For the most part, Linux ships with drivers in the kernel source tree.

This ensures it will remain maintained, and allows the developers to evolve subsystems in an incompatible way and update drivers accordingly.

The syscall interface is always maintained however. As Linus would say, “never break userspace”.

Linux drivers tend to be developed and maintained as part of the kernel rather than external plugins.

That said, there are still a few bad actors who refuse to do this, notably Nvidia.

Drivers are usually part of the kernel source tree.

Some clever brain thought drivers should be part of the kernel. I personally think that's what's prevented Linux from conquering the desktop because of GPU vendors having no stable API to build upon. That is also the reason Android phones get no updates. It was a horrible decision.

Oh THATS why android gets so few updates.. (pardon the sarcasm). Its all because of those damn linux renegates - ruining software for the rest of us. Somebody ought to stop the linux bullies preventing those poor corporations from updating their products.

It's unreasonable to expect OEMs to keep updating the code every time the driver API is broken, especially when you have dozens of mobiles.

The only side who's losing here is the end customer.

> It's unreasonable to expect OEMs to keep updating the code every time the driver API is broken, especially when you have dozens of mobiles.

Nobody expects that. Once drivers are in the mainline, the OEMs don't have to do any work to keep them from getting broken when Linux devs decide to do the kind of refactoring and systemic improvements that are impossible on Windows. All Android OEMs have to do is git pull, make, and send the new OS image off to the same QA processes any other update needs before deployment.

OEMs won't mainline their drivers with all their trade secrets. That's impractical, unrealistic wishful thinking that harms consumers.

The drivers aren't where the important trade secrets are. Those are all in the hardware or in the proprietary firmware that the driver has to upload to the hardware, or in a userspace blob as with AMD's GPU drivers. The code that actually runs in the kernel on the host CPU doesn't reveal any valuable IP given the way most hardware is designed these days.

They don't have to. They just need to open-source their drivers and mainline them, don't they? People will gladly maintain what Qualcomm et al. aren't willing to, they just need to abandon the binary blob bullshit.

Yes - very unreasonable. Im sure its an enormeous expense. Better keep those devices 10 security updates behind to make sure the bloatware still works. I mean - they already paid right: why bother updating.