Linux Kernel development

[Uturn]

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, and what does everybody else think about it?

[zetabeta]

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, and what does everybody else think about it?

should the discussion be here.
https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=18791

in short, unfornately it is true, though pp regular only. i think this a start of an end to allwiner a64 cpu devices, which use sunxi modifications. however, do not panic, for short time pp regular is usable. btw, i think it is all distros more or less.

this has one implication, i'm not very likely going to buy yet another pp regular.

[alaraajavamma]

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, and what does everybody else think about it?

Not completely true.
That single person is megi and megi is just said in Pinephone matrix group that "I am not going to stop soon". So kernel is not abandoned or left rotting - it sure would help if more people start working on it but that statement is not true.

It is not ideal that this is one man show but if you look how many foss projects in general work this is not so out of the ordinary.

[diederik]

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.

1. 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).
   
2. 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'.

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.

[Kevin Kofler]

And the main issue Mobian is having is with the way megi's changes are currently distributed. As I wrote in https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=18791&pid=120171#pid120171:

The main annoyance Mobian seems to be facing maintaining their kernel is that the megi kernel, which they use as a source for some patches, is no longer available as a regular git repository. That seems to be fairly easy to fix: it just takes someone to set up a mirror on some high-bandwidth host (Pagure, GitLab, GitHub, or maybe even kernel.org), regularly downloading megi's bundles with a cron job and pushing them to the mirror. Then the Mobian maintainers or any other interested people can just work with that mirror and do not have to bother with megi's way to publish the changes (and neither does megi have to change the way they are published).

---

And that seems already fixed: megi himself has now set up such a clonable mirror on Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/megi/linux

[aular]

So i dont know if this is part of the thread, but is this codeberg where you would go to to redownload the og pinephone and the pinephone pros kernal to reinstall in the system. Having issues with my kernal and wanted to know where i can redownload or reinstall the package for pinephone or pro. thanks

[Kevin Kofler]

That link has the kernel's source code. You probably want the binaries for the distribution you are running. So which distribution are you running (so that I can point you to the correct place)?

[aular]

Arch, if there is anyway i can do it(reinstall) through the terminal that would help. Thank you

[Kevin Kofler]

The packages can be found here: https://archmobile.mirror.danctnix.org/d...x/aarch64/. The current kernel for the PinePhone and PinePhone Pro is https://archmobile.mirror.danctnix.org/d...pkg.tar.xz – as far as I can tell, it is the same kernel for both the PinePhone and the PinePhone Pro (unlike, e.g., Manjaro, which ships separate kernels for the two models). You should be able to install that package with: pacman -U linux-megi-6.5.7-1-aarch64.pkg.tar.xz

[aular]

Thank you, been trying to find them files for a while and google didnt help to much.