Huawei Linux Laptop Driver Improvements On The Way

[blackiwid]

As a Venezuelan who lives in Venezuela, I can tell you our culture is very close with that of the US and we couldn't be more happy with the way the US has managed "the siege" that you talk about. Maduro is a Dictator, he and Chávez created a kleptocracy with the help of the Cubans. Venezuela is arguably the richest country in Latin America, but now is in shambles. Even before Maduro, with Chávez, the country showed symptoms of mismanagement, but high oil prices cover it. The majority of Venezuelans are happy with the help that Mr. Trump and his advisors are providing to us. Without their help, we wouldn't stand a chance against this horribly dictatorship. I remain confident that the end of this nightmare his approaching, and finally we can start rebuilding our beautiful nation.

Just because you are a Venezuelan doesn't mean that you speak for your country, democracy is the rule of the majority your opinion is the minority you are probably white and or rich or at least wealthy most people in your country are poor and they like Maduro and they LOVED Chávez.

[Bsdisbetter]

You know the definition of dictator? The Venezuelan government is elected, the small rich elite don't like them but in elections not only the rich have a vote but also the poor most poor's prefer the current "dictator" over the person the US elected for them without asking them.

Just because the opposition mostly boycotts a election because they can't win makes the winner not a dictator!

Do you know what a sham election is? If not, just google that & venezuala. Not quite as bad as a north korean vote but...

I do like your quaint mention of a voluntary abstention from the 'election'. Now, that's funny.

[the_scx]

3. even without access to Arm and google apps could this big company that has access to state money with nearly endless money and manpower create a nice MIPS processor and heavily invest in openstreetmap data and programs and opensource all of that?

I am afraid that MIPS is not an option here. It will be subject to sanctions as well. In 2017 Imagination Technologies was sold to China-linked private equity. Before that, Imagination had to offload the MIPS business it acquired in 2013.

The MIPS deal needs to happen, because Canyon Bridge was established using Chinese government money and US president Donald Trump last week ordered it be prevented from buying US-chipmaker Lattice Semiconductor on grounds that the buyers “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” MIPS' roots are American so it is felt likely the deal to buy Imagination would also have fallen foul of Trump's economic nationalism.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/25/imagination_technologies_sold_to_private_equity/

So what remains? RISC-V? Today it is not more open than e.g. Power.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=RISC-V-Not-All-Open-Yet

You get free ISA, but everything else you have to develop literally from scratch: memory (DRAM) controller, point-to-point high-speed processor interconnect or another type of fast link, GPU/DSP and audio processor, IO extension, etc. And to make it competitive with hi-end ARM, you have to develop your own core design and instruction set extensions (SIMD extensions, like SSE/AVX in x86, AltiVec in Power or NEON in ARM, virtualization extensions like VT-x or AMD-V, security/crypto extensions for RNG, MD5, SHA/SHA2/SHA3, SM3/SM4, AES, etc.). Well, at least it should be possible to use the PowerVR GPU, but what about the other parts?
Please keep in mind that currently HiSilicon uses the Cortex-A core designs, as well Mali GPUs, licensed from ARM Holdings. They didn't developed their own core designs, nor GPUs for their SoCs. It applies as well to any Chinese company on ARM market. So you have literally nothing here and expecting some miracle. Don't you thing that this is impossible, at least in near future?
I would believe that without sanctions they would be able to develop their own ARM core in a few years and further in the future maybe even the GPU, but now?
Arm Holdings has money to develop ISA and cores because they sell licenses. Qualcomm and MediaTek have money, because they sells a lot of chips. Where do the Chinese get the money to develop their processors? I mean, state funds aren't infinite and currently RISC-V CPUs aren't even competitive with 0.5-2 USD Cortex-M chips. So, where would you sell them? There are not many things where these CPUs would be suitable. Maybe some kind of digital photo frames, weather forecast stations or something like that? Sure, it should be possible to put these chips in some kind of home appliances (e.g. fridges or microwave ovens) and consumer electronics (like DVRs or Blu-ray disc players), but I bet that it is cheaper to just buy ARM chips than to port the Linux IoT platforms to RISC-V.
Maybe with multibillion investments each year, they would be able to achieve something in 10 years, but this is very unlikely to happen in my opinion.
You can say that it should be possible to transfer experiences from developing other CPUs, like MIPS (Loongson), x86 (Zhaoxin) or Shenwei (Sunway). However, I don't believe that. It just doesn't work like that. If that were the case, Intel and IBM would have created their own ARM chips a long time ago.

