Why You Can’t Run Desktop Linux Software on Android These applications are targeted at Android devices and the application programming interfaces (APIs) Android provides rather than being targeted at Linux in general. Rather than running typical Linux applications, Android uses the Dalvik virtual machine to essentially run applications written in Java. It also doesn’t include an X server like Xorg, so you can’t run standard graphical Linux applications. Android doesn’t include the GNU C Library (glibc) used on standard Linux distributions, nor does it include all of the GNU libraries you’d find on a typical Linux distribution. However, much of the other software is different.
When you boot an Android device, the Linux kernel loads just like it would on a Linux distribution. There’s some debate over whether Android qualifies as a “ Linux distribution.” It uses the Linux kernel and other software, but it doesn’t include much of the software Linux distributions normally include. RELATED: What Is a Linux Distro, and How Are They Different from One Another? You’ll even see the Linux kernel version running on your device under About phone or About tablet in Android’s Settings. This is the way many different devices are built - for example, the PlayStation 4 uses the open-source FreeBSD kernel, while the Xbox One uses the Windows NT kernel found in modern versions of Windows. Linux gives the Android developers a pre-built, already maintained operating system kernel to start with so they don’t have to write their own kernel.
Because Linux is open-source, Google’s Android developers could modify the Linux kernel to fit their needs.
That’s why some people think the term GNU/Linux should be used for “Linux distributions” like Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Fedora, Arch, openSUSE, and others.Īndroid uses the Linux kernel under the hood. They contain many other pieces of software, such as the GNU shell utilities, Xorg graphical server, GNOME desktop, Firefox web browser, and so on. We also refer to Linux distributions as simply “Linux.” However, Linux distributions aren’t just the Linux kernel.
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