Google's Pixel 3 Is Using The MSM DRM Driver, More Android Phones Moving To DRM/KMS Code

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Google's Pixel 3 Is Using The MSM DRM Driver, More Android Phones Moving To DRM/KMS Code

It turns out Google's recently announced Pixel 3 smartphone is making use of the MSM Direct Rendering Manager driver associated with the Freedreno open-source Qualcomm graphics project. Google is also getting more Android vendors moving over to using DRM/KMS drivers to power their graphics/display...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Pixel-3-Freedreno-MSM-DRM-Plus

[darkbasic]

Wait a moment, is the Pixel 3 truly running on an open source DRM?

[dreich]

This is great news!

[tildearrow]

Wait a moment, is the Pixel 3 truly running on an open source DRM?

DRM as in Direct Rendering Manager, not the other useless and controversial thing also called "DRM".

[chenxiaolong]

This is fantastic news! From my experience with debugging TWRP rendering issues on one of my devices, fbdev is an abomination (at least on Android) with tons of device-specific quirks.

[dos1]

Fun fact: the first phone ever with KMS support was Openmoko Neo Freerunner with SMedia Glamo back in 2009.

[shmerl]

That's an improvement. But they should get rid of Android specific interfaces in their whole graphics stack, not just the kernel, and unify it with regular desktop Linux. That would be a major improvement.

[SpyroRyder]

Does this impact being able to run (eventually) android apps native or with a wrapper ?

No. This affects device performance, debugability, and the ability to hopefully run more up to date kernels, at least as far as the graphics drivers are concerned. The situation still isnt good with how many proprietary drivers phones ship with

[TemplarGR]

It would be ideal if Android was brought closer to Linux desktop APIs and libraries. That would mean less work for Google developers too. It is a win-win situation for both us Linux users and Android users.

[pgeorgi]

It would be ideal if Android was brought closer to Linux desktop APIs and libraries. That would mean less work for Google developers too. It is a win-win situation for both us Linux users and Android users.

And they have to start somewhere. Having everything on a single driver interface enables further unification, so how knows, maybe Android T could be based on Wayland?