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Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

> Make it so that the kernel and OS can be fully updated independent of device drivers and bypass manufacturers for distribution.

This would mean that you'd have to commit to a stable ABI for device drivers, forever.

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Or maintain device drivers in mainline. Anything less is irresponsible and "designed to fail".

This is why it is so important to buy a device that has open source drivers. If your device can run mainline linux without any patches then you can be pretty sure it will be easy to update for a very long time.

The only phone I know which fits this description is the Librem 5. Unfortunately it would currently be a lot cheaper to just buy second hand android phones every 2 years than to buy one of these but hopefully they can get the price down later.

The postmarketOS project is working on mainlining drivers for other devices. They're almost done wrt. the LG Nexus 5, which is their current flagship (though mobile voice/data support is still problematic)

I tried installing PMOS 5 on a nexus 5 and it seemed a long long way away from being usable.

Well there is also the fairphone! And pinephone in the future (based on rk3399, so not bad mainline support). Peripherals are always iffy, but sometimes you need to make sacrifices.

Not forever. Windows XP drivers don't work in Windows 10.

5 years of support for a driver ABI seems achievable though. Especially for basic things like proximity sensors, touch screens, buttons etc.

How often is the ABI for a button going to change?

And?

The mainline kernel doesn't have a stable ABI, so you're stuck maintaining a fork, forever.

What it would mean is committing to supporting previous interfaces for some window of time when introducing new ones, not one interface ever.

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