Padovan: A dream come true

[Posted December 17, 2018 by corbet]

Gustavo Padovan notes an important milestone in Linux graphics development: "The dream finally came true in 2018 with the release of the Google Pixel 3, the first Android phone running with the mainline graphics stack. A feat that was deemed impossible 10 years ago is now a reality thanks to a lot of hard work from the entire community."

Padovan: A dream come true

Posted Dec 17, 2018 21:49 UTC (Mon) by augustz (guest, #37348) [Link]

This is really fantastic news and the teams involved should be cheered.

Android trying to work with linux hasn't always had an easy time of it. I remember wakelocks. A power management approach that seemed to drive towards sleep as quickly as possible unless had a wakelock.

"looks to me like some people hacked up some ad-hoc trick for their own local need without instead trying to figure out how to fit things with the existing infrastructure" or "I think that this wakelock stuff is in 'can't be used properly' area on Rusty's scale of nasty interfaces." to quote LWN at the time.

Yowks, wakelocks trashed, wasn't the best start to things... Good to see things going a bit more smoothly now.

Padovan: A dream come true

Posted Dec 17, 2018 22:24 UTC (Mon) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (2 responses)

And extra thanks to libv for showing us a fully functioning graphics stack doesn't need to be a trash fire of closed firmware/userspace blobs, regardless of whether it's a throwaway ARM or thrown-over-the-wall AMD. We already knew it was possible 10 years ago.

Padovan: A dream come true

Posted Dec 18, 2018 15:08 UTC (Tue) by jhoblitt (subscriber, #77733) [Link] (1 responses)

libv as in Luc Verhaegen or is there a lib by the same name?

Padovan: A dream come true

Posted Dec 18, 2018 22:25 UTC (Tue) by dbaker (guest, #89236) [Link]

yes, libv is Luc Verhaegen

Padovan: A dream come true

Posted Dec 18, 2018 3:38 UTC (Tue) by xnox (guest, #63320) [Link] (1 responses)

Hmmmm... It's Qualcomm Adreno 630 right? Same one as in Lenovo Yoga C630 WOS and Samsung Galaxy Book2? I wonder if it's possible to bring up Ubuntu on those machines... would be lovely. Those use Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 Mobile Compute Platform, I wonder how similar that is to the Pixel 3 Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. It's only off by 5, right?!

Padovan: A dream come true

Posted Dec 18, 2018 16:05 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

This would be nice. I really don't need to have a powerful system for most of the stuff I do. It would be nice to have a dirt cheap ultra-portable that would be easy to use Debian or Fedora on.

Padovan: A dream come true

Posted Dec 18, 2018 16:06 UTC (Tue) by hailfinger (subscriber, #76962) [Link] (1 responses)

AFAICS the Pixel 3 is only partially running a mainline graphics stack: It uses DRM/KMS, but not the Freedreno 3D driver.
That said, this really is a nice milestone.

Padovan: A dream come true

Posted Dec 18, 2018 18:37 UTC (Tue) by jhoblitt (subscriber, #77733) [Link]

Is freedeno used by any of the community built aosp images?

Padovan: A dream come true

Posted Dec 21, 2018 10:44 UTC (Fri) by hawski (guest, #121884) [Link]

Would this mean that it will be the second best (after Nokia N900) supported device by PostmarketOS? As of yet it seems far from it: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Google_Pixel_3_XL_%28g...

Also could this be also at least partially expected for other devices with the same SoC: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Qualcomm-Adreno-630-GPU.299...