And this is only the first part: hardware. The fact is that you need software as well. And people expect that they will be able to run their current favorite apps. Let's say it: compatibility with Android is a thing that they "must have". Good news is that Android is an open source project. You should be able use AOSP without need to worry about US sanctions. Unfortunately, it is only available on x86 and ARM. To be honest, there was MIPS port as well, but now it is almost dead. I mean, even Google stopped supporting Google Play Services on Android > 4.0 on MIPS. The last mobile devices with Android on MIPS were available around 2013. You could see Android 5 on MIPS, but only on bigger devices, like SmartTVs with I6400 SoC. According to the Google documentation, historically NDK supported 32-bit and 64-bit MIPS, but this support was removed in NDK r17 (June 2018).

https://developer.android.com/ndk/downloads/revision_history

With RISC-V (or any ISA other than ARM or x86) it will be an even bigger problem, because such a port doesn't even exist. And without Google's involvement, it would be really hard to make it. Well, at least it is not impossible.
Unfortunately, that's not all. As I said, users expect that they will be able to use their favorite Android apps. While running Java-/Kotlin-based programs (which were developed using Android SDK) shouldn't be a problem (thanks to ART), we can't say the same about native applications (which were developed using Android NDK). The second one includes games using Cocos2d, Unity or Unreal Engine as well as applications using Xamarin.Forms or Xamarin.Android. Of course, these things are just examples. Almost every serious app is using Android NDK. This includes Evernote, Firefox for Android, Signal, Telegram, VLC, etc. As you can guess, you won't be able to run app compiled for incompatible ISA... at least without some kind of binary translation layer. There was one for x86-powered Android devices - libhoudini. It basically allows to run ARM binaries on x86 devices. Unfortunately, it was really slow. Anyway, this kind of software is something we definitely need on non-ARM (e.g. RISC-V) based Android smartphones and tablets. And because libhoudini is ARM-to-x86-only thing, we need a completely new solution here. Please forget about QEMU - it is extremely slow. As you can see, we have another problem here - in the end, new CPU should be more powerful than competitive ARM processors, because it has to compensate for the overhead needed for emulation. And today, Kirin isn't even the fastest ARM CPU for mobile. That's why the whole thing is extremely unlikely to happen.
Of course, theoretically, Huawei or another Chinese company can convince developers to publish binaries for RISC-V (or any other arch that they choose) as well. However, it is very unlikely. Intel already tried this a few years ago, when Android wasn't so tied to ARM and we had devices on x86 and MIPS as well. They failed, and because of that, they had to withdraw from this market. Today, there is no mobile Android device on no-ARM SoC at all. Even if someone tries to release the device on a different architecture, nobody will care.

Youtube should not be a big problem because I A don't understand why somebody would watch youtube on a handy and B it works in the browser.

This is not about YouTube or some pre-installed apps. This is about Google Play Services. Many apps only function with Google Play Services available. These services and APIs are used in apps in various ways:
- Authentication via Google account.
- Google Maps Android API allows programs to include Google Maps or Street View.
- Google Drive Android API exposes Google Drive to be used as a storage structure.
- Google Cast Android API allow applications to display content on TVs.
- Google Play Game Services can be used by application developers to provide leaderboards, achievements, multiplayer sessions, etc.
- Saved Games API allow to quickly sync game saves on Google's cloud infrastructure.
- Google Pay is a digital wallet platform and online payment system.
- Google Play Billing Library can be used for in-app purchases.
- AdMob offers advertising solutions.
Although users may not like ads and microtransactions (in-app purchases), they are important because without good monetization solution any store will lack applications.
Theoretically, Huawei (or any Chinese company, e.g. Alibaba Group, Baidu or Tencent) can provide its own replacement. However, this is something that has to be implemented by developers in their apps. You can't just replace Google Pay by AliPay at the system level. You have to convince the developers that they should support your solution. Unfortunately, it is not easy, at least in the Western world. Microsoft already tried it... and failed. They provided a complete ecosystem: Microsoft Ads instead of Google Ads, App Insights instead of Google Analytics, Bing Maps instead of Google Maps, Xbox Live services instead of Google Play services, etc... but the developers just don't want to use it. With Google solutions they already can reach 100% Android users, so wasting time on other solutions isn't really profitable.
Some time ago Amazon tried to sell their Amazon Fire Phone. The device was exclusively tied to Amazon's software and doesn't offer the Google Play Store, nor Google Play Services. It was a disaster. Really good phone (hardware) ends with terrible sales results, because of Fire OS (software). Even today, Amazon services, such as Amazon Appstore, don't exist in the mind of the average Android user.
It is also worth mentioning about another Android-based systems, such as LineageOS. LineageOS unofficial fork with built-in microG allows you to run some apps that require Google Play Services. However, it is not a full replacement and never will be. What is worse, it is in a very immature state, so a lot of apps will crash or not start at all.

