this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2024
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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How are all the AOSP-based OSes, like for instance GrapheneOS, not Linux distros?
There are apps made for linux that don't work with android, and there are apps made for android that don't work with linux. That's enough for me to consider them different
Also android just doesn't use the basic mainline kernel which is what most people want when they say "linux phone"
They dont use GNU or glibc or systemd
Lots of distros don’t use systemd, and a few non-AOSP distros don’t use GNU userland or glibc, Alpine for one.
Just saying what some guy told me.
It is also a highly modified kernel, extremely reduced. They do all filesystem stuff in userspace for example, which is pretty cool. And they add a ton of garbage out of tree drivers.
glibc is key here, it's what most linux distros use. One of Google's vendor-lock moves was to start using their own libc implementation, making it incompatible with everything else.
I can imagine that theirs is safer and more suited for targeted devices. Linux is extremely generalistic and has a ton of cruft.
But I have never looked at their code or tried to port a Linux app to Android. The #Krita devs might have some insight here.
For targeted devices so is Gentoo. Their edge is having access to proprietary drivers.
If it's written in portable C you can use the Android NDK/SDK to cross-compile it for the 4 archs they support. I do it at work.
So how is this vendor lockin?
Not an actual lock-in as they (still) provide tools to cross-compile and the source is (still) available, more like a vendor push-out if you insist.
When people want "Linux" on their phones they're talking more about the ecosystem than the OS