Comment by zozbot234
2 months ago
Android systems don't even run the linux kernel in any real sense, pretty much every downstream kernel has millions of lines of patched code that will never make it upstream in their current form. Of course, that's no different from mostly any other "Linux" embedded device, but it's very different indeed from what's standard on desktop systems.
I would still count it as the Linux kernel. They don't change the syscall API, it's really mostly at the BSP level, right?
Said differently: if manufacturers cared to mainstream their changes, they could. And we would all be better for it.
Equating sub-desktop (based on typical use) Linux device instances, with desktop instances, would be similar to counting iOS, iPadOS and Vision OS instances with macOS instances.
It would change the graph quite a bit to include all sub-desktop devices. Although that would also be an interesting comparison.
> I would still count it as the Linux kernel.
This may be technically true, except it has no single meaningful implication, like no Linux software works there.
That's not even true. You can use typical Linux software inside of a chroot, like with Termux.
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I think this really undervalues what Linux provides. The Android software is Linux software.
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No software compiled for arm will run on x86. No software depending on Qt will run without Qt, even if you have GTK.
Doesn't mean they don't run the same kernel, does it?
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You can run Linux software on Android via termux, or the amazing UserLAnd app even lets you install an entire distro userland with several choices (Debian, Arch, etc)
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Checkout https://postmarketos.org Those vendor provided kernel trees let you run a real Linux distribution on your phone.
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This is the reason I hate the recent surge in linux desktop users. People jumping in without allocating enough time to get familiar with the ecosystem
Android is Linux
Android is not GNU/Linux.
Article talks about GNU/Linux clearly. There is a point to the whole "I'd like to interject for a moment..." copypasta and Android's situation is the clearest illustration of it.
The article talks about browsers that use Linux in the user agent. This includes Alpine Linux - which is not GNU/Linux. It also splits out Chrome OS which is pretty much GNU/Linux.
Alpine and GNU/Linux are Posix, while Android is not.
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> Article talks about GNU/Linux clearly.
There are Linux distributions that don't use the GNU userland. Should we start being pedantic about that? And say Busybox/Linux or MyCustomThingy/Linux etc?
And actually, were you talking about GNU/Linux/Xorg, or GNU/Linux/Wayland? Can I also ask people to mention which libc they use? Alpine is OpenRC/Busybox/musl/Linux, which is not systemd/GNU/glibc/Linux.
So yeah... Desktop Linux is not worse a way to describe an OS than GNU/Linux.
> There is a point to the whole "I'd like to interject for a moment..." copypasta and Android's situation is the clearest illustration of it.
Well… :-)
With you in spirit, but to add to the mess, one could argue Alpine (and Postmarket OS) is a standard Linux distro, but non GNU.
"GNU/" cannot be used for clarifying things anymore.
This has been repeated for so long that in the meantime enough of the changes have been upstreamed such that Android has been able to run with the upstream kernel since 6 years ago.