SkiffOS: Minimal Cross-compiled Linux for Embedded Containers

This release corresponds to Buildroot 2021.02 LTS.

Significant features / improvements in this release:

• Zram support for compression when under memory pressure
• jetson/common: migrate to squashfs-based boot for OTA compatibility
• Early support for Android kernel features with android/common
• Stability improvements to all core images.
• CPU-specific optimizations and Linux 5.11.x for Odroid and Raspberry Pi series of boards.
• Improved base skiff/core image with minimal desktop GUI
• Technical report
• Support for running DietPi in the core container
• Pinephone on Linux 5.12 with skiffos/skiff-core-gentoo-kde:pinephone-lto-wip
• Upgraded all kernels & firmware
• Stability improvements to all core images.

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Skiff compiles a lightweight operating system for any Linux-compatible computer, ranging from RPi, Odroid, NVIDIA Jetson, to Desktop PCs, Laptops (i.e. Apple MacBook), Phones (PinePhone), Containers, or Cloud VMs. It is:

• Adoptable: any userspace can be imported/exported to/from container images.
• Familiar: uses simple Makefile and KConfig language for configuration.
• Flexible: supports all major OS distributions inside containers.
• Portable: containers can be moved between machines of similar CPU type.
• Reliable: changes inside user environments cannot break the host boot-up.
• Reproducible: a given Skiff Git tree will always produce identical output.

Uses Buildroot to produce a minimal "single-file" host OS as a standardized base cross-platform operating system "shim" for hosting containers. Most Linux platforms have widely varying requirements for kernel, firmware, and additional hardware support packages. The immutable SkiffOS host system contains everything needed to support the hardware, cleanly separated from the applications.