It's Possible To Get The Nexus 7 Running On A Mainline Linux Kernel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: It's Possible To Get The Nexus 7 Running On A Mainline Linux Kernel

With an effort led by John Stultz at Linaro, developers have managed to get a Google Nexus 7 tablet running on a mainline Linux kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Nexus-7-On-Mainline

[c117152]

That's quite impressive.
Also, about the Sony contribution mentioned: http://developer.sonymobile.com/2016...peria-devices/

[Slartifartblast]

Interesting, perhaps it might give KDE Plasma Mobile the push to come to my Nexus 7 before my 100th birthday; however I'm not holding my breath.

[FLHerne]

Which Nexus 7 is this? The original 2012 version?

Ah, a G+ commenter says:

I'm assuming 2013 because the Freedreno driver is used (for Adreno GPUs). The 2012 Nexus 7 has an NVIDIA GPU.

[kaprikawn]

This is very cool. I've just ordered a Pixel C, so my Nexus 7 is now a prime candidate for installing an alternative OS for shts and giggles. Any Linux distro other than Ubuntu would be nice

[Licaon]

Stand still my beating heart, it's not 2012, its FLO aka Nexus 7 Wi-Fi (2013).

@Michael: Do edit your article to specify what device.

That's quite impressive.
Also, about the Sony contribution mentioned: http://developer.sonymobile.com/2016...peria-devices/

Yeah, Sony should enable bootloader unlocking for devices sold through TelCo's first, then brag about how developer friendly they are. :-|

[CrystalGamma]

Since when is “mainline + x patches” considered “mainline“?

[lgrootnoob]

hey guys, we at least got 3.4 for the grouper n7. check my github for the source.

[robclark]

Since when is “mainline + x patches” considered “mainline“?

John's g+ post makes it clear, ~50 patches on top of mainline, and of those, I expect given a bit of time most/all will land upstream. That is a *significant* difference from any vendor kernel you will get on these sorts of devices (with 1-2M SLOC delta from upstream, and next to nothing headed upstream). Good luck rebasing ${some_random_device}'s 3.4 kernel at each kernel -rc.

To put the "50 patch" number in perspective, the i915 kernel driver is 400+ patches from v4.4 to v4.5.. qcom's 3.18 branch is 15000+ patches from upstream v3.18.. 50 patches is really nothing.

[droidhacker]

Ooooh, nice! I thought from the headlines that it would be running some weird crap like ubuntu, but its running mainline kernel + freedreno + mesa + ANDROID. That is really awesome.

Next step is doing the same to Nexus 4, which has a lot of similarities.