alt Hacker NewsAll the mainline kernel support is reverse-engineered. No help from Arm.
Thus there is a considerable lag for the support of newer Mali generations.
Some Linux distributions for various embedded computers with Arm-based CPUs and GPUs use closed-source GPU drivers from Arm, not the reverse-engineered Linux drivers, when the Mali versions are newer than supported by the kernel and Mesa.
The Arm GPUs do not have public technical documentation, not even at the level of NVIDIA, much less something comparable with AMD and Intel.
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I liked it better when electronic components which didn't have very thorough detailed documentation were instantly recognizable as completely unsuitable for a production BOM. :\
>All the mainline kernel support is reverse-engineered. No help from Arm.
That's not true. Arm has been supporting the open source driver effort for the last couple years, but it's still behind the closed source one in terms of performance, features, and HW support.
I think you are confusing Apple and Arm.
Mali drivers are contributed by Arm:
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/MAINTAINERS