Even with android custom ROMs like Lineage, support eventually ends. Meanwhile, you can just slap on linux onto any old computer and its still getting the latest updates. 🤔
Why not just do the same thing with phones? Forever phone updates? 👀
Even with android custom ROMs like Lineage, support eventually ends. Meanwhile, you can just slap on linux onto any old computer and its still getting the latest updates. 🤔
Why not just do the same thing with phones? Forever phone updates? 👀
in the case of Android, it comes down to the proprietary driver modules that are compiled for certain kernel versions. As newer versions of android are released with newer kernels, the closed source modules fall out of step. If the drivers for these components were open source anyone could recompile them for any Linux kernel. It’s usually up to the device manufacturer working with the likes of the chip makers to release newer module versions for their hardware. OEMs dont want to support their hardware beyond few years, so you’ll hopefully buy a new phone.
The postmarketOS community (and some of the android community) works pretty hard trying to bring mainline kernel support to devices, which enables them to run generic Linux kernels, or conceivably newer versions of android than the OEM has released. But this involves reverse engineering support for this hardware.
We need some regulation that makes driver APIs and a linkable compiled version of drivers mandatory to be available upon request.