Google propels Linux to the top | Hacker News Reader

Google propels Linux to the top

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51 pointstaylorbuley57 comments

Meh, Android is a locked-down OS that happens to use the Linux kernel. ChromeOS is a crippled internet-only OS that happens to use the Linux kernel.

Sure, this makes a lot of people have "Linux" in their hands, sort of, hidden away where they'll never find it and where it doesn't matter. I'm not sure this is much of an "open source" victory.

It's fairly straightforward to root your Android handset.

For a ChromeOS device it can be even easier: just download an installer, turn off the physical safety switch or screw, and you're running a full linux distro.

Still you have a point that it's hidden away. That could be seen as a plus for some: they don't want a Gnome or KDE experience. ChromeOS appears to be filling a real market niche.

The fact that you need to root Android negates the meaning of using a Linux OS.

That's like saying the fact that you need to occasionally run sudo negates the meaning of using Linux.

That's like saying that using a sledgehammer for a nail is the same thing as using a hammer.

Except for the fact that sudo is already built into your system. What?

Rooting most likely voids your warranty and is definitely nontrivial to non-technical people. I have rooted my phone and installed cyanogenmod before and I wouldn't call it easy. I can't imagine average people going through that process voluntarily or without screwing it up. Yeah, to people like us it might not be that bad, but to your every day user it just doesn't make any sense to do.

That's a horrible analogy, sorry.

I have to agree with some other commenters here that Google using Linux as a base for android and chromeOS doesn't do much for the Linux community (not nothing, though). It really doesn't matter what kernel they are using. It's all the stuff that's build on top which matters... maybe there's something to calling it "GNU/Linux" after all - just so we could avoid misleading and misinformed commentary like this blog post.

> Except for the fact that sudo is already built into your system. What?

It wasn't built into mine (Gentoo Linux). I had to install it separately.

> Rooting most likely voids your warranty and is definitely nontrivial to non-technical people.

Sudo is also nontrivial to nontechnical people[1], and it doesn't even have a warranty[2].

[1] As immortalized in the mouseover of a recent xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1343/

[2] http://www.sudo.ws/sudo/license.html

I had to install sudo. If somebody else installed it, told me when I could use it, and threatened me legally when I disobeyed or helped others disobey, sudo would be a problem.

Linus Torvalds feels pretty strongly about GPLv2 as compared to GPLv3.

The fact that he prefers GPLv2 is a pretty strong counter-argument: GPLv2 allows the ODM/OEM to implement a linux soltuion. The end user has no guarantee of crypto keys, software, or hardware that enables "root" access.

Perhaps it negates the reason you use Linux, but there are plenty of reasons to use it that have nothing to do with Free Software. It's a tried and true OS with tens of thousands of eyes on its source code, it has a massive community supporting it, and it's free as in beer. Getting a very good OS for free is reason enough to use it for many people, even if they don't have complete control over it out of the box.

The fuck? Running apps as root (or other high privileges) happens all the time on desktop linux. Does that negate "the meaning" of Linux.

Are you actually complaining about how manufacturers often have locked boot loaders and you need to jump through hoops to get to an OS you like? That's not an issue with the OS.

Depends on how hard it is to root - if it's flipping a (metaphorical) switch, that's fine.

The real problem is that tools like Unrevoked[0] are needed, and that bootloaders can come encrypted (even on the HTC One, for Verizon).

[0] http://unrevoked.com/

It's currently better than it has ever been with in the open source movement as it pertains to mainstream computing. Never before have so many consumers had so many devices with so much open software under the hood. Of course it may not be what you hoped for, but it's hard to argue it's not better than it was, say, in the 90s.

It is an "open source" victory although possibly not a "free software" one. A lot of people actually believe that open source and proprietary software both have their "raison d'être" and that it's all good if they form a symbiotic relationship (think of git/Github for example). Richard Stallman obviously disagrees with this as I suspect you do: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

"obviously" is an understatement :)

Linus counted android as a victory in this video where he swears at nvidia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA

Most people will never find Linux just like they will never find the NT kernel. What is important for most users is the outer shell -- not the inner workings.

The more the Linux kernel is used, the more contributions and bug fixes it will have from companies that use it. This might also mean better hardware support -- which we all benefit from.

> What is important for most users is the outer shell -- not the inner workings.

Exactly, so if the shell is a bunch of non-free restricted crap or is under the control of someone else in a remote server... what's the point? What practical difference does it make to a user to be running Android or iOS? What difference does it make to them if there is an invisible Linux kernel underneath?

Why should the difference be to the user? The inner workings are important to the creators - it loosens their dependency on an external proprietary firm. The interface matters to the users.

It's no coincidence that six out of ten in this list run on Linux:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mobile_operating_...

In a roundabout way it may actually matter to users in that it enables more competition and better choice.

