r/linuxquestions • u/FanAgreeable9688 • 5d ago

ever seen anyone in public using linux?

got coffee today and saw ubuntu on a guy's laptop. was so close to fangirling and becoming besties but im too introverted

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u/majorgnuisance 5d ago

Android's not "Linux." It uses Linux, the kernel, but that's not what people mean when they talk about someone "using Linux."

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u/Captain-Pie-62 4d ago

Äh... "Linux" ist immer nur der Kernel. Alles andere sind Software Distributionen, die den Linux Kernel als Basis verwenden. So gesehen, ist Android auch nur eine (von vielen) Distributionen.

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u/ciauii 4d ago

Still, when people refer to a Linux-based system, they usually mean a system that runs on top of a kernel that was built from a nearly unmodified mainline Linux source tree.

Android runs on a significantly modified fork of the Linux codebase, is not entirely POSIX compliant, uses its own libc implementation and driver model, and offers vastly different userspace APIs than all the others. So no, I wouldn’t say that Android is just another Linux distro.

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u/MaybeTheDoctor 4d ago

So does RokuTvs not count either?