Can you tell me why Android is not Linux? Android is an off-shoot of Linux. For all the differences between Ubuntu Linux and Mint Linx, they are closer to each other than either is to Android. Using that analogy, Android has evolved into a separate species. What are the actual differences between Linux and Unix, though? You might have to tweak Android to run on your device, whereas Linux is customizable to run on any device. Linux is famous for its customizability, even relative to Unix. Android has a bigger OS than Linux. It tends to be really slow if it is on a device with less than a 1GHz CPU. Android has a better user interface. Only on smart phones. Linux has wider adoption for non-smart-phones. Like dumb phones? Like medical devices, PCs, tablets, servers, etc. Android has a more professional developer community, primarily because a lot of them get paid to do it. Android is set up to run JVM, particularly the Dalvik Java Virtual Machine. Linux supports any programming language, but it doesn’t have a good JVM. JVM is so good that even Scala and other new programming languages were designed to use it. Android has a lot more licensing problems. Probably because it isn’t open source. But Android has a built in LTE and VOIP telephony function in the OS. Because it was designed for smartphones. And Android has better connectivity protocols. It sounds like Android is a Linux offshoot designed for smartphones, to the point that it is hardly related to the Linux OS for computers and servers. There are Linux versions for medical devices and a few other wireless health monitoring devices, but it isn’t widespread yet. But I don’t know if I want to have open source medical devices in my body. But you do get a pacemaker that could be hacked. I’d be more embarrassed about someone hacking my health monitor and threatening to post my real weight on Facebook’s health forums if I don’t pay up.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 08:29:24 +0000