Everyone says how great Google is for Linux, but nobody talks about how good Linux is for Google.

Not that I think Google is exploiting the free software movement or anything, but Google would have never had a chance with Android without the Linux kernel. The Google play stack is the opposite of a free software victory.

I'm tired of hearing all the things Google has done for Linux. Maybe we could talk a little more about how free software has facilitated the growth of one of the top tech companies on the planet.

> I'm tired of hearing all the things Google has done for Linux. Maybe we could talk a little more about how free software has facilitated the growth of one of the top tech companies on the planet.

I think the case can be made that both are true -- Linux desperately needed a way to win public acceptance, Google needed an unencumbered foundation for various projects.

Also, we mustn't forget the snowball effect -- when an operating system gets to a certain point in installed base, it becomes the operating system. All signs are that Linux will get to that point, and Google will have been one of the primary reasons.

Quite so: It took a company with the resources to give Linux a modern touch-based managed language userland to make it popular. If you want to know where the next Ubuntu is coming from, look to fully open Android distributions like CyanogenMod. With their deal with Oppo, you can make a good case that Cyanogen has done better than Ubuntu in making OEM deals.

While this is generally true for many of Google's activities, had Linux not been available they could probably have used a BSD-licensed kernel for a mobile OS, as Apple have done.

This is quite unfair.

Android has had a huge impact on the phone market in terms of openness, for manufacturers as well as for end users. I took advantage of this when I put CyanogenMod on my phone using the unlocking tool provided by HTC. I didn't even think of doing something like that with my pre-Android phones.

If you choose to buy a locked-down Android device, blame yourself and then blame Linus: he's the one strongly objecting to distributing Linux under the GPLv3 license, because he dislikes the very clause that would guarantee your freedom to tinker with you device's kernel. But even if every Android was as closed as a TiVo box, it would still be an open-source victory. It would just be a victory more relevant to the manufacturers world than to the users world.

Chrome OS device are similarly hackable, each Chromebook having a switch to turn on Developer Mode. I took advantage of this to run a Debian chroot in my Chromebook's linux system.

More generally, I find it ironic that people complain about Android and Chrome OS not being "real Linux". For years we have had flame wars about Linux vs GNU/Linux terminology, and now people say that Androids and Chromebooks don't really run Linux because they are not anything like a GNU environment. Turns out the Linux vs GNU/Linux distinction is actually useful.

I'm constantly surprised at how Google drags its feet with getting Android out to more uses. I mean, we've seen 3rd-party hardware manufacturers sticking Android on All-In-One PCs, netbooks, HDMI sticks, mini-PCs, video-game consoles, etc. Even Android support for tablets came out well after manufacturers had released hundreds of Android-based iPad clones.

In spite of its various UI failings, android is well-positioned to be the next Windows, and with it the Play Store could take over the world. And yet Google sits in their hands and sticks to phones and tablets.

My experience is any time I've seen Android on anything not a phone or tablet it has pretty much sucked.

I think splintering the platform before they are ready might be risky.

Also you mention that Android support only came out for tablets after manufacturers had proven the demand for them...seems like a good idea to me.

Android is already 60% of all interactive devices: http://www.telirati.com/2014/03/who-makes-how-many-of-things...

Google was correct to focus on dominating handsets. If you dominate handsets, you dominate devices as a whole.

Android also has a very strong position in embedded UI in "appliance" devices.

There is an argument to made that Google sucks at marketing tablets, and gave iPad too big a lead in the market. But overall execution is hard to find fault with.

Devices sold each year is not the same as devices in use at any given moment. Because of the break-neck pace and carrier subsidies, consumers replace smartphones faster than anything else. So obviously you're going to see fewer set-top boxes, portable gaming devices, notebooks, etc. devices being sold. But Google doesn't care how many Android devices are sold, because they don't make a dime from sales. They want the OS to be used.

Android's dominance in sell-in in handsets is not new, so you won't find a large lag between sell-in and the installed base.

No, but my point is that most people still have a PC that doesn't run a Google OS, they just don't buy a new PC every 2 years - but that PC may see equal or greater use than their phone.

I don't want to argue because we agree completely that Android has more potential that it has yet accessed. And I have been sharply critical of how Google has handled marketing of Android in some contexts. But they're not bunglers. They got 90% of the task 90% right, and Android is on track to have a multi-decades dominance, surprisingly similar to how dominant Windows was.

Criticism has to be tempered by reality and the reality is that Andy Rubin made the right first moves and executed about as well as possible. And if that makes Google late to an enterprise focus, which will get more love in the next version of Android, that's a relatively small price to pay for total focus on and crushing what really matters. Also, embedded Android isn't completely out in the cold in terms of becoming "Google logo" products. The newer Android-based cameras from Samsung have the Play store. These are real Android cameras, with a fully Google-blessed, general-purpose Android OS in them. in addition to sharing photos to any app, you can edit your Drive documents on your camera.

