Funny, the comment types here are the same as on Youtube:
- “I still run Android and it is totally fine, will never switch Android just got worse!”
- “Well, money”
- “Companies need to support phones longer”
- “I just use LineageOS on that device”
- Misinformation
Their own phones have support for the mainline kernel. It is the vendors that dont want to upstream their drivers and produce half-proprietary garbage they dont publish, so nobody can update these devices.
But Googles decides, that that is possible. I fthey changed the structure to enforce a seperation there’s nothing that would keep Android updates from those devices. Put all hardware and device specific stuf in a seperate layer and have it accessible to the updatable system. And it’s not like these vendors have an alternative to go to
Could you elaborate?
Android uses Linux, a monolithic kernel. You cant just separate drivers.
I also heard that OEMs write horrible drivers, which wouldnt work on a microkernel without maaajor porting issues.
And there are Linux distros with rolling releases, where the drivers stay where they are and the OS around them gets updated without issue. I’m sure the smart people at the Android team could do something similar
The drivers are in the kernel, kept updated with every release. As I said, pixels at least boot with mainline kernel support, but the Android kernel is modded.
And then manifacturer use out of tree drivers as core part of their kernel.
Yes I know the manufacturers do, but there’s no reason for the drivers to be replaced when the kernel is updated, you could hold them separately or reapply them after an update
This doesnt always work as nonstable kernels (or even porting to a newer kernel) changes in their interface.
Like, backportig patches to a 6 year or more old kernel is crazy! My 6a runs on 5.14 and that is a currently supported phone.