20, 2019
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...for-mainline-linux-kernel-support-in-android/

It seems like Google is working hard to update and upstream the Linux kernel that sits at the heart of every Android phone.

The company was a big participant in this year's Linux Plumbers Conference, a yearly meeting of the top Linux developers, and Google spent a lot of time talking about getting Android to work with a generic Linux kernel instead of the highly-customized version it uses now. It even showed an Android phone running a mainline Linux kernel.

This is an extremely long journey that results in every device shipping millions of lines of out-of-tree kernel code. Every shipping device kernel is different and device specific—basically no device kernel from one phone will work on another phone.

"Today, we don't know what it takes to be added to the kernel to run on a [specific] Android device," Android Kernel Team lead Sandeep Patil told the group at LPC 2019. "We know what it takes to run Android but not necessarily on any given hardware. So our goal is to basically find all of that out, then upstream it and try to be as close to mainline as possible."
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guest · Sep 24, 2021

Android to take an “upstream first” development model for the Linux kernel
Google stops by the Linux Plumbers Conference for an Android update.
September 23, 2021
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...first-development-model-for-the-linux-kernel/

The Linux Plumbers Conference is this week, and since Android is one of the biggest distributors of the Linux kernel in the world, Google software engineer Todd Kjos stopped by for a progress report from the Android team. Android 12—which will be out any day now—promises to bring Android closer than ever to mainline Linux by shipping Google's "Generic Kernel Image" (GKI) to end-users.

Android's kernel fragmentation is a huge mess, and you can imagine how long and difficult the road is for a bugfix at the top of the fork tree to reach to the bottom, where end-users live.
It's also a big time sink, and even Google phones typically ship kernels that start at two years old.
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Google has been on a journey to lessen the distance between Android and Linux with the GKI. The goal is for Google to fork the Linux kernel once for Android, instead of three times, and give SoC and device manufacturers space for their customizations via plug-in modules.

Kjos says Google prefers short hooks for these vendor modules as opposed to out-of-tree code, because "we want to be as close to upstream as we possibly can." Google is working on getting vendor code upstreamed, too, but admits, "this is a multi-year project, and we don't expect we'll ever get all the way there."
Kjos laid out a timeline for the next few years of kernel work, which has 2020-2022 as work toward upstreaming existing features and isolating vendor changes in modules, and starting in 2023, taking an "upstream first" development model for new features.
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NormanF · Oct 3, 2021

Makulu Linux has just launched Droid, which aims to bring Android apps to the Linux desktop via the Core base. Its a unique marriage of Linux and Android much like what Google is seeking to bring to the Linux kernel.

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