https://github.com/microg/android_packages_apps_GmsCore/wiki/Implementation-Status

There were also a few alternative mobile platforms that allow to run Android software: BlackBerry Tablet OS/BlackBerry 10 (Android app compatibility), Firefox OS (OpenMobile ACL for Firefox OS - Application Compatibility Layer), webOS (OpenMobile ACL for webOS - Application Compatibility Layer), Tizen (OpenMobile ACL for Tizen - Application Compatibility Layer), Sailfish OS (Android Support) and Ubuntu Touch (Anbox). And all of them have failed, mainly because of lack of Google Play Services as well as poor emulation performance.

And don't even think that you can gain a significant market share without an Android-based operating system or at least system compatible with Android apps. It is practically impossible. So many mobile platforms failed because they were unable to gain software base comparable to the Android and iOS ecosystems (or Symbian, Windows CE/Mobile/Pocket PC, PalmOS and BlackBerry OS, before these two appeared). This includes OpenZaurus (Sharp), MontaVista Linux (Motorola), Openmoko Linux + Qt Extended (Nokia), Moblin (Intel), LiMo (Samsung), Maemo (Nokia), MeeGo (Nokia), Bada (Samsung), Access Linux Platform (Access, a company that has acquired PalmSource, the owner of Palm OS), webOS (Palm → HP → LG), Firefox OS (Mozilla). A lot of them had has huge companies behind them, but it wasn't enough. Today we have Tizen (Samsung), Sailfish OS (Jolla, a company founded by former Nokia staff of the MeeGo project team), Ubuntu Touch (Canonical → UBports), but all of them are niche systems and nothing will change that. Don't even think that situation with PureOS will be different. It is the same story - it will be a niche system for rich nerds, probably even less polished than other alternative platforms. Nothing beats Google and Apple duopoly. Even BlackBerry (BlackBerry 10) and Microsoft (Windows Phone → Windows 10 Mobile) have failed here. And believe me, they tried to succeed.
Microsoft put a lot of money into its mobile platform. MS did almost everything that is possible to encourage developers to make UWP apps. They brutally pushed Universal Windows Platform into desktop system, making users angry, just to make it more popular on mobile. And it didn't work. Even today Windows 10 Mobile is the most powerful and polished mobile platform after Android and iOS. It has underlining spell checker, guest mode, parental control, complex per-app permissions, on-device encryption solution, printer support, NFC payment software, safe driving mode, voice recognition, screencast support, and a lot more features. But it doesn't have what people want the most - applications.
Look at Samsung. It was the leader IDC on Android-based device market almost from the beginning (well, at least since 2011). In 2012 it beat even Apple in terms of the number of mobile devices sold! They invested a lot of money into their mobile systems, but it didn't work. For a short time I was a Bada developer. It wasn't a bad system. I can agree that it wasn't perfect, but at that time Android wasn't perfect neither. Bada even has some technical advantages over Android. Although Android NDK was available almost from the beginning, it wasn't so popular and polished as it is today. At the same time, I started my programming adventure with Android, thanks to HTC, and it was like "don't use Android NDK if you really don't have to". So for a long time it was C++ (Bada) versus Java (Android). Anyway, Samsung created its own store (Samsung Apps). They offered financial incentives for developers with most popular apps, but it didn't work out. So when they decided to introduce Tizen, they essentially gave up western markets. This system was basically aimed at emerging markets, like India or South Africa, at least when it comes to mobile devices. The latest smartphone with Tizen is Samsung Z4, released on 2017, so as we can guess, even here it doesn't work out very well. And Samsung is a much more powerful and experienced company than Huawei in almost every aspect: hardware (their own ARM cores in Exynos: Mongoose, Super AMOLED, S-Pen in Galaxy Note, their own NAND Flash and DRAM memory as well as lithium-ion batteries), software (LiMo, Bada, Tizen, Linux on DeX) and services (Samsung Galaxy Store).
Today, Android leaves all other Linux mobile platforms behind. Android and iOS are the most mature and feature-rich operating systems for smartphones. And it's really hard to beat them. What is worse, all current Linux-based alternatives are behind Windows 10 Mobile (Windows NT) and BlackBerry 10 (QNX). This it not just about IDT support, but also featureset. And to be honest, they are much less polished than they should be, at least for average users.

