why android is an OS ? ,, it's more look like a java VM on linux for me..?

Question

Can you help me for an explanation .
You know android uses dalvik vm to run almost all of it's aplications .dont it Make sense if i think android are just a VM on linux . In fact you can run dalvik on other OSes besides linux .
Thank you .

Answer 1

Android is technically a software platform. In theory you could port it to windows, or a BSD, or even GNU Hurd. But it is more than just the dalkiv VM, there's a lot of specific libraries and functionality that comes with it. Linux just has the widest support and a high number of people qualified to modify it to suit phone OEM requirements.



There's a lot of advantages to aiming an application to a platform instead of an OS. You usually have some really good tools available and a lot of ready-made functionality and interfaces to tap into. However you give up a lot of low-level access and performance so some android application actually run native code as well as a dalvik based interface.

Answer 2

You already said that Android looks like linux. Isn't linux an OS...?



Yes, the apps run in a Dalvik VM, but there needs to be an OS layer in between Dalvik and the hardware, which is the linux-based Android OS.

Answer 3

Linux Mint and Kali Linux are two different operating systems, but they're both just linux+other junk.



Linux is just a kernel. A kernel is only one aspect of an operating system, otherwise you'd say that Microsoft has only ever released two operating systems.

Answer 4

That's what it is.