Android distributions¶

• Table of contents
• Android distributions
  • Reviews
    • Anbox
    • Android x86
    • AOSP
    • CustomROMs
    • DivestOS Mobile
    • Fairphone
    • GLODroid
    • LineageOS
    • Waydroid
    • Building a collaboration with other Android distributions
  • Comparison
• Comparison of distributions
  • AOSP and LineageOS

Reviews¶

Anbox¶

Manifest: https://github.com/anbox/platform_manifests/blob/anbox/default.xml
Android base: 7.1.1_r13
Based on: AOSP

Goals:

• Run Android (applications) in containers on top of GNU/Linux

Extra repositories (overridden or added):

Android x86¶

At the time of writing, the most recent images are RC images for Android 9, but there are branches for Android 10.

As they use (mostly?) upstream kernels, they sometimes have interesting code.

Source code: https://git.osdn.net/view?a=project_list;pf=android-x86
Manifest: git://git.osdn.net/gitroot/android-x86/manifest.git

Branches¹:

¹ https://www.android-x86.org/source.html

AOSP¶

AOSP doesn't support many devices, but it seem to support some devboards.

The advantage is that in general devboards are well supported by upstream kernels.

The official documentation also mentions some devboards .

¹ Some of the devboards in this page are probably supported: https://wiki.linaro.org/AOSP#AOSP_Dev_Board_Reference_Information

CustomROMs¶

CustomROMs seem to be a space for unofficial port of LineageOS. The idea is probably to develop the port until they manage to meet LineageOS's device-support-requirements.md . When the requirements are met, they are probably included in LineageOS directly.

• The Galaxy SIII (GT-I9300) is being ported to more recent LineageOS versions. There is a thread on the collaboration with Replicant in github. The person/people doing the port seem to alternate between an upstream kernel and a older kernel based on the vendor code depending on the amount of work required to finish the port and/or the difficulties encountered. As we are also using a kernel based on upstream Linux we collaborate on that part by reusing each other work when applicable.

DivestOS Mobile¶

This distribution is based on LineageOS. While they seem to reuse nonfree software to make the hardware work, they spent some time cleaning up LineageOS code itself.

For instance it contains patches to remove privacy issues and nonfree software included in CyanogenMod or LineageOS.

As we need to do that too in Replicant as long as we use LineageOS as base, it would be interesting to collaborate more with DivestOS on that part.

Web site:
https: https://divestos.org/
Onion: http://6sdlxbqgcxdbkvysoir2qvqqs5ro3fxgyl3phvuphcdyklv7rg57jhid.onion

Fairphone¶

As October 2020, they are porting the Fairphone 2 to Android 9. However to do that, they are using 3.4 kernel and not any upstream kernels.

In addition, they don't seem very interested in free software bootloaders, and the Fairphone 1 and 2 use Qualcomm System On a Chip.

However they are probably interested in free software libraries to make the port to newer Android versions easier.

GLODroid¶

Based on: AOSP
Manifest: https://github.com/GloDroid/glodroid_manifest/blob/master/glodroid.xml

Glodroid specific repositories:

There are also various toolchains:

It also contains various repositories for nonfree firmwares and nonfree bootloader components (BL1, etc), and a repository with just APKs (this might be an issue for license compliance).

LineageOS¶

See device-support-requirements.md for more information on LineageOS expectations.

Replicant has a script that is able to parse the LineageOS wiki data . That can be useful to find information on devices supported by LineageOS.

• A Qualcomm SOC with an integrated modem inside (MSM*) for many devices
• A Qualcomm SOC without a modem inside (APQ*) for many devices
• A HiSilicon Kirin 970 SOCs for devices like:
  • The Huawei Honor View 10
  • The Huawei P20 Pro
• A Samsung Exynos 7580 SOC for the following device
  • Galaxy S5 Neo (Smartphone): It has shared memory between the modem and the SOC

It may be because they rely on nonfree software to support devices, which has not been ported to Android 9, or may be because they need more time to add devices with other SOCs like exynos.

Waydroid¶

Waydroid consist in some host tool that can containerize an Android distribution, and some changes on top of LineageOS.

• The audio library does something like that: snd_pcm_open(&out->pcm, "pulse", SND_PCM_STREAM_PLAYBACK, 0); [1], so if I understood right, it uses Pulseaudio's alsa compatbility layer.
• For the graphics, some repositories like mesa, minigbm are replaced by Waydroid's own repositories. It also integrates boringdroid APK as-is instead of building it from source. Boringdroid brings moving windows to Android instead of the default full-screen windows.

There is some interest in Guix about having something like that as a patch serie was sent for adding the Waydroid host part in Guix.

What would be more interesting for Replicant as-is that in android_hardware_waydroid², there is libraries that work with upstream kernels like the vibrator library. We also have our own vibrator library but it would probably be a good idea to share the maintenance somehow.

¹ https://github.com/waydroid/android_hardware_waydroid/blob/lineage-18.1/audio/audio_hw.c

² https://github.com/waydroid/android_hardware_waydroid

Building a collaboration with other Android distributions¶

• Replicant doesn't want to support devices that have more freedom issues than the ones currently supported.
• Many other Android distributions probably don't have the same goals with the freedom of the devices they support.
• Replicant 9 is based on upstream Linux and will have to maintain its userspace libraries.
• Some users may still want to support devices that have more freedom issues than the ones supported by Replicant.

It could be a good idea to share the maintenance of the code used to make Replicant 9 with other distributions.

Comparison¶

Comparison of distributions¶

AOSP and LineageOS¶

commit 22abc3cf4077644463a2dc1c59a5a74e9518ea16
Merge: 9e96d54 8a6b6c3
Date:   Sat Jul 13 18:57:45 2019 +0200

    Merge remote-tracking branch 'aosp/pie-gsi' into lineage-16.0-pie-gsi