A Quick Tour of the Android System

We keep hearing that Android is based on a modified form of Linux. What does that actually mean? What are these modifications? How does the Android system above the kernel compare to a traditional GNU/Linux system?

There’s plenty of information available about Android from a user or app developer’s perspective, so let’s skip that. Instead, we’ll look at Android’s overall architecture, and see what’s interesting from the point of view of a Linux system administrator or Gentoo hacker.