Linux LTS Kernels To Now Be Maintained For Six Years (phoronix.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In a bid to help Android smartphone vendors the Linux LTS (Long Term Support) kernels will now be maintained for a period of six years. The Linux LTS initiative backed by the Linux Foundation has supported annual LTS kernels for two years worth of updates, but that is being changed for Linux 4.4+ at the request of Google and their Project Treble. This means the Linux 4.4 LTS kernel will be maintained through 2022 and the upcoming Linux 4.14 LTS through 2023 for security/bug fixes in order to last a complete "device lifecycle."

Comments

Terrible practice.

[iCEBaLM]

Huge waste of resources backporting when it would be easier to just upgrade to the latest kernels. Either way you have to test them, so why bother backporting?

How is six years a complete device lifecycle?

[RhettLivingston]

Most of my life, I've received 20 to 30 years of service out of appliance-class products such as televisions, refrigerators, stoves, microwaves, washing machines, and dryers. I have noticed a steep downtrend in those lifecycles, particularly in televisions, washing machines and dryers. But that reduction has been due to engineering choices in the machinery.

Now I'm interpreting this as an indication that devices with Android are targeting a six-year lifecycle!!! No way.

Android is in all of the above device types today and even in our cars. Android needs to be thinking in terms of how to at least maintain security updates for 30 years. Perhaps that may have to involve some standard pluggable module so that the hardware can be upgraded too, but it has to happen. The ever falling device lifetimes are soaking up both the piddling economic growth of the middle class and our resources.

Completely different strategies

[DrYak]

Linux LTS kernels are mostly useful for Android smartphone (specially the older letters).

The main problem is that the hardware manufacturer that build the base PCB that are used by phone manufacturer to build the smartphone rely heavily on binary drivers (Intel being one of the few exceptions).
Usually, they'll fork whatever is the current version of the kernel in the Android letter-du-jour, slap binary GPU (and a few other special chips, like sensors) drivers, and ship that in the devkits they give to smartphone manufacturer.

End result : it's 2017, the current kernel is 4.14, but your smartphone is stuck at running some ancient 3.2.xxx kernel because that's what Android Jelly Bean was running back when Qualcomm designed this chipset, and they haven't bothered to make any upgrade since.

By making extremely long LTS release cycles, it means that, even if current crop of android kernel is stuck to kernel 4.14 because of Android Oreo, in 6 years, there will be still patches and bugfixes publilshed for this kernel, and LineageOS would be able to ship some hack of Android K(akao ?) running on kernel version 4.14.986 with all the latest security fixes.

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The strategy of Fuschia is different.

It's supposed to be a micro-kernel architecture :
- The kernel is only a very low-level hardware abstraction layer.
- Everything else are user-land server.

That could in theory enable Anroid Y/Z to use binary proprietary user-land server for the chip-set specific drivers written by the hardware manufacturer,
but upgrade the other servers to the latest security corrections.