It's not the kernel security updates that are important in regards to this 5 year promise, those are all open source and can be applied to any device a ROM (such as CalyxOS) supports. It's the proprietary firmware blobs that are the big deal, and what this 5 years promise from google means is that those blobs, required for certain hardware on the device, will receive 5 years of security updates. And that's good, because those are the security vulnerabilities that e.g. the CalyxOS team cannot patch themselves (no source code).
This is why CalyxOS now makes it clear what devices they support are still getting full security updates (kernel + firmware blobs) or just kernel updates. I believe the most recent CalyxOS patch added the ability for the user to see in settings the month and year of the last firmware security update for their device vs their current kernel security update.
This is why CalyxOS now makes it clear what devices they support are still getting full security updates (kernel + firmware blobs) or just kernel updates. I believe the most recent CalyxOS patch added the ability for the user to see in settings the month and year of the last firmware security update for their device vs their current kernel security update.
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