[Lilug-dev-sig] Android and Linux

[robwilkens at gmail.com]

Wanted to reply before I forgot-- I've been browsing the slides and am 
finding them interesting, Thanks for sharing them.  I know I could probably 
figure out this same information by reading the documentation, but the 
slides seem to be easier/quicker and more of an outline covering a lot in a 
little space which I appreciate someone taking the time to do.

One major issue I have so far is I haven't figured out a way to force a 
repaint 'now' rather than waiting for an invalidate to be auto-updated at 
the phones convenience (as the documentation says an invalidate will cause 
an update 'at some point in the future').  I might have to try messing with 
OpenGL ES 2.0 which might not be the worst thing anyway because I have an 
iPod and and iPad which also use OpenGL ES 2.0 and I guess I should learn 
how to program with it anyway (yes, I bought a MacMini with the express 
purpose of learning how to program for the iPad, but have done minimal work, 
though some with opengl es 2.0 on that front).

-Rob
(Apology for replying at top, but my e-mail program doesn't ">" indent so 
this makes sense)

-----Original Message----- 
From: Chris Knadle
Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2010 2:41 AM
To: LILUG Developer SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Lilug-dev-sig] Android and Linux

On Wednesday, December 15, 2010 10:11:31 am robwilkens at gmail.com wrote:
> Last night before the general meeting, I believe it was Mike C. and I were
> talking about (briefly) whether or not Android was Linux...  I did a quick
> search to find where I saw hints that it was...
>
> Here is that link:
>
> http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html
>
> says
> “By default, every application runs in its own Linux process.”
> “By default, each application is assigned a unique Linux user ID.”
>
> All on the first section in the document, so that tells me that android
> _IS_ linux with some additions.
>
> I don’t know that much about android otherwise, but developing Java apps 
> is
> fairly straightforward so writing apps for android is easy enough at least
> with eclipse (which I’m using on Windows, though is available on Linux).
>
> -Rob

Keep in mind that the name "Linux" technically refers only to the Linux
kernel.  In that sense, Android is "Linux", however if you think about what 
a
"normal Linux box" is, Android wouldn't fit that description because it uses 
a
very different system past the kernel.

And while Google has a reference Android distribution, typically this is not
directly usable on Android phones because the phones have customized 
hardware
requiring the kernel to be custom patched for each device model.  This is 
why
you see so many application vendors online complaining about "fragmentation"
of the Android platform -- because this is making it very difficult to make
generic applications that will run on all of the Android phones.

There was a good presentation about Android at MHVLUG in June, and the
presentation slides for that are available.

   http://mhvlug.org/content/android

  -- Chris

--

Chris Knadle
Chris.Knadle at coredump.us
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