Why Canonical Is Using Android Drivers For Ubuntu Mir

Quoting:The drivers on Android generally aren't open-source

Quoting:The reasons they are piggy-backing on top of Android GPU drivers is reportedly for stability, performance, and power.

How do you know these drivers are as stable as they could be? Or offer the best performance possible? When the source code is hidden!

Don't sugar coat it Ubuntu - you are writing your stuff use the Android drivers because you don't have any other choice. The GPUs on almost all ARM devices are closed source powered nightmares, plain and simple.

~Jeff Hoogland

Well, my Android phone doesn't crash very often at all when playing games or other graphically intensive applications. The drivers appear to be very good. Do you have a buggy Android phone or something? And, to be fair, Mir will also support standard drivers on the desktop:

Quoting:Aside from Mir supporting the Android GPU drivers, on the desktop side it will also work with the standard open-source Linux graphics drivers with EGL and Mesa.

I'd like to see some stats on the number of open, vs. closed sourced drivers in Android... Binary firmware blobs excepted, of course,... I really don't think it's all that much higher than on x86 hardware. A lot of the same devices are used in both,...

@JaseP The difference is that on x86 we have a number of decent GPU drivers that are open source and at least functional. Beyond that some of these vendors at least release decently powerful closed source drivers for X11/Linux.

Trying to get X11 going on most ARM hardware is a flipping nightmare.

@distrorank - I'm not saying the Android drivers are buggy. I am simply saying how do we know they are the best they can be? Plain and simple we don't. Same is true for nVidia closed source drivers on the desktop.

~Jeff

Quoting:The reasons they are piggy-backing on top of Android GPU drivers is reportedly for stability, performance, and power.

As you say Jeff, that's really the sugar coating, the fact is they don't have any choice, if they want Ubuntu for phones running on actual hardware this side of Christmas.. of any year.

@Jeff91; Keep in mind that X11 is not run on ARM architecture, for the most part. The graphics system run on most of those machines is a frame buffer system. It's a frame buffer system with 3D chipset support, but it's a frame buffer system nonetheless. And with Wayland around the corner (OK, down the block a bit & around the corner), all the graphics systems will be run frame buffer (X11 as a client under Wayland for legacy support).

Besides, I'm talking about most other peripherals, other than graphics... Keyboard. Camera. Bluetooth. Wireless. Etc. Many of those are the same kernel drivers we see in a standard kernel. I would still actually like to see the stats on how many drivers on a given Android implementation are closed versus open source...

JaseP that is a TOTAL cop out. Do you know *why* X11 doesn't run on ARM devices for the most part? It is because the drivers aren't there! It has **nothing** to do with the architecture of the platform and everything to do with the lack of open specs/drivers being available.

The few ARM devices we do have full OpenGL powered X11 drivers for work great - these pieces of hardware are just few and far between though.

~Jeff

Well, Jeff, the video chipset manufacturers are among the most protectionist of hardware manufacturers,... And their outlook is not going to change. Switching to a frame buffer style of architecture, like Wayland for example, allows THEM to continue to be stingy with firmware, while allowing for open source,... So, that said,... ***and realize I'm not in disagreement with you that it sucks,...*** If it allows for development to continue, then,... let development continue...

But absent video,... How much of Android drivers are NOT in the standard kernel now? My guess is very few. While RMS wouldn't be satisfied, I'm sure Linus Torvalds would be, and that's good enough for me.