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Comment by 2020aj | Hacker News Reader

2020aj

Librem was geared towards openness/security, this just has a focus on repairability. Can Framework not just use off the shelf parts that already have the proper firmware/drivers available for windows/linux and then encounter none of the same issues? Or is the issue the interfaces b/w the modules and mainboard?

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I think the particular problem for devices based on ARM SoCs is they’re not on the mainline kernel, support for hardware and for upgrading software relies on a whole pile of hacks on top of an ancient kernel version, and that means that upgrading to a new Android version requires applying a pile of new hacks on top again, and can be very laborious to get a reasonable, stable result. So Fairphone used a chipset whose manufacturer quickly dropped support for upgrading beyond a certain Android version, and that made it difficult for Fairphone to support the upgrade themselves.

Whereas if x86 systems have support on the mainline kernel, future kernel upgrades will be supported.

Is there a reason why there needs to be so much tweaks to get the kernel running on a modern SoC?

Any reason there couldn't be a "canonical" ARM64 standard for SoC?

There is a "canonical" ARM64 standard, so to speak -- ARM's ServerReady architecture, which implements UEFI+ACPI, which coupled with the right hardware, could create the same kind of ecosystem Intel/PCs have enjoyed for so long.

The problem is a lot of ARM SoCs have tightly integrated, custom hardware which requires modified or new drivers, and the tweaks needed to use them are often either very dirty and won't be accepted into mainline Linux without basically redoing them, or are occasionally just hooks for proprietary userland blobs to interface with, and are effectively obfuscated, satisfying the "letter of the law" for GPL but no more.

There are some devices like this on x86 too, FWIW -- Google's Pixelbook, as an example, has a few devices that effectively need a custom fork of Linux to get the audio device to function correctly, because it's driven over i2c (IIRC) and needs special blobs uploaded and an out-of-tree driver to function.

ARM SoCs could be more "PC like" but it'd be more expensive, which as far as I can tell is a big reason it hasn't happened. No real incentive as people don't seem to care if their OS goes out of date in 4 years.

This could change with support for Apple's M1 chip being added to the Linux mainline hopefully later this year.

For desktop computers this is a lot easier, for laptops it's still not that easy. The motherboards are not just COTS "Asus z490 prime" or whatever, and you can't just include a nice standard USB mouse which requires no drivers. If you don't have a good plan for how you will ensure you have good motherboard firmware and touchpad drivers, then they won't turn out good.

Luckily it seems like Framework do have this well under control (somewhat quietly :)

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