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Drawing the Line Between Android and Linux
jfruhlinger writes "The relationship between Linux and Android is on a technical level not hard to grasp — there's a shared kernel, but the application and interface layers are quite different. But, as Brian Proffitt points out, there are differences of philosophy and of community — which hasn't stopped Adobe from touting its Android dev tools as proof of its devotion to Linux."
android didn't do anything good for linux, if anything it just made another incompatible implementation of the same platform. wake me up when i can run android app on my linux desktop without needing to run it in some virtual machine.
adobe i don't even wanna comment about. i avoid them more carefully than entrance to hell.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
When will I be able to run Android on my desktop?
"The relationship between Linux and Android is on a technical level not hard to grasp — there's a shared kernel...
Most Linux Distros -> GNU/Linux.
Linux is the kernel. Shared kernel means it's Linux.
Period. end of story.
, but the application and interface layers are quite different.
That could be said for any Linux distro.
Android is a Linux distro.
I don't understand why so many companies refuse to support linux. Yes the market is small comapred to Windows BUT its not that small and its a big niche market which lets you charge more for the software/hardware as most Linux users will undderstand that a company might have to sell at higher margings since the user base numbers are smaller. Mabe its the short term profit mantality that is causing this but wouldn't you as a company want to make customers for life?
I'm just an average Linux user who has all computers in the house running Mint but I don't get into the software and hardware setup anymore yet I'm willing to pay a little more to have the software hardware compatabiliy in Linux even at 20% of whats available on windows.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
No problem! The Android SDK is in the repository for every major distro. Just push out the ROM, and reboot into recovery and flash it.
As I understand it, AIR is pretty much the same environment as Flash, except run outside of a browser.
The kernel is not shared, it is derived and has never _really_ attempted to minimise it's changes from it's upstream so really it is an incompatible fork. So not only is Android not GNU/Linux (or X/Linux or posix/Linux or BSD/Linux) it's not even Linux.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
So the GNU/Linux arguments start making a lot more sense now, aren't they? Cause if you just call it Linux, Android seems perfectly "Linux" to me.
All the other programs running on top comprise the OS. Why can't people get this straight? There isn't just a "Linux" community, there's a GNU community, an X community, a Debian community, a GCC community, an Android community, etc. Some parts overlap and some parts don't. But to say that all of these communities is Linux is a little misleading.
There's a difference between being cheap (trying to minimize costs), having an entitlement complex (believing that you deserve everything for free), and wanting the source code available (software freedom). I'm not saying that they don't intersect, but there are differences. It's easy to confuse people who call for software freedom with the people who pirate software, because they're both using the word "free", but in different contexts, and they both have an aversion to paying for commercial software, whereas the cheap user might be virtually immune to spending their money on luxury brands, like Apple or Sony, that offer little real return for the extra money spent.
But, in the end, you're just trolling, and I'm simply bored; so I'm responding to your troll. I'm sure someone else will mention the Humble Indie Bundle, because it's turning into an annoyingly cliched (though true) counter-example to this common troll.
One common pattern is a Java front-end made especially for Android that runs in Dalvik, combined with a C++ back-end shared with other platforms that runs in the NDK.
Except that your C++ code is still executed from within the Dalvik VM.
The Android NDK is a companion tool to the Android SDK that lets you build performance-critical portions of your apps in native code. It provides headers and libraries that allow you to build activities, handle user input, use hardware sensors, access application resources, and more, when programming in C or C++. If you write native code, your applications are still packaged into an .apk file and they still run inside of a virtual machine on the device. The fundamental Android application model does not change.
So no it doesn't run in the "NDK" considering that statement makes absolutely no sense.
First, it's called Java and it runs android apps on linux (amoung others), just like Linux runs any other app. Android doesn't make kernel bound, machine compiled apps for the very good reason that they need as many apps to run on as many phones without separate compilers. Phones are still running completely different chipsets than PCs, or are you not aware that you can't run amd64.deb on a 32bit PC, etc. etc. If so, you aren't very educated about the issue at all.
