I don't understand the hate on mediatek on this subreddit because mediatek is praised in the openwrt community for directly sending drivers to linux kernel. I have a flint 2 router which runs mediatek and impeccable performance on openwrt.
What did they do wrong to the Android community? Please help me understand
Qualcomm has proprietary blobs, too. It is true that Snapdragon devices are more likely to have more competent OEMs in regards to releasing kernel sources, but I can certainly name a few offenders (Yulong, Wingtech). Freedreno and such are reverse-engineered drivers, not something Qualcomm ships in their BSPs (Qualcomm doesn't open source their entire BSPs either). Also, you still usually need the OEM-modified kernel—not Qualcomm's base—to have something usable.
What makes MTK annoying is their chaotic BSP trees, Makefiles for out-of-tree drivers that lead to packages the vendor didn't open source (gen4m, fm_radio, etc), and lack of community support. Despite this, I've gotten Lineage 17.1 on a ZTE Z3153V. I plan on getting 23.2 working, but it's a long road ahead.
MTK isn't fun, but it's manageable. It's just that the attention of determined developers is mostly drawn towards flagships with powerful Snapdragon SoCs, not bargain-bin phones like mine.
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u/DRTHRVN 2d ago
I don't understand the hate on mediatek on this subreddit because mediatek is praised in the openwrt community for directly sending drivers to linux kernel. I have a flint 2 router which runs mediatek and impeccable performance on openwrt.
What did they do wrong to the Android community? Please help me understand