Some of you might be aware of the fact that about a week ago, on March 18, Carsten Munk, Chief Research Engineer at Jolla, published an interesting article on his blog, where he claimed that BQ is not offering a GPL license for the Linux kernel powering the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition device.

We also want to remind you that Adan Munoz, product development lead at BQ, revealed in a video interview that BQ was involved in the development of the Linux kernel used in the Ubuntu Phone device they sold on their website in partnership with Canonical, the maker of the Ubuntu operating system, so that all the drivers are correctly integrated.

Today, March 26, we announce that BQ has published the Linux kernel source code for the Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition device on GitHub, so that anyone who wants to hack it and contribute to it can do so by cloning the kernel from its dedicated GitHub page. This is very good news, as the community can now contribute to the kernel used in the Ubuntu phone and improve it.

You need to run Ubuntu OS in order to contribute to Aquaris’ kernel

Those of you who want to contribute to the kernel found in BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition devices, should know that they will need to run a supported Ubuntu Linux operating system on their computer and have a setup similar to that used for flashing Ubuntu Touch on smartphones like Nexus 4 (e.g. phablet-tools).

Then, you must install the gcc-arm-linux-androideabi and packages using the “sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-linux-androideabi abootimg” command, then clone the kernel with the “git clone git@github.com:bq/aquaris-E4.5.git” command, and choose the branch you want to contribute to using the “cd aquaris-E4.5/” and “git checkout aquaris-E4.5-ubuntu-rtm” commands.

To build the kernel, after making modifications, run the “./makeMtk -t krillin n k” command, them build a flashable kernel image with the “cd testboot” and “./mkbootimg.sh” commands. Finally, flash the kernel image to your BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition device with the “fastboot flash boot boot.img” command. Please note that the sources are organized by comments and branch in the commits.