Tim “XML” Bray is now working on Android for Google; he’s got a great post called “What Android Is” that explains in good, high-level, technical detail what Android is made from and how you make stuff with it.
Linux · Underneath everything is a reasonably up-to-date Linux kernel (2.6.32 in my current Nexus One running Froyo), with some power-saving extensions we cooked up; the process of trying to merge this stuff into upstream Linux has been extended and public and is by no means over. ¶
Android runs on Linux, but I’d be nervous about calling it a distro because it leaves out so much that people expect in one of those: libraries and shells and editors and GUIs and programming frameworks. It’s a pretty naked kernel, which becomes obvious the first time you find yourself using a shell on an Android device.
If it were a distro it’d be one of the higher-volume ones, shipping at 200K units a day in late 2010. But nobody counts these things, and then there are a ton of embedded flavors of Linux shipping in unremarkable pieces of consumer electronics, so there’s a refreshing absence of anyone claiming to be “the most popular Linux”. I like that.
(via O’Reilly Radar)
- G1 Android phone coming October 22 for $179 – Boing Boing
- Video: Google Android phone user interface (looking great …
- 7" Android Tablet Touch PC, indeed. – Boing Boing
- Wired on Google Android – Boing Boing
- Carriers close down Android – Boing Boing
- Google Instant now available for Android and iPhone – Boing Boing
- Quake III for Android Boing Boing
- Android installed on iPhone – Boing Boing
- TOR for Android: anonymize your phone's data-connection – Boing Boing
- Android App Inventor: giving everyone the ability to hack their …
- Randall Munroe's Android bug-reports – Boing Boing
- Rogers Canada forces Android update that takes away root access …
- Book-tours with Android – Boing Boing
- Android app crowdsources UK election spending survey – Boing Boing
- Asus prepares its own Android phone – Boing Boing