Over the past few years, Google has been working to modularize Android and improve update speed. As part of these efforts, for Android 11, the team is creating a more portable Linux kernel – or Generic Kernel Image (GKI) – to work across all Android devices, which would enable faster security deployments.
According to Ars Technica, “Today, the Linux kernel gets forked three times before it hits a phone: the LTS release gets forked into the "Android Common" kernel by Google with Android OS-specific changes, then that gets forked into an SoC-specific kernel (usually by Qualcomm), then that gets forked by the device manufacturer into a device-specific kernel. The GKI would take the Android Common kernel – the first fork – and run it on a device.”
Read more at Ars Technica.
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