Mainline Linux
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There was an announcement that ubports would look into supporting the new librem 5 device. This device is famously supporting actual mainline linux through PureOS. Having a mainline device means that it (i guess?) it would not need to run on top of halium or libhyrbris.
There are however other attempts to run mainline on devices, such as postmarketOS which currently has (partial) support for the Nexus 5 and Sony Z2 (tablet and phone).
What are your plans to support mainline devices in general? I suppose you'll make a mainline version to run on the librem 5? Would you make a mainline rootfs? If the Nexus 5 has "good enough" mainline support, would you migrate the nexus 5 builds to run mainline instead?
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@rogier-oudshoorn there are not a free Android devices ( as per liberty ) , the drivers are closed source by manufacturers and they don't care and won't opensource those drivers, therefore we need to run Halium, Libhybris, basicalLy low level Android to actually have it possible to run Ubuntu Touch on Android devices. If a vendor release - opensource those proprietary blobs, drivers, then it might be possible. Also there is no such a thing as a BIOS on Android devices, so every device is different, should be standard to have such a thing as BIOS or whatever they might call it.
Librem 5 has the potential to break this habit and start a new era of opensource Linux phones, as you mentioned, it will be without any Halium, libhybris and any of Android proprietary files. It should be a mainline GNU/Linux and should run PureOS, Plasma MOBILE or Ubuntu Touch, the choice will be there. Let's just hope and cross fingers that it will be a success!
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We cant tell this now. First thing is to get a chance to see how UT works without Halium and the Android layer. We also need to change a few things, yes. It wont be out of the box.
We will also try to boot UT on Raspberry Pi, which is a good exercise for the final goal
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@Flohack that explains a lot then. I had tried previously to being up Halium with the mainline Flo kernel and had problem after problem because the Android image wouldn't compile under it due to some missing APIs that the camera libraries we're expecting. Good to know it wasn't because I was being an idiot and missing repos or something like that!