this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025
12 points (92.9% liked)
No Stupid Questions
3326 readers
50 users here now
There is no such thing as a Stupid Question!
Don't be embarrassed of your curiosity; everyone has questions that they may feel uncomfortable asking certain people, so this place gives you a nice area not to be judged about asking it. Everyone here is willing to help.
- ex. How do I change oil
- ex. How to tie shoes
- ex. Can you cry underwater?
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca still apply!
Thanks for reading all of this, even if you didn't read all of this, and your eye started somewhere else, have a watermelon slice ๐.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Linux is only a kernel. It isn't a full operating system; it's only a small (albeit central) part of one. Everything else is components like the GNU utils, X and/or Wayland, so goes on. That's why some people call Debian, Fedora, Arch etc. "GNU/Linux distributions", to highlight that those components are damn important.
Android uses the Linux kernel (or a modification of), but it lacks practically every single other thing you'd see in a common GNU/Linux distribution. And applications are incompatible - you can't run Android applications in, say, Debian, nor vice versa.
And, more importantly, Android lacks what makes GNU/Linux worth using: commitment to free and open source software (FOSS).
Sure, you can fork Android. Some already did it; it's called GrapheneOS. But when people say they want a "Linux phone", they mean they want a phone version of a GNU/Linux distribution, because of that commitment to FOSS. You don't get it from Android.