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Bringing the Android kernel back to the mainline

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Re: Bringing the Android kernel back to the mainline

#41

Post by pedrocr »

pdimitar wrote: post #39
pedrocr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point isn't that Apple isn't good at doing updates. The very next sentence points out explicitly that they do that above and beyond everyone else in the space. The point is that you're locked in to a specific HW+SW ecosystem at the mercy of the vendor. If you like that ecosystem that may be great service to you, I'm pointing out that the #1 computing platform has only that choice and that's not the case in all th…

The HN crowd, me included, are real humans with real needs and smartphone apps and convenience brings a real value to my life. For one, transparent syncing of photos, notes, basic spreadsheets and many others is a huge selling point of iCloud. It's not about if I can buy a cheap FreeNAS rig -- an i5 CPU and 10-year old motherboard with 16-32GB of DDR2/DDR3 RAM -- and gradually add WD Gold hard drives to it. It's not…

You seem to be taking my point as prescribing what everyone should want. But that's not what I'm suggesting at all. I think well designed consumer software and hardware ecosystems that get out of the way are great. I don't want a world where there's no iPhone experience that has all that value in integration that you're describing. I'm not an OSX user but plenty of family members are and they seem to be well served by exactly that.

My point is that if the world's #1 computing platform only has that choice then we lose the ability to get some kinds of innovation driven by the few percent that care and have the time to tinker. And HN has a much larger proportion of the kinds of people that will want to do that innovation or at least value that it's possible. We wouldn't have gotten Linux if Linus couldn't develop on his hardware.

But maybe we've just been spoiled with mass-market general-purpose hardware up to now and this is the new normal. I shudder to think that but maybe it's true. At this point I don't think I'd much care for a smartphone if I didn't need it for work. And it's the stuff of nightmares for me particularly if that was also the case on the PC/laptop side of things.

Re: Bringing the Android kernel back to the mainline

#42

Post by pedrocr »

fffrantz wrote: post #20
bubblethink wrote: post #14

I'll believe that real progress has been made when google updates the major kernel version for a phone. No OEM (AFAIK) has ever done a kernel (major version) bump.

Honestly, it's extremely difficult to update the kernel since it's usually tied to the BSP the SoC vendor is providing. Also, you gotta keep in mind the difficulties associated with the lazy 3rd parties providing drivers for a single kernel version, making updates almost impossible. -- Disclosure : I work for an OEM as a system architect, and it's been one of my goals to try and get newer kernel versions running. (Su…

Is upstreaming hardware drivers to at least staging quality that much of an uphill task? Seems like this should be fixed at the source by having the initial development go straight into mainline. That's what seems to happen for PC hardware anyway.

Re: Bringing the Android kernel back to the mainline

#43

Post by cronix »

pdimitar wrote: post #40
cronix wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the last 5-6 years however, everyone I asked told me that their iPhone and iPad either gets a bit smoother or stays the same after a new iOS. Except those who Apple was "helping" "preserve battery life" by purposefully slowing the clock speeds on updates without telling them? I've often wondered how many people went out and actually purchased an entirely new phone due to this unannounced "help" vs slapping a (r…

It's a basic electronics knowledge that there's a danger in physically damaging a chip if you continuously feed it less voltage than it needs. What Apple did is to prefer to have people's devices run slower compared to breaking them. What they did wrong was keeping quiet about it. I ain't ever disputing that, it was a really bad decision to hide it. The reasoning to do it however has solid foundations in physical rea…

I was just bringing it up to dispute your claim

> So please don't imply iOS updates brings iDevices "ever closer to unusably slow" because that's very non-factual.

Because THAT was non-factual. They have done it, and for some it was "unusably slow." Whether the reasons were electrically sound wasn't in dispute.

Re: Bringing the Android kernel back to the mainline

#45

Post by pdimitar »

pedrocr wrote: post #41
pdimitar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HN crowd, me included, are real humans with real needs and smartphone apps and convenience brings a real value to my life. For one, transparent syncing of photos, notes, basic spreadsheets and many others is a huge selling point of iCloud. It's not about if I can buy a cheap FreeNAS rig -- an i5 CPU and 10-year old motherboard with 16-32GB of DDR2/DDR3 RAM -- and gradually add WD Gold hard drives to it. It's not…

You seem to be taking my point as prescribing what everyone should want. But that's not what I'm suggesting at all. I think well designed consumer software and hardware ecosystems that get out of the way are great. I don't want a world where there's no iPhone experience that has all that value in integration that you're describing. I'm not an OSX user but plenty of family members are and they seem to be well served b…

Apologies if I misunderstood. No offense meant anywhere.

I agree that it's rather horrifying what we settled for these days. The world to me is a lot darker compared to my student years back in 1997 to 2001 when I played Quake3 for days on end, without sleep, with only WC and food breaks -- and when I was coding my heart and brains out on things I believed could shape the future world.

These are the times I'll dearly remember until the end of my life. And nowadays almost nobody seems to be wanting to make things better. It's saddening and extremely discouraging. I get it and I agree with your overall premise.

What I was mostly saying is that those of us who had wide-eyed naive optimism for the future and were there when the internet started gaining steam are now anywhere between 30 to 50 and we can only dream of the ages past when we could do the things you described without any other worries.

