Comment by echoangle
6 days ago
Every Linux distro just uses Linux for the kernel, right? What else is there? Init system and user space stuff isn’t Linux in any Linux distro either, because Linux is a kernel. The real thing that might make Android not a normal Linux distro is the heavy modification of the Kernel.
A Linux distro uses the Linux kernel by definition, I guess, so I think you are right about that. We could talk about distros in general, maybe Homebrew and Cygwin, if we didn’t want to define a distro as being a Linux distro. But I’m not sure what the point is.
I’m not clear on what they meant by Linux. But if we use a definition of “Linux OS” that includes Android and is restricted to devices which people typically use to perform searches (aka consumer devices) (since that was the original topic), then Linux is mostly Android and it is a kind of pointless distinction to make.
If we want to use some definition of Linux that precludes Android, and covers all devices that use the Linux kernel, then we have a bunch of servers, streaming boxes, smart lightbulbs, whatever.
If we want to use a definition which is, like, what I think everyone means when they say Linux in the context of market share: GNU/Linux or BusyBox/other/Linux (I was hoping to avoid the GNU/Linux meme, but here we are), then that doesn’t have much market share.