Android/Linux is not the same as GNU/Linux.

From the perspective of users, a proprietary userland with a free kernel is not meaningfully different than an entire proprietary OS.

By this article's logic, OSX is a massive victory for FLOSS because, hey, it uses the XNU kernel.

True enough, but the article's main premise was that Google's products propelled Linux to the top of the OS heap. That only indirectly benefits FLOSS.

> the top of the OS heap

Fair, but again to be specific, Linux isn't an OS--it's a kernel. When people talk about "Linux" as an OS, they typically mean some variant of GNU/Linux: RedHat, Ubuntu, Debian, etc.

Android (as promoted by Google) is not a member of that club. Maybe ASOP is, but more and more of Google's development effort is shifting to Play Services, and away from ASOP.

I do agree with what the article states, but I feel the author misses on a key point.

Google was based on linux and grew around it. As Google grew, they needed more linux boxes and started to develop more. They built their entire infrastructure around linux OSes and contributed most of their knowledge back to the open source world. Examples: MapReduce, GFS,... Google build it for internal, people redevelop for open source, and therefore Linux grows in usage.

However, the growth in Linux could also be attributed to the boom in software/app development which theses days mostly runs on Linux anyway. Think of a big-name web or app company that doesn't use linux. Not too many I can think of.

I'm not quite sure what AngularJS, a JavaScript framework, has to do with Linux.

touche...removed.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the next big Linux distributer: Valve.

I had my doubts about how well SteamOS would do, until recently when the Unreal and Cry engines were opened to licensing and both touted SteamOS support as a major current or upcoming feature. People seem to be taking this seriously.

Mark my words, SteamOS will do for the desktop what Android did for mobile.

I hope you are right. There are two reasons I still interact with windows: 1- Work 2- Games

There is an interesting symmetry there: ChromeOS is taking traditional notebook form factor devices away from Windows. Steam OS might do the same for gaming PCs. With the high price of current-generation consoles, people will increasingly ask "Why not a PC?"

> [ChromeOS] is gaining ground faster than any operating system ever has, thanks to dirt-cheap hardware and an amazingly simple interface.

Citation seriously needed on that. I'm not aware of any sales figures on ChromeOS, but at least the usage numbers still appear pretty pathetic, 3 years after the launch of the first commercial devices. By what useful and publicly available metric would ChromeOS be growing faster than any OS ever?

Linux is easily the most used OS for servers. Linux has been at the top for awhile, just because the consumer doesn't run the OS natively doesn't mean that they are not using Linux machine. I disagree that google "propelled" linux to the top.

No, Windows is if you count individual deployments. Any big enterprise runs countless Windows file and print servers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system... (look at the second, smaller table)

Accordingly W3 Tech...http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/operating_system/al...

That's only web servers.

Ugh ... the prose and overall writing style .... not for me.

And the content..

Android is the most popular mobile platform?!? Who knew?!? /s

Yeah, I couldn't find the words initially for why he rubs me the wrong way. Self grandeur and verbosity can be tolerated. Fanboyism can be tolerated. But verbosity from fanboyism (for a kernel)... well....

What a bullshit! The user has no idea that there is a linux under the hood and the user cannot use the power and freedom of linux. Would Android be a proprietary system nobody would care (besides some cyganogenmod users). So Android is not about linux from the end users view point.

What is the Linux market share across all platforms?

Take a look at this wiki article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system... Basically: desktop wise linux is small, but smartphone/tablet it is huge.

Also, Mark Shuttleworth closed Bug #1 for Ubuntu: Microsoft has a majority market share. It really depends on how you count market share though. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1

ISTM that bug should not have been closed. From the bug:

    Steps to repeat:
      1. Visit a local PC store.
      2. Attempt to buy a machine without any proprietary software.

These conditions still obtain.

This is true. Very, very true.

But then again, go visit a Verizon/ATT store and count the amount of Android vs. Windows phones. Its all about how you count market share.

Sure the market has changed so that PC numbers aren't quite so important. But even Android phones have some "proprietary software", don't they?

Android is really a Dalvik VM that runs Java bytecode. You could port it to any OS, and BlueStacks runs it on Windows http://www.bluestacks.com/

While this is mostly true in the US (especially if "local store" is Best Buy), things are reasonable compared to when this bug was opened:

- WalMart occasionally sells linux boxes

- When I lived in New York, B&H often had a laptop-with-linux available.

Although I agree that in both cases, the selection, when it is available, is small and often limited to just one model. However

- Outside the US, most stores will sell you a "naked" or "freedos" machine, and not charge you for the windows license. It is, in fact, illegal in many countries to force you into a "hardware+software" bundle. Yay for USA freedom. (For corporations, that is)

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