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Comment by neuromancer2701 | Hacker News Reader

This would seem to allow security updates at a faster rate, but the linux kernel will forever be abandoned to hardware vendor whims aka still on 3.10.X

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It seems they're making the vendors push their kernel patches into AOSP.

From TFA:

" In addition to the architectural changes, we're working with our silicon and device partners to take their code changes, such as features for a carrier network in a specific country, and move them into the common Android Open Source Project (AOSP) codebase. For example, Sony and Qualcomm contributed dozens of features and hundreds of bugfixes to Android O so they no longer need to rework these patches with each new release of Android. "

So is this a way around mainlining all of the silicon vendor's various kernels? I have heard that each vendor just hacks their hardware into the 3.10.X and then just keeps a repo of it to meet open source requirements. Because they are unable to make the quality requirements to get their code upstream.

By the time anyone can get all the code required to support a modern SoC upstream in Linux, it's already obsolete.

Perhaps it's time for a Halium/libhybris approach. If I understand correctly, Ubuntu Touch and other GNU/Linux platforms would use an upstream kernel (4.x) to boot a device and delegate to an lxc container to pull in only whatever binary-blob hardware support from a 3.10 Android kernel was necessary.

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