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Comment by jaywalker | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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