Qualcomm hardware support increasingly in good shape with Linux kernel • Hacker News Board

Re: Qualcomm hardware support increasingly in good shape with Linux kernel

#21

Post by jauntywundrkind » Tue, Feb 20, 2024, 2:08 AM UTC

stefan_ wrote: post #11

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #2

There really has been a huge shift for Qualcomm, and it's great to see. It's so interesting to me to guess how and where this is happening, what the pressure points are driving this. It feels like there's two areas that have been highly motivated to make Qualcomm more than good for limited-lifetime appliances running unmaintained kernel. First around were the motivated hobbyists, namely, OpenWRT. OpenWRT already had…

I guess the good news is that if I remember correctly, the NSS stuff was already dropped again for the next generation... There is also the whole interesting disconnect where they employ one or two cranky old timers to maintain the upstream ath drivers, then have the usual Indian teams write untested rushed upstream "support" patch series for the routing WiFi chips. The old timers don't want to test them because they…

It'd be neat to see NSS dropped. There are still the NPU (network processing units) on the upcoming Wifi7/BE hardware, IPQ95xx IPQ53xx: https://techinfodepot.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Qualcomm#be_.28Wi-F...

Re: Qualcomm hardware support increasingly in good shape with Linux kernel

#22

Post by jauntywundrkind » Tue, Feb 20, 2024, 2:11 AM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #8

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having a heckuva time reading the tea leaves on GKI. On the one hand, we might actually be able to upgrade kernels! Neat, overdue, necessary. S24 has 7 years of updates! Why & what changed? Well, there's decent upstream support. Ok, so they can keep the computer running. But the phone is basically a whole second system, and GKI promise to let them keep the phone parts running along as is, while the computer part…

GKI is short for Generic Kernel Images. Android kernels have always been heavily forked compared to mainline, this is not a new feature of GKI's. And if anything, the distance is shrinking over time, not getting larger. It's not Google's fault that manufacturers' BSP's tend to rely on proprietary blobs, that's always been common throughout the embedded ecosystem. > If I can run a Debian phone & have all the fancy bit…

Good reply, thanks.

I agree, the distance between Android and mainline has been shrinking and that's wonderful to see. Agreed again, no one has been upstreaming a good amount of their work; that's the state of the world. I'm not totally willing to absolve Google of all fault/responsibility here, but I understand-ish. I'm still not sure though that GKI doesn't let us backslide, doesn't let folks do even more closed, doesn't reverse some of our gains.

As for Droidian & the ilk; I'm happy these exist. At the risk of once more going over the top though: I feel very differently about running my own Linux userland hoisted far atop a tower of controlled, locked-down platform I don't have access to, than I do having actual access to devices. It's wild how not our own our devices are. Maybe I can run a userland, but if I cant coordinate bluetooth devices and audio and display outputs myself, it's not really a good userland. And if Google SafetyNet is underfoot controlling my most personal machine forever, well, that's a sad shitty anti-user feature the future is being consigned to.

Re: Qualcomm hardware support increasingly in good shape with Linux kernel

#23

Post by ranguna » Tue, Feb 20, 2024, 8:53 AM UTC

Can't wait to switch my laptop to a phone running full Linux.

Imagine just walking around with one normal phone and one phone that you can hook to with xreal glasses, connect that phone to a remote server and you got yourself all the power you want in your hands (provided you have good Internet).

Re: Qualcomm hardware support increasingly in good shape with Linux kernel

#24

Post by pjmlp » Tue, Feb 20, 2024, 12:19 PM UTC

ranguna wrote: post #23

Can't wait to switch my laptop to a phone running full Linux. Imagine just walking around with one normal phone and one phone that you can hook to with xreal glasses, connect that phone to a remote server and you got yourself all the power you want in your hands (provided you have good Internet).

OpenMoko, Ubuntu Touch, N900, Sailfish,....

