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There's no denying the userland's different, there's just this notion where one's called GNU/Linux and the other ART/Linux (Android RunTime) but the thing they share in common is the Linux kernel, hence the name.


Sure. Yeah I guess it's not very important. But since we're here :-)...

My point was really that if I you say "I work on a Linux distribution", I think about something like Debian/Fedora/Ubuntu/... I could be pedantic and say "oh, is that a GNU/Linux distribution?", to which you could answer "nope, it's Alpine". And then we could debate on exactly what is required to call it "GNU/Linux" and not "something-else/Linux".

If now you showed me your computer running Android, I would honestly be very surprised. Why didn't you say "Android" instead of "a Linux distribution"?

If you tell me "I run Linux", I won't say "oh, do you not run a userland then?" either. Linux is a kernel, but it is also the name commonly given to a group of OSes that are very similar (and that are commonly referred to as "Linux distributions"). Android is not part of that group.




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