The Chinese market is very specific. A lot of western companies are banned here, so living without Google services is not a problem. However, almost all mobile development in China is focused on Android and iOS. Nobody will accept an another, incompatible solution. It has to be Android or system compatible with Android, especially if they are still interested in selling mobile devices >= 100 USD per unit. This applies to every market on this world: United States, Mercosur, Commonwealth, European Union, CIS, Japan, South Korea, China, ASEAN, etc.
So, they need at least:
- Android-based operating system (AOSP fork) or another mobile platform (Linux, maybe BSD) compatible with Android software.
- System replacement for Google Play services (something like microG, but more advanced and polished).
- Own services and APIs, as a replacement for Google Play services.
- Complex monetization solution: payments, wallet, in-app purchases, ads.
- Own store.
- A lot of money to promote their own solutions. They need to convince both users and developers.
- A lot of luck. They really need to be very lucky.
- They must have permission to use ARM chips. It doesn't have to be Snapdragon, but it has to be AArch64 SoC. Without being able to develop their own processors (HiSilicon Kirin) or purchasing chips from others (e.g. MediaTek), they are out of business, sooner or later.
These are the minimum requirements. I believe that there is a chance (very little, to be honest) to promote their own store and services. However, normally, it would take literally years to gain some popularity. In my opinion it is very unlikely that their emergency plan will work out. But we will see. Anyway, I still believe that diplomatic solution is possible. And it would be the best way.
Just look at the market reaction. Telecoms have already dropped new Huawei phones from theirs offers. Moreover, we see a huge sales here for the current models. And now EE and Vodafone drop Huawei phones from 5G network launch. Panic, panic, panic - no one believes that their rescue plan will work out.

It doesn't mean that they will defunct in the next 2-3 years. Huawei is mainly a telecommunication company. They will survive. They can still sell consumer electronics in the internal market. The only thing they may be afraid of is the loss of consumer electronics markets in the Western world. Maybe they will have to withdraw, but it is normal that companies get rid of unprofitable or non-prospective departments or leave markets where they have no chance.

To summarize:
- All major ISAs may be subject to US sanctions. This includes x86, ARM, MIPS, Power, SPARC and s390x.
- Currently there is no mobile Linux platform or serious IoT solution based on RISC-V.
- It is very unlikely that RISC-V will be suitable for anything more than very simple IoT solutions in the next 10 years. And even here there is no real reason to get rid of ARM.
- This could change if one of the big players will be involved. Google might create no-cost RISC-V SoC design (free for all), but only because they have enough money to do things that make no economic sense.
- Nobody wants an another mobile platform (neither developers, nor users) that is not compatible with Android.
- Just compatibility with Android is not enough. The system must be modern, mature, polished and feature-rich.
- Google Play services replacement is another thing that they must have.
- User-friendly store is yet another thing.
- Developers, developers, developers... They must convince developers.
- To do this, they need a complex monetization solution: payments, wallet, in-app purchases, ads.
- Huawei's problems can be resolved only on the diplomatic path. Either they can use ARM chips or they are out of business, sooner or later.

[oiaohm]

- Currently there is no mobile Linux platform or serious IoT solution based on RISC-V.

This is not 100 percent correct.
https://riscv.org/2019/02/elektronik...-applications/

There are a few very serous IoT solutions based on RISC-V interesting enough areas requiring lower power usage than arm. There is a growing number of serious IoT solutions based on Risc-v. Thinking you can do a basic feature phone with the arduino avr processor. Basic phone devices don't require that much.

https://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-re...nected-devices

Military grade drone controllers are going RISC-V.

There is a lot of serous IoT using RISC-V stuff where you need high security validation down into the silicon level.

If Huawei goes the RISC-V route and it able to make a mobile Linux platform on Risc-V they will be able to sell it as a high secure solution.

As you said losing Western world market is not going to kill Huawei. But losing that market may mean the focus improving things so they can never be attacked again. High secure mobile phone based around Risc-v fully audit-able into silicon level with end user replaceable firmware there would be no way for the USA to say this has backdoors. Instead they would be able to claim all those making arm phones are not releasing enough information to be classed secure so should be totally not trusted.

