Re:Android is a screwed, hard-coded, non-portable abomination.
by gvb on Thursday November 05, 2009 @08:51PM
(#925266)
I disagree, there is a lot of substance to the presentation.
My summary: Google hacked the snot out of linux to produce android.[1] The result is still nominally linux, but much of what a developer expects when you say "linux" is no longer there.
As a result of the hacking (including the lack of X11), it is going to be difficult (possibly to the point of being unrealistic) to port "standard" linux programs to android.
Trivia: Nokia's n770/n800/n810/n900 runs pretty vanilla linux and X11 with Hildon[2] (Maemo) layered on top for the user interface (on-screen keyboard, etc.). It still takes some effort to port a "standard" linux program to Nokia/Maemo, even though it is pretty straightforward. As a result, the number of available packages is nowhere near what you can get via Debian/Ubuntu.
[1] I image they did it to skinny up the memory footprint and speed it up (for some definition of "speed").
[2] It didn't help that Nokia kept the Hildon user interface layer closed source for several years.
My summary: Google hacked the snot out of linux to produce android.[1] The result is still nominally linux, but much of what a developer expects when you say "linux" is no longer there.
As a result of the hacking (including the lack of X11), it is going to be difficult (possibly to the point of being unrealistic) to port "standard" linux programs to android.
Trivia: Nokia's n770/n800/n810/n900 runs pretty vanilla linux and X11 with Hildon[2] (Maemo) layered on top for the user interface (on-screen keyboard, etc.). It still takes some effort to port a "standard" linux program to Nokia/Maemo, even though it is pretty straightforward. As a result, the number of available packages is nowhere near what you can get via Debian/Ubuntu.
[1] I image they did it to skinny up the memory footprint and speed it up (for some definition of "speed").
[2] It didn't help that Nokia kept the Hildon user interface layer closed source for several years.