In the end, I am just pointing out that these past life phases are long gone and aren't likely coming back for the most of us. And I'll say it again: I have a big respect for those who still manage to truly innovate and disrupt.

Re: Bringing the Android kernel back to the mainline

#46

Post by pdimitar »

cronix wrote: post #43
pdimitar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a basic electronics knowledge that there's a danger in physically damaging a chip if you continuously feed it less voltage than it needs. What Apple did is to prefer to have people's devices run slower compared to breaking them. What they did wrong was keeping quiet about it. I ain't ever disputing that, it was a really bad decision to hide it. The reasoning to do it however has solid foundations in physical rea…

I was just bringing it up to dispute your claim > So please don't imply iOS updates brings iDevices "ever closer to unusably slow" because that's very non-factual. Because THAT was non-factual. They have done it, and for some it was "unusably slow." Whether the reasons were electrically sound wasn't in dispute.

Seems we're on the same page but we argued different parts.

IMO the original statement implied some ill will from Apple -- a myth that has been debunked pretty quickly. That's what I was arguing against.

Re: Bringing the Android kernel back to the mainline

#47

Post by ori_b »

jumpywizard wrote: post #34
pedrocr wrote: post #12

When I buy a laptop I install whatever is the latest version of Ubuntu on it and am done. When I buy an access point I install whatever is the latest version of OpenWrt on it and am done. I've tried to do the same thing with phones using LineageOS but it's hopeless. Devices are often half broken and are never guaranteed to continue being supported because of this kernel mess. It seems there's slow progress being made…

Android Inc should probably have gone with a micro kernel, instead of going for Linux' monolithic approach. Would have made things much easier to manage in regard to separation of concerns.

Wouldn't really help -- the biggest result would be that vendors would have less of a reason to release things under the GPL.

Re: Bringing the Android kernel back to the mainline

#48

Post by Wowfunhappy »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #27
mixedCase wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about tradeoffs, Android phones getting updates usually means the phone gets faster as opposed to ever closer to unusably slow .

Anecdotally, iOS 11 made my iPhone 6 run slower than iOS 10, but iOS 12 made it run faster than iOS 10. (This is in line with other reports and benchmarks you'll find if you go looking.) There's an awful lot of snark about iOS slowing down with each successive version, but I'm not at all convinced it's universally true. (Again, anecdotally, I'd say iOS 7 and 9–11 were guilty of that.) At any rate, the big issue I ten…

> Here's an awful lot of snark about iOS slowing down with each successive version, but I'm not at all convinced it's universally true. (Again, anecdotally, I'd say iOS 7 and 9–11 were guilty of that.)

It's not universally true. It's mostly true, with a couple of outliers (namely iOS 9 and iOS 11). Most of time, major iOS upgrades slow down older hardware.

I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with this, if not for the fact that iOS downgrades are literally impossible (outside a small window of time). Install an update and discover your phone is too slow? Either learn to live with it or buy a new phone.

Re: Bringing the Android kernel back to the mainline

#49

Post by kbenson »

pdimitar wrote: post #30
pedrocr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do nothing of the sort. You're buying a specific combination of hardware and software that may or may not get upgrades and security fixes over time, just like any Android phone. Apple just has a much better track record at doing that than any Android vendor. On the other hand when I buy a laptop or an access point I just do minimal checking of supported hardware in case there's something that's very exotic and th…

> You do nothing of the sort. You're buying a specific combination of hardware and software that may or may not get upgrades and security fixes over time Bringing in strictly theoretical supposition which is directly at odds with what's historically been a very solid track record from Apple isn't doing your argument any favours. Unless I misunderstood you.

It's not strictly theoretical. The original comment clearly was calling out the Android and mobile ecosystem in comparison to other hardware devices. If I dig out my iPhone 3g, I'm not getting anything close to the latest iOS on it no matter what I try. I can pull out a laptop from the same time period and install quite a few of the top linux distros on it.

Any Apple device is a specific combination of hardware and software that Apple chooses when to stop supporting, and you have very little recourse. Apple has generally been better at providing support to older devices than Android (on average), but in the end the situation is fundamentally the same.

Re: Bringing the Android kernel back to the mainline

#50

Post by pedrocr »

pdimitar wrote: post #45
pedrocr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be taking my point as prescribing what everyone should want. But that's not what I'm suggesting at all. I think well designed consumer software and hardware ecosystems that get out of the way are great. I don't want a world where there's no iPhone experience that has all that value in integration that you're describing. I'm not an OSX user but plenty of family members are and they seem to be well served b…

Apologies if I misunderstood. No offense meant anywhere. I agree that it's rather horrifying what we settled for these days. The world to me is a lot darker compared to my student years back in 1997 to 2001 when I played Quake3 for days on end, without sleep, with only WC and food breaks -- and when I was coding my heart and brains out on things I believed could shape the future world. These are the times I'll dearly…

> What I was mostly saying is that those of us who had wide-eyed naive optimism for the future and were there when the internet started gaining steam are now anywhere between 30 to 50 and we can only dream of the ages past when we could do the things you described without any other worries.

I agree and identify with this. The reason I point these things out here is that the kinds of people actually doing the leg work on these platforms are on the site. And in some cases if they did a few things differently (e.g., upstream the drivers much earlier in the SoC bringup) then maybe we could actually fix this. I'm not nearly as pessimistic about the situation as you :)

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