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Comment by mda | Hacker News Reader

He is playing with words.

"Fact 1: Android runs Linux. But it’s not “the Linux.”" No, It IS "the Linux". A lot of distributions do not use vanilla Linux kernel. You are free to change whatever part you want. It does not change the fact that it is still Linux.

"Android was not developed by Google!" Does he think current android platform is developed by only the original members of the Android inc? It has been 5 years.

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Your views may differ. But I would take the statement "not developed by Google" as "not born at Google." I would compare that to SQL Server which wasn't born at Microsoft amongst a lot of other things.

Also, the fact that Android is not Linux means that you can't take a Linux app and port it to Android...it won't work...amongst other things there is no glibc; there is no windowing system; etc.

This discussion is somewhat turning into pedantry, but if it depends purely on linux then you can probably run it as a native app. The problem is that you're missing a lot of the system dependencies that are extensively used on Desktop linux.

Many linux deployments are servers, and they won't run a windowing system - that doesn't make them any less of a 'linux' distro. Programs like Apache for example are a fundamental part of the ecosystem and aren't dependent on X.

When we talk about Linux, we're usually talking about GNU/Linux. Android/Linux is a very different beast, and it's not pedantry to draw a distinction between them. The capabilities of GNU/Linux are closer to BSD than Android/Linux.

Except they're really not different. Just because Android runs a distinct userspace and windowing system doesn't make its Linux kernel any less Linux. You can easily install a Busybox userspace on a rooted Android device, and on top of that you can start building an entire GNU/Linux userspace, complete with package managers and X server. Install a VNC viewer in Android, and you can even connect to your local X server and have a fullscreen X session.

By that logic BSD is also exactly the same thing as Linux.

Even Mac is like a PC, then!

Maybe what you mean is that there's no GNU in their Linux?

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