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> To which trusted source can I initiate a remote update?

Probably you can get some sort of AOSP build running on it, and patch it yourself to get at least somewhat up-to-date components.

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Generally these devices use the ancient kernel that they shipped with with the current userland.

This is because the device drivers are compiled for that kernel version with no open source alternative.

So whilst it might be running a newer version of Android. It isn't like installing Ubuntu 20.04 on a 10 year old laptop.

Honestly, Google should require as part of the Play Store certification that vendors ship their goddamn drivers in a quality that is acceptable to upstream Linux, or at least get them to staging quality.

The situation exists entirely because Google created it, they designed a HAL (hardware abstraction layer) with the intention of letting device manufacturers design devices while skirting GPLv2 requirements.

https://source.android.com/devices/architecture

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