One of the main issues with Linux on ARM is the lack of proper GPU drivers for the platform, as most silicon manufacturers now only focus on Android drivers which are not compatible with the Linux kernel, because Android is based on Bionic C library, whereas Linux is based on glibc or its variants. There are two ways to solve this issue:
- Open Source GPU drivers. This would be the ideal solution, as you would just be able to cross-compile the drivers for the proper, as well as fix bugs without having to ask the silicon manufacturer to fix the driver for you.
- Bionic to Glibc library. Such library acts like libdl, and allows to load Bionic library and overrides some symbols from bionic with glibc based ones. This is exactly what libhybris does.
Ubuntu Touch is capable of using Android GPU drivers to run Ubuntu thanks to this library, and Libhybris will provides the interface between the HAL and Mir display server for Ubuntu 14.04.
Libhybris is released under an Apache 2.0 license, and the source code, written in C, is available in github. This library is based on the initial work of Carsten Munk.
There are 3 main directories in the source tree:
- compat
- ui – Some wrapper for Android UI.
- hybris
- common – Common parts, including parsing /system/build.prop and matching common C functions (e.g. pthread*, str*…) between Bionic and glibc
- egl – EGL support
- gles2 – OpenGL ES 2 support
- hardware – Loads /system/lib/libhardware.so
- tests – Test programs for egl, gles2, lights, sensors, offscreen rendering, and ui
- ui – Loads /system/lib/libui_compat_layer.so and creates bindings for the related functions.
- utils – Contains load_sym_files.py utility that loads symbol files for debugging.
Libhybris not only let you access the GPU, but also other hardware such as lights and sensors. I assume, but I may be wrong, that it could also be used with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth closed source drivers. Hopefully, work can also be done for VPU (Video Processing Unit) support in order to take advantage of hardware video decoding and encoding in Linux with Android libs, but I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if it’s feasible or not.
Using Libhybris is not an optimal solution, as there may be a small performance degradation, and you’ll be using the Android kernel, so many of the things you’d got used to with the Linux kernel won’t be available, and you’ll have to use the “Android” way. The implementation is not straightforward either, as Canonical’s Ubuntu Touch preview makes use of SurfaceFlinger which means applications relying on X11, GTK… will not work at the beginning, and you’ll have to wait until 2014 and and implementation with Mir display server to get a full solution based on libhybris with X11 compatibility. Nevertheless, even though libhybris is not a perfect solution, it’s a practical one, as it’s a technical solution, and not one which relies on convincing management and lawyers to release open source drivers.
There’s also some work on reverse-engineered open source GPU drivers such as the lima project, and some companies, e.g. Freescale / Vivante, release proper (closed-source) drivers for ARM Linux, but the company with the highest market share, namely Imagination Technologies, does not participate in any of those initiatives, and libhybris could become the way of the future, so most people may end-up using Android kernels on their ARM “Linux” distribution. Comments are welcome!
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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