What's the open source driver situation like for these things? Is it worth supporting nvidia by buying one of these, or are they likely to crack down on developers to keep this thing closed? It is an awfully interesting device, but I'd hate to buy one and find I could only really use it as an android device, especially after reading reviews about that lackluster functionality.

NVIDIA has opensource Linux support for its SoCs in the form of L4T - Linux for Tegra.

Also checkout Tegra Shield Tablet running Ubuntu natively. http://forum.xda-developers.com/shield-tablet/development/ru...

Wikipedia says L4T contains proprietary drivers, but nvidia's having a third party make experimental open source drivers for mainline linux. Is that information out of date? The sources are from 2012 and very well could be. I'm trying to look for info but there's a lot of uninformative crap out there.

AFAIK, in the above, the bit about experimental open-source drivers for mainline Linux is the latest news update.

Note that this last bit proprietary blob is only the low-level GPU driver. Linux device-drivers of the other controllers of the Tegra X1 SoC already appear to be available in source form at https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/tegra/linux.git... (search for 'Tegra X1' or 'T210' or 'Tegra 210').

Also https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/linux-tegra contains source-code(with supporting documentation) for the non-kernel parts like for boot-loader(u-boot), OpenCV, OpenGL, X11, Gstreamer and even CUDA on Tegra X1.

That's cool. And very promising. I wonder why they decided to do it this way for the tegra project, and if that approach will spread.

I think, Nvidia is well organised and you'll get a ton of developer informations for the Tegra DevKits on their website and forums. The community is pretty active and helpful as well.

They provide a lot of drivers for CUDA and the DevKit boards, namely the Jetson TK1 and Jetson TX1. And some of the users also reported that the Shield TV has a lot in common with the TX1 boards.

Here is a set of arm64-ready Docker images

  docker run -it --rm multiarch/busybox:arm64 /bin/sh
  docker run -it --rm multiarch/ubuntu-core:arm64-wily
  docker run -it --rm multiarch/ubuntu-core:arm64-trusty
  docker run -it --rm multiarch/ubuntu-core:arm64-utopic
  docker run -it --rm multiarch/ubuntu-core:arm64-vivid
  docker run -it --rm multiarch/ubuntu-core:arm64-xenial
  docker run -it --rm multiarch/ubuntu-debootstrap:arm64-wily
  docker run -it --rm multiarch/ubuntu-debootstrap:arm64-vivid
  docker run -it --rm multiarch/ubuntu-debootstrap:arm64-trusty
  docker run -it --rm multiarch/debian-debootstrap:arm64-sid
  docker run -it --rm multiarch/debian-debootstrap:arm64-jessie
  docker run -it --rm scaleway/ubuntu:arm64-wily

Source code: https://github.com/multiarch

Would be great if it were possible to keep Android TV on there, AND run Docker containers at the same time...

It is possible to run Android on something much closer to a Linux kernel, eg with namespaces and cgroups and other useful features normally missing from Android. So it might be possible. Not on a stock Android kernel though.

That would be absolutely great and amazing. And I think this is really possible, but will take a great effort to build a recent Linux kernel with better container support - a 4.x would be fantastic.

And then running Android within a container. I've seen some research on this topic, and one guy had already run Android within a LXC container almost two years ago.

This being said, it strongly depends on the kernel support and if we're able to get all the Nvidia specific drivers supported within Docker containers. As soon as Nvidia is helping in this effort, we are on a good track. This will take some time, but I honestly believe it comes true!

@Nvidia: It would be awesome if we could get in contact with someone from Nvidia to push this further... anybody?

From the kernel commits Alexander Courbot appears to have worked on it recently. Even going back to the early days of previous-gen Tegra K1 support. http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-devel/2014-January... Also Thierry Reding is the Maintainer of the Linux kernel Direct Rendering Manager framework support for Tegra. https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/tegra/linux.git...

I'm sure the relevant devs hang-out on the LKML (if not here...) http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html#linux-tegra

The linux-tegra mailing list is the canonical communication channel when it comes to upstream Linux kernel development.

I should add here that both Alex and I focus almost exclusively on upstream development, which may or may not be what you're looking for. On one hand, upstream is where most of the new technologies are developed, so it's the "bleeding edge" from that point of view. On the other hand the amount of manpower that goes into upstream development is limited, so the upstream kernel might lack a bunch of features that you might be interested in. That said, we are working very hard on getting upstream closer to L4T/Android from a feature perspective and would very much welcome contributors.

We also have an IRC channel (#tegra on Freenode) that we use for realtime communication. If you're interested in chatting with us, feel free to drop by.