Official Android 7.1 <-> LineageOS 14.1

[oli.sax]

Hello !

@RSpliet

But the older the base version is, the less likely it is to see back-ports of important recent upstream work.

That is a think that I fear as well, that due to the old kernel FP2 will miss some opportunities for new functionalities…
One example is Anbox, an Android emulator for Linux-based operating systems: UBPorts decided to include it on their system, to be able to run proprietary apps and get more users to Ubuntu Touch. For the moment it runs only on non-Qualcomm devices, due to the need of kernel patch…
Same thing for Anbox on SailfishOS, according to @mal:

@mal

The biggest issue with the community android support for FP2 Sailfish OS is the old kernel, based on my research 3.4 kernel would require backporting of approximately 30-40 patches from a newer kernel version. Not sure how easy that would be, maybe I’ll try it at some point. In general the current community android support, Anbox, is able to show at least some apps but still many issues.

My question is: what is the status of the mainline kernel fork 4.12-rc5 by @z3ntu? Is it working enough to be used for an alternative OS like UbuntuTouch or SailfishOS, or does it requires so much work that it’ll be easier to backport patches to the 3.4 kernel?