3 ms·
Also we are still missing the "Linux" of Smartphone OSes. It may take another few decades for that to come forth, but there is always a large enough user base t
by erikb 10y ago
Also we are still missing the "Linux" of Smartphone OSes. It may take another few decades for that to come forth, but there is always a large enough user base that is interested in a truly open operating system, which is neither of the existing two. Maybe the Ubuntu Mobile attempt can get there.
- simonh 10y agoAndroid runs on Linux? I'm not being facetious. AOSP is a fully open source stack that any handset maker can use, Cyanogen is as open a fully-baked distro equivalent as you could want.
- erikb 10y agoThere is a difference between having a linux underneath and Being The "Linux" of xyz. Android is not open and doesn't allow you full system control or full insight into all their source code. At least the last time I checked.
- simonh 10y agoAOSP does and Cyanogen is based on AOSP. Arguably AOSP is a separate platform from full license Android and it's AOSP that is experiencing the ballooning growth in the ultra-low-end markets, but it's universally counted into Android adoption and sales figures by everyone that publishes those.
- erikb 10y agoI'll check that out. Thanks!
- pjmlp 10y agoThe fact that Android makes use of Linux as a kernel is hardly visible to most developers. The user space is fully Java based and the NDK is so constrained that you can hardly see any difference from another POSIX compatible kernel. And they don't even support a full UNIX SYSTEM V compilant API (e.g. no IPC calls) Now with Android 7, any NDK library that tries to link directly to non-official shared objects will get killed by the dynamic linker. So yeah, Android has Linux as kernel, but they can change it at any moment and only the OEMs writing device drivers would notice the change.
- simonh 10y agoerikb put quotes around "Linux" and talked about a truly open OS. I don't think the intention was specifically for a literal Linux distro on a phone.
- erikb 10y agoYeah it can be something else. Doesn't have to be a Linux literally, but the spirit. In fact Linux and Unix were developed specifically how computers work. Maybe it would be even better if someone develops an OS specifically for how smartphones work.
- pjmlp 10y agoHow the PDP-11 worked actually.
- pjmlp 10y agoMight be and in that case it was wrong from me to post, I always assume that most aren't aware how constrained the NDK actually is.