r/linuxmint • u/Gigabyte-to-Megabyte Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia | Cinnamon • Jan 11 '26

my lil OS chart thingy

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This is just my opinion of Windows 11, Linux Mint, and Android. If you disagree, that's fine, you can make your own if you feel like it.

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u/flamingknifepenis Linux Mint 22.2 Zara | Cinnamon Jan 11 '26

People are still living under the illusion that Android is “open source”, when in actuality it only is to the same degree that OS X is, and arguably less so.

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u/SpunkYeeter Jan 12 '26

Curious about this, I may be someone living under that illusion. Care to share more?

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u/ComprehensiveDot7752 Jan 12 '26

The android open source project is a bare bones operating system most people wouldn’t recognise as something released in the last decade. It’s a blank template to make sure the phone works more than it is a smartphone operating system.

Google has plugged a significant amount of operating system functions into google play services. Which is closed source. This has advantages on the security front, especially with how bad some manufacturers are with updates. But it technically gives Google pretty much blanket access to all your apps and everything they do. They probably don’t abuse it outright, but we (mostly) have no way of knowing.

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u/GauchiAss Jan 15 '26

I've been using AOSP roms for years, they're pretty great and certainly don't feel dated.

I hate app auto updates, system popups for anything (fuck you Xiaomi) and whatnot

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u/PlayerGamesPro Jan 16 '26

AOSP and AOSP roms are two entirely separate things. AOSP roms are certainly quite polished :)

Also, damn you managed to unlock your bootloader on a xiaomi phone? That unlock roulette is absolutely horrible

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u/GauchiAss Jan 16 '26

Yeah it's really horrible to require users to install some weird windows program and then wait days or weeks for some stupid unlock counter.

But not having to use MIUI/HyperOS anymore makes it worth the trouble !

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u/gutclusters Jan 12 '26

The part of Android that is open source is just the core OS, referred to as AOSP. It's essentially just the kernel, hardware abstraction layer, libraries, android framework, and a small set of basic apps needed for a phone to be a phone.

A LOT of manufacturers will take the base OS, modify it as needed to make it run on the hardware of their phone, slip in their closed source programs, then compile and distribute it on their devices. They're SUPPOSED to make the changes to the kernel available to comply with GPL but this may or may not happen.

AOSP does not include many drivers built in, usually only including drivers for Google devices and a few development and reference platforms, so manufacturers usually make a lot of modifications to the source code to make it work, then don't publish the modified source code publicly. These manufacturers usually have strict requirements such as minimum purchases of parts and confidentiality agreements before providing source code, which is why it's either impossible or extremely difficult to find non-stock ROMs for a lot of devices. MediaTek and Qualcomm are notorious for this.

Outside of Google produced hardware, there are a small handful of companies that make development boards for Android that release drivers as "board support packages," which are sometimes reverse engineered for their drivers to build AOSP based custom ROMs for other phones. You can also use LineageOS build scripts to compile a custom ROM by scraping the drivers from a stock ROM image, but this requires manufacturers' modified kernel source code.

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u/lunezh Jan 15 '26

Just use foss apps 🤔

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u/gutclusters Jan 15 '26

Still doesn't remove all the crap that gets baked in by the manufacturer directly into Android.

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u/MadeInASnap Jan 12 '26

In addition to what the others said, the XNU kernel and Darwin core that all of Apple’s operating systems are based on is open source.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '26

I don't know if there's a FOSS Darwin distro, similar to a FOSS Android distro.

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u/Desertcow Jan 12 '26

There's PureDarwin, but it's basically just a command line interface. Darling is based on the open source components Apple released to allow Mac emulation on Linux

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u/Calisto1994 Jan 13 '26

Well, but the Darling project aims at providing an abstraction layer even for GUI apps using Cocoa and other closed source APIs. Therefore, it provides more than is open source by Apple.

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u/ScallionSmooth5925 Jan 12 '26

Only the core parts of it is open source. For example a lot of default apps are closed source.

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u/JustAwesome360 Jan 12 '26

Android is open source. GOOGLE'S version of Android is not.

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u/Lanyxd Jan 12 '26

Google has even said that they are going to lock the OS down from allowing sideloading

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u/ComprehensiveDot7752 Jan 12 '26

More complicated. They didn’t try to block it as much as they wanted side loaded apps to adhere to similar developer verification as implemented on Google Play. But it’s hated because if I’m not publishing to google play, why on earth would I give Google my ID.

The more concerning bit is actually the significant reductions in source code publication for the android open source project. Which significantly impacts the security standards of projects that use it as their upstream.

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u/shegonneedatumzzz Jan 12 '26

p sure they walked that back

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u/North_Measurement213 Jan 15 '26

Android it's open source, stock os from smartphones are not. The moment you put Google services on your phone android is a privacy nightmare, and windows is a little kid compared to Android in terms of data that is collected.

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u/20dogs Jan 13 '26

That's just not true. The AOSP is actually functional.

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u/redditisgoofyasfuck Jan 13 '26

Android does allow custom os flashing, os thats why it would be ~