Google moves towards convergence on Android

Android

The convergence fever and those struggles between Canonical and Microsoft to get there before, among other companies, seems to have been left behind. However, Google is making efforts to move towards its convergence in the Android operating system for mobile devices, but in this case towards convergence with the general branch of the Linux kernel.

Google is looking for a way to facilitate Android maintenance, and for this the search engine giant has been working for years to adjust the Android kernel to the official Linux branch, causing third-party drivers to be installed through a mechanism called Project Treble, which was first introduced in 2017.

In other words, Google wants the Android kernel to be the generic Linux kernel for everyone the devices. And it seems that in the Android 12 version there would be an important advance in this regard, according to the software engineer Todd Kjos of this company. He has presented a report on it at the Linux Plumbers Conference in which it is said that this version will access the main branch of the Linux kernel by supplying end users with a Generic Kernel Image (GKI).

Remember that now Android does not have a generic Linux kernel, it is about a fork of the vanilla branch. Google made specific changes to the kernel of the operating system aimed at the realm of mobile devices, creating a specific kernel for Android that was common. Later, some SoC manufacturers, such as Qualcomm, Samsung, or MediaTek, forked this common kernel from Google to create their specific cores optimized for their chips. Now, with these advances, all this could change, and have a new converged kernel where everyone who needs to add modules or drivers or firmware to the Android Linux kernel, can do so, but without modifications with respect to the kernel that comes out of the kernel. org.


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