Hacker News Reader

So is Firefox OS just Android fork? Because if not then this isn't as much "Firefox OS on Android" as it is "Firefox OS like home screen for Android"

View on HN

No, Firefox OS is built on top of the same Linux kernel as Android, and can use the same drivers as Android, but that's pretty much the only common stuff.

Last time I looked, Gonk used a significant amount of Android code as well that wasn't drivers[1]. That being said, they are fairly significantly different at a few levels.

[1]: https://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/widget/gonk/l... is pretty much all taken from Android.

Gonk being the Linux level of Firefox OS, the parent comment is right.

Sure, Gonk is below the application level, but it isn't the kernel nor is it drivers.

No, because Linux is a kernel and Gonk is more than a kernel.

Parent is both technically incorrect as well as semantically incorrect. FirefoxOS uses a large amount of Google-written Android code.

The way that I understand it is, that since Firefox OS literally runs on Firefox, you really only need to install Firefox in order to run the OS.

So in this case you are running Firefox OS on Firefox on Android. That is obviously not ideal, but fine for testing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com