Adreno 619 Support Added To Mesa - Enables Fairphone 4 GPU Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Adreno 619 Support Added To Mesa - Enables Fairphone 4 GPU Support

Linux 5.20 is adding Qualcomm Adreno 619 GPU support to the MSM DRM/KMS driver and now the Freedreno Gallium3D driver is also enabling that A619 GPU support which in turn enables open-source OpenGL acceleration on devices like the Fairphone 4...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Freedreno-Adreno-619

[SteamPunker]

Amazing news! Fairphone is known for manufacturing phones with an as ethical as possible supply chain, while companies such as Pine64 and Purism have been working on phones based on open hardware, being able to run open-source operating systems. The former and latter overlap in terms of repairability, which is good.

But so far, finding a device that was both ethically manufactured (or at least striving to do so) as well as allowing open-source ROMs and operating systems to be installed on them, has been a bit of a challenge. Also, there are currently no "open hardware" phones with 5G support yet, whereas the Fairphone 4 supports 5G.


Granted, Fairphone's cooperation with the e.foundation and LineageOS development community has been commendable, but having open-source GPU drivers improves this by a lot.

Good job, everybody who helped open the Fairphone 4 up further! There are still many aspects in which this hardware could be opened up further, but this is a major milestone in that direction.

[PublicNuisance]

The things most phones lack is mainline kernel support and Mesa support so this is good to see. I would get a Fairphone but they don't sell them in canada yet. Closest I can get is my Teracube 2e which has a removable battery.

[nist]

A cheap tablet in which I can install Linux natively (= with no workarounds, full functional, also 3d and video decoding)? Thanks.

[YCbCr]

A cheap tablet in which I can install Linux natively (= with no workarounds, full functional, also 3d and video decoding)? Thanks.

Well, depending on your definition of "cheap" (and availability / pricing where you live) you might want to look into lower end x86 tablets / detachables for a "plug & play" linux experience. Those also typically come with a lot more RAM to cope with Windows bloat (compared to similarly priced Android tablets).

I'm currently running a full fat GNOME Desktop on a Lenovo ideaPad Duet 3i and the ootb experience was quite alright. Probably better than on Windows if I could be arsed to upstream the few workarounds that were required.

[Quackdoc]

Well, depending on your definition of "cheap" (and availability / pricing where you live) you might want to look into lower end x86 tablets / detachables for a "plug & play" linux experience. Those also typically come with a lot more RAM to cope with Windows bloat (compared to similarly priced Android tablets).

I'm currently running a full fat GNOME Desktop on a Lenovo ideaPad Duet 3i and the ootb experience was quite alright. Probably better than on Windows if I could be arsed to upstream the few workarounds that were required.

also some chromebooks seem to be quickly suiting that bill too. but they don't seem to be quite there yet

[tuxd3v]

The things most phones lack is mainline kernel support and Mesa support so this is good to see. I would get a Fairphone but they don't sell them in canada yet. Closest I can get is my Teracube 2e which has a removable battery.

Actually I like a lot of teracube..
It has 1 feature that Fair-phone doesn't have, and I choose smartphones that do have that feature only..it has FM Radio,a 3.5mm phone jack and a bigger battery than Fairphone4
Its a smartphone that I would buy..

Does teracube or fair-phone have the google play store to install apps?

[robclark]

A cheap tablet in which I can install Linux natively (= with no workarounds, full functional, also 3d and video decoding)? Thanks.

any snapdragon chromebook detachable, perhaps? (hp x2 11, lenovo duet5 and duet3)

Boot flow is a bit different compared to x86 windows devices but same is true of of any android device. And the snapdragon chromebooks already have upstream support ticking all your boxes

[PublicNuisance]

Actually I like a lot of teracube..
It has 1 feature that Fair-phone doesn't have, and I choose smartphones that do have that feature only..it has FM Radio,a 3.5mm phone jack and a bigger battery than Fairphone4
Its a smartphone that I would buy..

Does teracube or fair-phone have the google play store to install apps?

Teracube 2e usually ships with Android 10 which has the Google Play store. You can also install /e/ OS on it or buy it with /e/ preinstalled which has the /e/ store which works like the Play Store. Fair warning I got fed up with /e/'s quirks and went back to Android 10. I hate Android so thinking of going back to Ubuntu Touch on another phone. Don't know if my /e/ issues were Teracube specific but half the time there were OS updates it failed to install them for one reason or another.

[ridge]

These are good news, perhaps this can help the postmarketOS (pmOS) developers make 3D acceleration functional on this phone. It is otherwise in good shape with its pmOS port.