Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] Mainline kernel on a cellphone

["John W. Linville" <linville@tuxdriver.com>]

On Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 10:25:47AM -0700, Tim Bird wrote:

<snip>

> I'm doing some research now on the usefulness of backporting the current
> brcm80211 code to 3.18, which many of the next round of Android phones
> will be using.  This at least exposes the stack to mobile device vendors
> and device owners, who (with some luck) can test it in production settings
> and find deficiencies.
> 
> If we do nothing, then we'll have another full generation of phones
> which focus exclusively on out-of-tree wireless driver code.  This will
> end up delaying the adoption of the mainline driver (in this product
> area) by another few years, IMHO.
> 
> Feedback on the and sanity of this approach are welcome. :-)  If anyone knows
> things about the broadcom driver or the wireless stack that would make this
> backport particularly costly, please let me know.

It probably goes without saying, but you should make sure that
brcm80211 actually supports the chips in use.  Broadcom has not done a
very good job at keeping brcm80211 up-to-date with the hardware that
they actually release for laptops.  Installing out-of-tree Broadcom
wireless drivers on laptops still seems to be a common requirement. :-(

John
-- 
John W. Linville		Someday the world will need a hero, and you
linville@tuxdriver.com			might be all we have.  Be ready.