Android-x86 6.0 Marshmallow Uses Mesa 12.0, Adds F2FS File-System

[starshipeleven]

Why isn't Intel helping out Android-x86 to to it up to version 7.0?

Because there is no OEM that managed to sell Intel tablets and smartphones with Android in decent enough quantities, and none seems to care about the fact that Android devices have a short lifespan.

Which is sad imho, as a tablet with a UEFI firmware and Intel SoC would be THE Android Tablet, Period. No silly update issues, no bs with bootloaders, no shit with drivers and hardware initialization, and so on.

Why is Android-x86 managed as a separate project to side of Android instead of being handled by mainline Android upstreams by Intel and Google together?

Technically speaking Android supports x86 upstream.
What this project does is rebase Android on a desktop linux kernel and add Mesa and other such stuff to make it work, and it is similar to what most OEMs do to make it work on their own hardware platform.

[uid313]

Why isn't Intel helping out Android-x86 to to it up to version 7.0?

Why is Android-x86 managed as a separate project to side of Android instead of being handled by mainline Android upstreams by Intel and Google together?

[droidhacker]

Android 6.0 is nice. I hope they get out version 7.0 Nougat soon tho, even though no apps require 7.0 yet.

It is really nice that Android-x86 uses kernel 4.4, my Nexus 5X still use kernel 3.10.

Android 7.0 is a lot more interesting than whether or not a particular piece of software requires it or not. Android 7.0 is the version that introduces multi-window side-by-side and floating modes, which actually makes it useful for the kind of hardware typically targeted by Android x86.

[Julius]

Hmm, so with the recent kernel it should work quite well on those 2in1 Intel Atom X5 tablets right? Those even have a intel GPU, so full FOSS graphics stack.

Could be also a really cool system to try running full Linux in a chroot and thus have the best of both worlds without massive performance impact (same kernel used) and no dual-booting required. Anyone tried something similar before?

[sarfarazahmad]

multi gpu (optimus) support is worse than in v5.0 . i have only been able to boot up this 6.0 release properly with vesa, otherwise android's gui stack wont come up and i am stuck at a terminal prompt. now that you say that garden variety desktop kernel is in play. maybe something can be done with it ? look at vgaswitcheroo?

[starshipeleven]

Indeed great that they're using kernel v4.4, unfortunately using such a recent kernel is unheard of in the current Android phone landscape.
With this Android-x86 using Mesa, doesn't that imply that it's using a fully OSS video stack? That would be awesome!

Uhm, I'm not sure what you are trying to say. This is basically Android 6.0 running on top of a garden variety "desktop Linux" kernel.

[starshipeleven]

AFAIK it's up to hardware vendors to ship which version of kernel that the hardware can run regardless of the Android version.

Yeah it works like that. This happens because drivers are usually blobs and, totally unexpectedly, they don't work with a different kernel version. Unless the hardware manufacturer makes new blobs (not likely), your kernel is locked to that version.

Also there are usually some hacks to get Android to work on that hardware, so it's not 100% "regardless of the android version".

[Decay]

Indeed great that they're using kernel v4.4, unfortunately using such a recent kernel is unheard of in the current Android phone landscape.
With this Android-x86 using Mesa, doesn't that imply that it's using a fully OSS video stack? That would be awesome!

[Modu]

Android 6.0 is nice. I hope they get out version 7.0 Nougat soon tho, even though no apps require 7.0 yet.

It is really nice that Android-x86 uses kernel 4.4, my Nexus 5X still use kernel 3.10.

AFAIK it's up to hardware vendors to ship which version of kernel that the hardware can run regardless of the Android version.

[Jumbotron]

Sorry.....forgot the link.

http://www.jide.com/remixos-for-pc