Questions regarding to Image

Hi, I’m trying to choose an image from Reference Images for Yocto Project Software Downloads | Toradex Developer Center .

I don’t understand the difference between Mainline based kernel and Downstream SoC vendor based kernel. May I know what are their differences or a link to understand it? I tried to google it but did not get a very good answer from it. I am still new to this, sorry if my questions is weird.

As I understand it, a mainline kernel is from the original kernel.org sources. On github, this would be GitHub - torvalds/linux: Linux kernel source tree. You’ll notice the latest tags there are v5.14-rcX and last official “release” was v5.13.

A downstream kernel refers to somebody taking an upstream kernel and making modifications to it. For NXP, they would “start” with an upstream kernel version and make some modifications to better support their chips and/or fix problems that exist in the upstream kernel they chose.

Not sure how that applies to Toradex exactly, but I would assume that their “Downstream SoC vendor base kernel” probably starts with something from NXP and their “Mainline based kernel” starts with something from the Linux kernel sources specifically.

Hopefully that helps answer your question, but I wonder if the real question is “which one should I use?” I don’t have any help for that one. Hopefully somebody else chimes in with more knowledge.

Hi @DaveM , thanks for your help.
Hi @Raymond , does @DaveM 's answer solve your question?

Hi @benjamin.tx . Yep, I found some explanations in toradex too. Which is similar to what he explains.