10-17-2023, 02:08 PM
(10-17-2023, 01:27 AM)Uturn Wrote: the mobian blog https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2023/09/30...t-dilemma/ notes the pinephone Linux kernel is close to being abandoned due to ists dependancy to a single person's development who is not interested in investing more time to develop this kernel anymore: Our single reference tree was then left rotting (the last kernel compatible with the PinePhone being based on 5.9, which was released nearly 3 years ago!) and unmaintained since then. So it does not look like Pinephone users will get any support in future.
Is this true at all?
That's not an accurate representation of what that blog says.
- Various ppl/project used to work together (i.e. single reference tree) in https://gitlab.com/pine64-org/linux/-/tr...rnel-5.9.y but that repo/branch is considered abandoned (and I'd agree).
- Mobian is considering abandoning support for the OG PinePhone as a consequence
I think that means you shouldn't expect any 'new features' on the OG PinePhone with Mobian. But I suspect that Mobian Bookworm with the 6.1 kernel will receive the 'standard' kernel upgrades (from the 6.1 series)
But another distro which depends on "megi's kernel" may still see active development/'new features'.
Quote:what does everybody else think about it?
I think this is EXTREMELY worrying.
Not so much that Mobian is considering dropping support for the OG PinePhone, but the underlying reason for it.
IMO devices support will only get better when kernel patches are getting 'upstreamed' (i.e. send on their way to Linus Torvalds' tree).
And that pretty much doesn't happen at ALL and I consider that REALLY REALLY BAD.
AFAICT that also didn't happen with the patches in the 'reference tree' (so it was already not good).
And having a bus factor of 1 ('megi') is always bad.