If you want to take some code, make some native applications compile to it, I'm sure you could get some command line tools that work on both platforms, compiling separately on each. Mainstream users don't CARE if they can run it on their computers. Frankly, not many geeks care either. That's a pretty minority of a minority view. At best, people would like to run Linux desktop apps on Android, not the other way around.
And the problem isn't Android, it's XWindows. When you get XWindows and Gnome/KDE to run efficiently on ARM, you let me know and THEN we'll talk about portability. Until then, NON ISSUE QED.
And even then, you'd still need a type of virtual machine, regardless of whether the code ran or not. Apps are built for.. wait for it... phones and tablets! It's pointy-multi-touchy, not lefty-righty-clicky.
The fact is that Android is the first, and only, real main stream Linux OS that rivals every single one of its competitors. What did Android do for Linux? That's like asking what Apache has done for Linux. Without Apache, Linux wouldn't have the server market cornered. Android did for linux on phones what Apache did for linux on servers. And if you don't get that analogy, you just don't get it the topic at all.
I8-D
Except that your C++ code is still executed from within the Dalvik VM.
Depends on how you define "within". True, the VM allows control to pass to the C++ code. And true, that code is running in the process context of the VM. HOWEVER, the C++ code is running directly on the CPU, just like ordinary C++ code.
The situation is not unlike a shell invoking a native program. Although the native program is running as a child process to the shell, the native program is only minimally influenced by that.
b.g.
Air is great for people who care only about developing cross-platform apps cheaply and not about whether those apps fit with the rest of the platform they're running on. As a user, I won't use Air apps unless there's absolutely no other choice. For me, that's happened ... never.
Linux users respect the developer and their choices. This is inherent in the whole GPL thing.
I see a product and I am willing to pay a fair price for it. I won't make excuses meant to make things cheaper for me.
No. In truth it's Windows users that are the real "freetards". Their numbers just help diffuse this problem somewhat In truth, Windows users are a den of theives that have no problem pirating anything they might want or need. This is the reality that the results of the Humble bundles reflects.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That's not how that works at all. It works similarly to JNI. The method call is a proxy made available to your Java (or Dalvik) application, then by executing that code, the VM will, rather than executing Java (or Dalvik) byte-code, know based on the declaration:
public native void Blah() {
}
That it has to execute a native method, and it will check the library in LD_LIBRARY_PATH for a shared object that contains a method with a matching name and signature.
The Humble Bundle proves that people that are fans of open source will pay more for open source games than people that don't give a fuck if it's proprietary or not. It's like using the sales of a Metallica album to prove that Metallica fans are more willing to pay for music than other fans. Fans that were told "please show how much you support us" while the rest were told "please check out our games". Big surprise that a lot of Windows users did download it for nothing or next to nothing to check it our, almost like a free demo while many Linux users took it as a donation run. You can look at Steam and see lots of people spending lots of money on games every day, a single sale there often being more than any OS' users gave for the Humble Bundle. That this somehow proves this is all wrong and that it's the Linux users that are willing to pay and the Windows users that are not, well let's just say it takes a certain kind of zealotry to reach that conclusion.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They are doing everything in their power to damage Linux in the marketplace.
They are threating manufacturers actively using litigation to increase the cost of deploying Linux on a device/computer above that of Windows. This is a sleazy tactic but Microsoft is proving itself to be one of the sleaziest companies in tech right now.
The racket goes like this. Microsoft enters your store/shop/company :-O
Microsoft: "You know, Its a dangerous neighborhood around here. You need some protection."
You: "Protection? From who?"
Microsoft: "Well.. from us mainly... IF you fail to get protection from us then you will feel the full wrath of our boys in our legal department."
Microsoft: "Oh and by the way. The specifics of our protection deal is under NDA. You cannot talk about it got it?
You:
Did X kick your dog or something? If you don't like it feel free to not use it.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Instead of: "each copy costs $X", say, "to fund the development of that software we need $X"
The trouble is that for some kinds of software, especially software intended for home use, there's no single buyer who can front the entire $X. Say someone has posted the first complete draft of a design document for a video game and asked you to help fund the implementation of that design document. Would you donate? Or would you wait for the finished game to see if the game is worth your while first? How should the developer make the deal more attractive to potential donors?