Lets say china hits back by say no insecure silicon can be made in there country so blocking all arm devices being produced in China. This is playing with a very dangerous level of fire.

[the_scx]

Oh no, you again?

There are a few very serous IoT solutions based on RISC-V interesting enough areas requiring lower power usage than arm.

Android Things (Brillo) is not available for RISC-V. Ubuntu Core is not available for RISC-V. Windows IoT is not available for RISC-V.
So what do we have here? FreeRTOS, Zephyr, Yocto Project... They are just embedded operating systems, not serious application platforms. You have to build your platform on top of them. Oh, yeah, you have Huawei LiteOS... with such a small market share in consumer electronics that almost nobody cares about it. And even this solution is mainly focused on ARM devices.

Thinking you can do a basic feature phone with the arduino avr processor. Basic phone devices don't require that much.

And people no longer care about basic cellular phones. Even Series 30+ is not interesting for most of them. As I said, if you go into RISC-V, you can forget about selling $100+ smartphones.

If Huawei goes the RISC-V route and it able to make a mobile Linux platform on Risc-V they will be able to sell it as a high secure solution.

People don't care about "high secure solution". This is not something you can sell. For the same reason you have literally zero paid games on Flathub, but hundreds or even thousands of them on platforms like Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle, Game Jolt, Itch.io, Indie Gala, Groupees, etc.

But losing that market may mean the focus improving things so they can never be attacked again.

And by introducing the Juche ideology, they can become the second Korea... To be more specific, the second North Korea. Do you know that North Korea is the most independent country in the world?

[oiaohm]

Android Things (Brillo) is not available for RISC-V. Ubuntu Core is not available for RISC-V. Windows IoT is not available for RISC-V.
So what do we have here? FreeRTOS, Zephyr, Yocto Project... They are just embedded operating systems, not serious application platforms. You have to build your platform on top of them. Oh, yeah, you have Huawei LiteOS... with such a small market share in consumer electronics that almost nobody cares about it. And even this solution is mainly focused on ARM devices.

Lets go through this list kind of backwards. LiteOS has been mainly focused on arm but would have paid to do even some basic homework.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiteOS

The reality is mainline LiteOS has support RISC-V for over a year now. Take away what the embargo block this leaves Huawei LiteOS developers totally focused on Risc-v. So there current LiteOS items can go away from arm to risc-v fairly quickly.

Windows IOT not worth considering this is blocked by the embargo so does not matter if Huawei is planing survival. Ubuntu Core this is another screw up on your part Debian port will happen first.

https://fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/riscvdebian/attachments/slides/3179/export/events/attachments/riscvdebian/slides/3179/Porting_Debian_to_the_RISC_V_architecture_FOSDEM_2019.pdf

Debian port of risc-v is on track to be ready not for the current release in progress but for the next release in year or 2 time. Reality here Ubuntu Core is not highly important. Debian has a larger embedded market usage than Ubuntu. For every device based on Ubuntu core there is between 2 to 3 based on Debian. If there was not a Debian Risc-v port under way there would be some issues with the risc-v route.

Basically if the USA was going to try to harm Huawei with an embargo they had to do this year. Next year Huawei would have most likely had enough non USA linked tech not care.

People don't care about "high secure solution". This is not something you can sell.

High secure solutions can make your 1500 dollar smartphones look cheap. Military/Government customers at times will pay big dollars for security and reduced features.

This is a survival move. Target the 3000-5000USD secure communication market. Will not be selling the volume but it keeps your R&D turning over. Basically just because the customer base you are thinking about does not care does not mean there is not a decent market place to go after that does.

For the same reason you have literally zero paid games on Flathub, but hundreds or even thousands of them on platforms like Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle, Game Jolt, Itch.io, Indie Gala, Groupees, etc.

Flathub does not provide a market place to sell production. Yes you can get steam from Flathub. Flathub you would expect market places to put their market apps in time in it.

[tildearrow]

One of the interesting things about Phoronix is that simple threads like this end up going off-topic, and then something else further goes off-topic and we talk about something else.

I remember a time when we were talking about AMDGPU's DC code changes, then we began talking about QNX and microkernels, and then somebody said "cars" and suddenly we began talking about car engines!

