Status/Progress of CherryTrail / BayTrail support in mainline Linux kernel

[greg@kroah.com (Greg KH)]

On Mon, Sep 05, 2016 at 10:49:08AM +0200, Hanno Zulla wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> sorry for asking a possibly obvious question, but:
> 
> Why is support for Cherry Trail / Bay Trail so bad in the mainline
> kernel? Is this being worked on? And where can one help or track the
> progress with improving this?

Works for me! :)

> Recently, I bought a Win10 netbook to install Linux on. It's a
> beautiful small device with a fanless Z3735F CPU. Just right for my
> kids as their first own computer.
> 
> After using Intel hardware since several years without a hitch, it was
> surprising to find this not being fully supported by current 2016 Linux
> distributions.
> 
> The Wifi is not running at all, lost the network with a Wifi stick that
> works fine on RPi and the system freezes every now and then for no
> reproducible reasons. Googling around, all I found were similar
> complaints by other Linux users and a confusing array of incomplete
> third-party driver projects not ready for mainline, like this one:
> 
> https://github.com/hadess/rtl8723bs/issues/96

That is not an Intel part, not much Intel can do here about that.  I
suggest asking about this device on the linux-wireless mailing list, the
developers there can help you as they are working on a cleaned up driver
for that chip.

> Also, there's a litany of "don't buy Cherry Trail or Bay Trail devices
> for Linux" articles, which probably would have been helpful to read
> before buying that fateful device.

And almost all of those are wrong :)

Almost all Android tablets shipping right now are BayTrail devices, so
it is a working platform for Linux.


> This is sad to watch. I tried to find a different device for my kids,
> but all of the netbook-like devices on the market now share this
> problem. A whole generation of very interesting devices appears to be
> lost for Linux users.
> 
> Is there hope for this device class or does one have to stick to Core i
> CPUs for the time being?

All you have is an issue with a non-Intel wifi chip?  What else is
wrong?  Have you filed bugs for this with your distro-of-choice?

thanks,

greg k-h