Hacker News Reader

Comment by kitsunesoba | Hacker News Reader

Vanilla Android or AOSP might kinda have “Linux Spirit” but I’m not sure what gets shipped on most consumer devices does… lots of random things locked down (including boot loader, sometimes), crapware all over the place, drivers and kernel changes that aren’t upstreamed making it difficult to install anything but carrier/manufacturer-flavored Android, etc.

I think most people rooting for “smartphone Linux” are looking to be able to swap and customize OSes on their phones and tablets as easily as they do on their x86 PCs without futzing around with device specific ROMs and the like.

View on HN

Android has something called GSIs (Generic System Images) that will run on any device that supports Android 9 and above. They don't always support custom hardware, but this isn't really any different from pure Linux. Instead of building a mobile ecosystem from scratch, why not build a community around submitting drivers to a build based on GSI?

AIUI, GSI's are not quite "generic", there are a few architectural variants. Plus they only give you a "system" partition, so the kernel and low-level userspace code (driver HAL, init-system etc.) are still Android-native and device-specific. Droidian is trying to implement something that's as-close-as-possible to Linux as GSI's, and it's not easy.

Even AOSP is running something quite far from a mainline kernel, although they've been gradually reducing the delta with Linux proper. It really is a fork.

But why is a fork still not Linux? Every major distributor runs a fork.

Because Linux kernel is an implementation detail in what Android userspace is concerned.

My pixel broke (was running CalyxOS, lineage before that), and I had to get a quick burner phone to make work calls. Got a $200 dollar used samsung. I didn't realize what utter trash nonsense is loaded onto normal phones. It's absolutely bonkers what Samsung did to destroy Android with no value add.

> It's absolutely bonkers what Samsung did to destroy Android with no value add.

They added value, just not for end users.

To be honest though, there's a huge difference between the Android experience on a $200 Samsung phone, and a $2000 one. I have a Galaxy S10, and the experience is fairly good (though I would prefer at least a vanilla Android).

Each AOSP version is just a big code drop from Google. It's really far away in the spirit. Not even talking about how difficult it is to patch some component as a user.

No it's not, AOSP is developed in the open. Directed by Google sure, but not just a code drop every release.

Check out the current PRs in gerrit: https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+-is:wi...

I have taken a look at random git repo that seemed important enough: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/system/core.git

There's about 5% of commits made by people with e-mail domain different than google.com, android.com or chromium.org (6% if you count the last one too).

Pretty much the same result on another one: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base.gi...

Do you get to see the code of yet unreleased versions of Android? Sure, they do accept some patches, but "developed in the open" doesn't seem to describe their development model.

>including boot loader, sometimes

Perhaps in the past, but it feels like more and more this is shifting toward the expectation, rather than the exception.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com