Re: Qualcomm hardware support increasingly in good shape with Linux kernel

#25

Post by fsflover » Tue, Feb 20, 2024, 10:42 PM UTC

ranguna wrote: post #23

Can't wait to switch my laptop to a phone running full Linux. Imagine just walking around with one normal phone and one phone that you can hook to with xreal glasses, connect that phone to a remote server and you got yourself all the power you want in your hands (provided you have good Internet).

Here you go: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 or https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone.

Re: Qualcomm hardware support increasingly in good shape with Linux kernel

#26

Post by unmole » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 12:34 AM UTC

dirkf wrote: post #6

On a related note: I have the impression Broadcom is more and more losing terrain to the likes of Qualcomm and Mediatek. A couple of years ago nearly everybody was using Broadcom chips in their products (or at least in the consumer-grade telecom devices I'm familiar with as part of my job). Now I'm seeing a shift away from them. I can't really say if it's due to better features, price, vendor support, open source sup…

On the other hand, Broadcom is dominant in high end network gear. The only real competition was Tofino which Intel killed off.

Re: Qualcomm hardware support increasingly in good shape with Linux kernel

#27

Post by Gibbon1 » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 12:47 AM UTC

bgnn wrote: post #16

dirkf wrote: post #6

On a related note: I have the impression Broadcom is more and more losing terrain to the likes of Qualcomm and Mediatek. A couple of years ago nearly everybody was using Broadcom chips in their products (or at least in the consumer-grade telecom devices I'm familiar with as part of my job). Now I'm seeing a shift away from them. I can't really say if it's due to better features, price, vendor support, open source sup…

it's because of the CEO Hock Tan. Broadcom became a sort of investment fund rather than an engineering company. Hock even wanted to buy Qualcomm but got blocked by Trump. This was because it was very likely Hock would just divide it into pieces, cut R&D and start charging 2-3x more for the existing products like he did for Broadcom, symantec, CA techmologies and now vmware. He even sued Broadcom customers like VW.. D…

If you asked for my reflexive feeling about using a Broadcom chip in a new design the answer is you're asking to be in a abusive relationship with a supplier.

Re: Qualcomm hardware support increasingly in good shape with Linux kernel

#28

Post by unmole » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 3:35 AM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #27

bgnn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's because of the CEO Hock Tan. Broadcom became a sort of investment fund rather than an engineering company. Hock even wanted to buy Qualcomm but got blocked by Trump. This was because it was very likely Hock would just divide it into pieces, cut R&D and start charging 2-3x more for the existing products like he did for Broadcom, symantec, CA techmologies and now vmware. He even sued Broadcom customers like VW.. D…

If you asked for my reflexive feeling about using a Broadcom chip in a new design the answer is you're asking to be in a abusive relationship with a supplier.

TINA. You aren't exactly spoilt for choice if you want to build a 400G switch.

Re: Qualcomm hardware support increasingly in good shape with Linux kernel

#29

Post by ranguna » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 8:41 AM UTC

fsflover wrote: post #25

ranguna wrote: post #23

Can't wait to switch my laptop to a phone running full Linux. Imagine just walking around with one normal phone and one phone that you can hook to with xreal glasses, connect that phone to a remote server and you got yourself all the power you want in your hands (provided you have good Internet).

Here you go: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 or https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone .

Las time I checked, the battery on those was horrible because the cpu just uses too much power. Hence why I'm waiting for SD 8 support, plus SD is much faster, just in case I'm somewhere with low connectivity and need to run vscode (electron behemoth) locally.

Thanks for the suggestions though!

Re: Qualcomm hardware support increasingly in good shape with Linux kernel

#30

Post by fsflover » Wed, Feb 21, 2024, 10:27 AM UTC

ranguna wrote: post #29

fsflover wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here you go: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 or https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone .

Las time I checked, the battery on those was horrible because the cpu just uses too much power. Hence why I'm waiting for SD 8 support, plus SD is much faster, just in case I'm somewhere with low connectivity and need to run vscode (electron behemoth) locally. Thanks for the suggestions though!

https://forums.puri.sm/t/i-am-getting-17h-of-battery-time-on...