Android is Not a Single OS | Linux Today

Android is Not a Single OS

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Jul 6, 2012

In other words; Ubuntu should be thought of as a standalone Linux based Ubuntu OS, and not so much as Ubuntu “Linux”.

Android is in fact an example of what I meant. It was never branded as “Android Linux”, making it seem as a yet another variant of the same operating system. It was branded as its own standalone OS, which just happens to have the Linux kernel and a bunch of other open source components at its core.

As Android popularity grew, and it came shipping with a wide variety of mobile devices, we’ve hit the fragmentation problem that actually reminds of the old Linux situation. The culprit is in the fact that various device manufacturers tend to customize Android, putting their own layers on top of it (usually user interfaces), and often even making core modifications. In other words, manufacturers started creating “distributions” of Android reminiscent of the distributions of Linux.

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

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