
Brillo Common Kernel - cpeterso
https://android.googlesource.com/device/generic/brillo/+/master/docs/KernelDevelopmentGuide.md
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wmf
One wonders if this will suddenly make embedded companies non-incompetent or
if they will just not use Brillo.

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dmitrygr
A noble goal, but good luck doing this with a QCOM kernel :(

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nextos
I guess this would be fantastic for alternate ROMs like CopperheadOS, as they
would be freed from the burden of testing on many devices.

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aorth
It would even be nice to have a more modern kernel on regular AOSP Nexuses,
not just alternative ROMs! But I'm not _entirely_ sure this is for phones.
Brillo itself places more emphasis "embedded" and "internet of things".

[https://developers.google.com/brillo/](https://developers.google.com/brillo/)

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IshKebab
This just isn't going to work as long as there isn't a sane way to distribute
Linux drivers.

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TD-Linux
Yes there is - in the kernel tree. Works great for my desktop and laptop.

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IshKebab
That's not a good solution in general.

* You can't distribute closed-source drivers. I wish everything was open source as much as the next guy but let's be realistic. Imagine if all Linux user-space software had to be open source!

* You can't release drivers at the same time as your hardware. You have to get your drivers into the kernel _years_ before you release the hardware, otherwise nothing will support it out of the box. This is obviously idiotic development-wise, but it also leaks product releases.

* It's extra effort to get drivers into the tree. Despite what the kernel developers say they clearly _won 't_ accept every driver. They might not like your architecture or code style, it might be too niche, etc. It's another annoying barrier.

* Fairly obviously it doesn't scale well. What happens in 2030 when the Linux kernel contains 100000 drivers, or whatever?

Of course there are downsides to a stable ABI - you have to maintain backwards
compatibility, it might encourage closed source drivers... but it's easily
worth, especially on mobile.

