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BSP Tracker  /  BSP Status / NVIDIA

NVIDIA Jetson Orin (Tegra234)

Mainline boots Orin and gives you a fine SBC. It does not give you CUDA, TensorRT, the DLA, NVENC/NVDEC or the camera stack — which is the entire commercial reason to choose Orin. The real decision is not mainline vs BSP; it is JetPack 6 (kernel 5.15) vs JetPack 7 (kernel 6.8).

BSP branch Jetson Linux 39.2 (JetPack 7.2)Linux 6.8Mainline since v5.10
See all 17 →
Security cliff
Linux 6.8 is not a longterm series. Upstream stable support has already ended, so every fix in this BSP is one the vendor backported alone.
The vendor BSP tracks Linux 6.8 on branch Jetson Linux 39.2 (JetPack 7.2). A kernel that is not a longterm series receives no upstream stable fixes at all.

Mainline instead of the vendor BSP

Can you ship mainline instead, and what exactly do you lose if you do?

Vendor BSP required

BlockIPUpstreamDetail
GPU / CUDAAmpere iGPUmissingProprietary. No CUDA, cuDNN or TensorRT on a mainline kernel.
NPUDLAmissingNo NVDLA/Tegra entry in drivers/accel.
VPUNVENC / NVDECmissingNo upstream V4L2/DRM drivers; exposed only via the L4T Multimedia API.
ISPVI + ISP (Argus)missinglibargus and nvarguscamerasrc are L4T-only.
SoC platformTegra234 DTSupstreamNVIDIA upstreams the DTS and core platform drivers.
Mainline since v5.10, verified by bracketing the device tree against the kernel tags: proof 1 · proof 2

Vendor BSP

Repository. https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/jetson-linux

Newest branch that actually exists. Jetson Linux 39.2 (JetPack 7.2), tracking Linux 6.8. Last commit 2026-06-02.

Cadence. Release-based, not a public rolling git tree. Two live lines for Orin: JetPack 6.x / L4T 36.4.x on kernel 5.15, and JetPack 7.x / L4T 39.2 on kernel 6.8.

Silicon longevity

Committed until 2032-01. The only vendor here with a real per-module availability table. Orin Nano, Orin NX and AGX Orin: January 2032. AGX Orin Industrial: July 2033. This is module availability, not software support duration.

Vendor source

Yocto

Layer. meta-tegra (community, OE4T). A branch for the current LTS exists: wrynose.

NVIDIA ships no official Yocto layer. meta-tegra pins L4T per branch; which L4T the plain wrynose branch targets is not verified.

Hardware you can buy

Evaluate on. Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit, Jetson AGX Orin Developer Kit

Production modules.

Notes

The Orin module IS the production part. Third parties sell carriers, not modules.

What to do about it

NVIDIA Jetson Orin (Tegra234): upstream fixes have already stopped. The BSP tracks Linux 6.8, which no longer receives security fixes from upstream. Any new CVE that affects this kernel has to be found, backported and tested by your own team.

There are three options:

  1. Backport the fixes yourself. Your team maintains a kernel that nobody else maintains: tracking each CVE, applying the patch to a tree that has diverged from upstream, and testing the result, for as long as the product ships.
  2. Move to the vendor’s newer BSP. This gives you a few more years of upstream fixes, and it costs a second bring-up: a new kernel, your patches forward-ported, drivers re-validated, and the product re-tested.
  3. Move to mainline. Mainline does not yet support the blocks this product needs, so a migration would require upstreaming them first. It is the only option that does not have to be repeated when the next vendor kernel reaches end of life.

All three are engineering work, and all three are work we do: reading vendor kernel trees, checking what mainline actually supports, and moving products from one to the other. This page is built from the same work.

Embedded Linux engineering →Talk to us about your BSP

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An email when a kernel series reaches end of life, a board row changes, or a layer picks up a release branch. Nothing else.

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