Users wanting to run mainline Linux on ARM64 often face a familiar set of trade-offs: the hardware is too expensive, hard to find, outdated, or doesn’t support mainline at all. But this is starting to change, and Rockchip is one of the SoC vendors hitting the sweet spot.

Find out why Rockchip hardware, and Rockchip as a company, has been doing particularly well when it comes to mainline Linux support. This talk provides an overview of the available Rockchip hardware and the current state of the mainline software landscape around them. We will then highlight what the community has sucessfully upstreamed in 2025, and look at what's still baking in the developers' ovens.

The talk assumes the audience is already convinced that using the mainline kernel rather than vendor BSPs is the way to go. Beyond that, both veteran kernel hackers who are curious about hardware they're unfamiliar with, as well as people looking to get their feet wet in Linux kernel development, are welcome to attend.