Quoted from the A64's user manual:
Regarding the kernel version they either have no idea how Linux development works or it's just marketing. They got an SDK from Allwinner using a heavily patched kernel 3.10.65. It's not a clean patchset they could apply to a forked 3.10.y kernel branch but it's just a huge mess of code. It's completely unrealistic to apply hundreds of thousands commits from the official kernel sources to their Allwinner kernel sources to be sometimes in the future at 3.18 or 4.2.
It works different: new code has to be written from scratch to be able to support the A64 SoC in mainline u-boot and kernel. And then the A64 will be supported partially by kernel 4.x sometimes in 2016 and support will increase from version to version.
They could speed things up if they change their business model (currentlly trying to donate a few free boards to devs and hoping to delegate work) and hire for example free-electrons -- but it will still take a lot of time until a more recent kernel will be useable.
In the meantime the situation with all what they have currently (an Android SDK relying on 3.10.65 kernel) needs also a lot of improvements to avoid the 'linux experience' with Pine64 being just crap: http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic...#entry3173
- Supports Secure Digital memory protocol commands (up to SD3.0)
- Supports Secure Digital I/O protocol commands(up to SDIO2.0)
Regarding the kernel version they either have no idea how Linux development works or it's just marketing. They got an SDK from Allwinner using a heavily patched kernel 3.10.65. It's not a clean patchset they could apply to a forked 3.10.y kernel branch but it's just a huge mess of code. It's completely unrealistic to apply hundreds of thousands commits from the official kernel sources to their Allwinner kernel sources to be sometimes in the future at 3.18 or 4.2.
It works different: new code has to be written from scratch to be able to support the A64 SoC in mainline u-boot and kernel. And then the A64 will be supported partially by kernel 4.x sometimes in 2016 and support will increase from version to version.
They could speed things up if they change their business model (currentlly trying to donate a few free boards to devs and hoping to delegate work) and hire for example free-electrons -- but it will still take a lot of time until a more recent kernel will be useable.
In the meantime the situation with all what they have currently (an Android SDK relying on 3.10.65 kernel) needs also a lot of improvements to avoid the 'linux experience' with Pine64 being just crap: http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic...#entry3173