[blackiwid]

1. I want another mobile platform as developer and user so your assumption about "nobody" is wrong and I am not the only one. Everybody that likes free software must want this because Android is only 99.9% proprietary apps that are therefor useless garbage.

2. ok I am no expert on hardware, but even if you are right an Risc is totally unusable why would Huawei have to care about a license from Arm? It's Chinese law, and if the America illegally bans 1 random Chinese company because they can't take competition china can ignore that license rights. I don't see why not, they would be really stupid to just play a unfair game.

If it's just a license that's thin air they can't ban that.

As you said they can use google and that's all you need, blackberry did it pretty well for a long time and that's absurd small company that had 20 Billion dollar turnover, Huawei has 80 Billion currently and with the Chinese market for growth and possible state subventions and the state could make laws to help them that as example the state only buys from them and stuff like that.

And they had a completely different platform with just a horrible compatibility layer, while Huawei can use the same 90% base AOSP and only has to replace the 10% proprietary Google garbage. Companies do replace that shit even without fear of such banns like Samsung replaced half of their shit already.

If Samsung can do that again why would Huawei not be able to do just what Samsung did? They replaced the store and other apps?

But that said I would also not wonder if Trump again just pretended to do something strong. I also was sure now that he now really wants to attack Iran yet he called back his dogs. So you can't take a word from him serious.

[blackiwid]

I'm not rich, I live in a small town and I'm brown, or as we say here, "moreno" o "mestizo". Don't believe me, believe opinion polls, all show that the majority of Venezuelans HATE Maduro. You can see it on the streets also, one of the favorites subjects of small talk is to curse at Maduro, because everyone agrees he is the cause of all the problems of Venezuela. One of the most funny things you can do in the streets of Venezuela is to shout "Maduro"; the instant answer of all the crowd surrounding you is "coño e' tu madre" something like "motherfucker". You can't even buy a ripe banana because in Spanish this is "plátano Maduro" all the people in the store will shout "coño e' tu madre". Like I said, almost everyone hates Maduro, if Venezuela were a Democracy Maduro would not be in power.

In times of war truth dies first, and there were tons of lies around Venezuela as example that people would have to eat rats to survive and other stuff, some people eat rats in Venezuela so do people in the US but most or all don't have to. If the US mainstream press would not lie the first time in their history and describe Venezuelas situation accurate then it's a internal conflict and you are either able to change it or not. The trade war against Venezuela is illegal and caused 90% of the problems in the country, that should never happend and any further interference is not only illegal according to international law it is also unmoralic.

I am no expert on your country but just one small city where people think your way is no proof of anything, you could just be a victim of propaganda. Happend to me also a few years ago, where I believed that Putin is just horrible when he send troops to Ukraine I was ignorant of the Fashist in the new government how fucked up the new government was. Also ignorant of the agreements the West did with Russia to not further their influence, and ignorant that the US was involved in that coup.

Even if most people now would not like Maduro they did in the past and you even denied that most people loved Javez that indicates to me that you are tribalistic and not fact oriented anymore. Because that is a known fact nobody really disagrees on.

But again I can't 100% sure say what's true in Venezuela the press is bankrupt and you can't trust anybody but even if you would be right it's a internal conflict and even dictators can't be legally attacked as long as they don't start a genocide.

The funny thing is till this day people really honest believe in the US that Trump is a puppet of Putin even the Mueller Report couldn't find any evidence for that. So you likely really believe what you are saying but that does not make it automatically the truth.

[the_scx]

Reality here Ubuntu Core is not highly important. Debian has a larger embedded market usage than Ubuntu.

The reality here is that you have no idea what you're talking about. You still don't distinguish between basic embedded systems and complex IoT solutions. Do you want to create an app store for all your devices? If you go into Canonical ecosystem, you could easily create your own branded IoT app store, hosted by Canonical. With Debian, you have to build everything on your own - the entire infrastructure have to be created from scratch.

Next year Huawei would have most likely had enough non USA linked tech not care.

Because they are magicians and will develop a new SoC literally from scratch in one year!

Military/Government customers at times will pay big dollars for security and reduced features.

Cyrix went into "military/government" solutions under the leadership of National Semiconductor. Please remind us where they are now...

Flathub does not provide a market place to sell production.

But developers can sell games on their own, right? This is exactly the same difference as between Debian and Ubuntu Core in IoT.

Yes you can get steam from Flathub.

And you can get the same Steam client from Arch or Gentoo repo as well. It doesn't mean that Steam games are developed for Arch or published on Arch.