As part of the collaboration between Canonical and OEMs public OEM archives exist that ship additional open-source patches, fixes and hardware-specific documentation. These archives are used by default on the Ubuntu pre-installed SKUs as sold by OEMs. The updates in those repositories are sensitive in timing by OEMs and Canonical, to match hardware release cycles and thus are performed outside of the SRU process.
Often enough the updates are prepared in private, using codenames of unreleased hardware, and are made available simultaneously with the hardware releases / announcements for Ubuntu support. Ahead of integration in vanilla kernels. Eventually, all fixes make it into all the relevant upstream projects, and eventually integrated into vanilla ubuntu. This happens across multiple releases / LTS-point releases. To provide a better experience on vanilla Ubuntu installations I would like to ship stub meta-packages with Modaliases metadata in the Ubuntu Archive. These stub meta-packages would pull in OEM signing key as a trusted key, and enable the correct OEM repository matching the hardware in question. Usually, it involves switching machines from linux-generic to the linux-oem kernel flavour. Both kernel flavors are maintained in the public Ubuntu Archive by Canonical Kernel Team). Thus this would allow users of vanilla installations to opt-into OEM updates, fixes, firmware updates, and documentation to be installed after the next `apt full-upgrade`. Such a solution is very transparent, as one can disable the OEM repository and uninstall the OEM vendor meta package from the GUI software-properties app & ubuntu-drivers CLI tools. This is atypical request for the Ubuntu Project, as it's a new type of archive that users would be guided to choose and enable. The closest similarity is the Canonical Partner repository, however, the key difference is that OEM repositories contain open-source software that already exists in the Ubuntu Archive with additional hardware-specific fixes to particular machines. These repositories might contain proprietary things too - i.e. specific laptop model documentation, manuals and service guides. I am seeking permission from the tech board to ship OEM Archive keyring in the Ubuntu Archive, together with meta-packages that declare certified OEM Modaliases to make users an offer to opt into receiving updates from the OEM Archives for their hardware. -- Regards, Dimitri. -- technical-board mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/technical-board
