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Comment by ffsm8 | Hacker News Reader

Android uses the Linux Kernel, but iirc (correct me if I'm wrong), it doesn't come with the required application to make it Unix and hence is not the Linux operating system. That would mean it's only using the same kernel as the Linux operating system?

Idk, just speculating to maybe get the thought process

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> That would mean it's only using the same kernel as the Linux operating system?

There's no "Linux operating system". Linux is the name of the kernel. Android is an operating system, GNU/Linux is, things like BusyBox/Linux are. They're all operating systems that use the Linux kernel.

Linux is a perfectly good operating system. If you're motivated enough, you can boot Linux straight into your software without any other dependencies at all. Linux operates the system just fine all by itself.

There's this weird definition of "operating system" which means "some sort of platform with a shell and little commands like cp, ls, etc.". That's just what POSIX tells people an operating system is, not the ultimate truth. It doesn't have to be that way.

You kinda blew my mind just now. I never considered an operating system as a collection of packages before (conceptually speaking).

Uh, didn't I say exactly that? Gnu/Linux Is just collegially known as "Linux" and the operation system suffix made it clear what he was talking about. I didn't come up with the usage of the term, I was merely trying to interpret their words.

there's competing specs, holy wars, etc. but POSIX is kind of like what you're describing. popular distros are usually mostly-but-not-completely compliant.

There was also the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Standard_Base , but unfortunately it wasn't particularly successful.

> it doesn't come with the required application to make it Unix and hence is not the Linux operating system.

Linux is not a Unix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix-like

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