Am I missing something? Every Android phone is running Linux.
The overall Android environment isn't Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat, ..., or other GNU/Linux environment.
(the downvotes you currently have there given the graying text are a bit misguided IMO, your misconception is a very common one, one that people in some circles even seen to encourage)
It’s not a desktop Linux OS, of course. But it’s still Linux.
That is what makes a linux distribution too me in my opinion, in the same way I can run a linux with musl libc, and busybox, I can run Android
Often, for specific devices, the kernels they run are forks with changes that aren't upstreamed. Some of those changes can be significant enough that porting those changes to an updated kernel snapshot is nearly impossible, so it never happens, despite the kernel fork's source being available under the GPLv2.
[1] https://android.googlesource.com/platform/ndk/+/4e159d95ebf2...
Kernel is the major thing under GPL left and while there are some theories they might want to replace it with the Fucsia micro kernel I don't think they have a chance in hell given the ministered and number of parties involved in cooperative Linux kernel development.
Does Termux count? It may be containered within an application package, but it's running off the host kernel and it uses the debian package manager.
https://i.imgur.com/WIT2VjW.png
I find that, when it comes to Android, people try really hard to make exceptions for what qualifies as "Linux" that do not exist as goalposts for other distributions or forms of Linux that are generally accepted under the Linux umbrella.
I'd say it's as much as Linux as anything else that uses the base kernel and is reduced (for space reasons) or modified (for hardware support)... DDWRT comes to mind.
When you have a base kernel for a device, running a "proper" distribution isn't much further behind. I was able to install Ubuntu on top of the stock kernel of one of my oldest Chromebook devices, the Acer C710. That's how I started using Linux full time. Does that not count? Because you can do that on Android devices, too.
It's Linux. Carving out exceptions and drawing arbitrary lines and qualifiers doesn't really get anyone anywhere. In the end it's a very specialized Linux kernel for that hardware running often proprietary blobs, but when it comes down to it:
Yes, you an install distros on top of the kernel on the device[1],
And yes, I'd argue Android itself is a distro.
The only thing Android really lacks is a universal installer. IMHO, we can thank Qualcomm for that situation we're in.
So given that from Google's point of view POSIX and Linux syscalls aren't public APIs on Android, termux no longer works on latest Android versions and it will get worse, as NDK APIs keep being locked down as sandbox improvements.
One of the workarounds for those affected calls for making SELinux permissive.
SELinux, of course, only works on a Linux kernel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux
https://source.android.com/security/selinux
But, apparently, Android isn't Linux..................
Just another example of how people try too hard to create goalposts to say Android isn't Linux when those goalposts don't exist for anything else.
Just another example on how Linux die hards try to make juice out of lemons, to pivot Linux dominance on consumer devices.
I can't see what replying with "how to access LinuxSE on non-rooted devices" has ANYTHING to do with my comment that you previously replied to unless you're just trying to be disingenuous. I specifically mentioned that a typical use case of someone affected by the changes breaking Termux are users *most likely to be the type that will run a custom rom or root mode.*
"Regular consumers" don't give a flying fuck if Android is Linux or whether or not they can run Termux.
BTW, a Pinephone running WebOS is very tempting. WebOS was so much ahead of its time it’s still ahead of ours.
So, what is Android? Does Linux run the Android userspace, or does Android run the Linux kernel...
No, “GNU” is the operating system project, which includes the userland components, the kernel, and everything else. Just like “Windows” is not ntkrnl.dll, nor is “Windows” the sum of explorer.exe, cmd.exe, etc. – “Windows” is the overarching project name. “GNU” is the same.
People who think of “GNU” as userland components likely are influenced by the accident of 1990’s history that was the prevalence of SunOS (etc.) systems with added GNU command utilities. But the GNU command line utilities were originally meant to be for a (yet to be written) complete GNU operating system, including a GNU kernel, Hurd. But since the GNU operating system was to be compatible with Unix, and the command line utilities were good, people liked to run the command line utilities on proprietary Unix variants, and later the same happened when a Linux-based Unix system was cobbled together; the GNU utilities were there for the taking, and they were very useful in creating a complete Unix-based system, based on Linux. This probably created the confusion that GNU = userland utilities and Linux = operating system, even though almost the opposite being true.
The kernel is Linux and the most important userland parts are from GNU. Therefore they are really GNU/Linux distributions.
The GNU project has more to offer than coreutils, like Hurd.