I mean in a technical sense that is true since well it is the Linux kernel.
But there is the argument that Linux is not Linux without GNU tools, build systems, terminals and *root access. I stress the last one, the day I can ssh into my phone and install/add repositories, setup scripts, who knows I might actually make my life easier and for god sakes develop with whatever I want, whether it be C, Clojure or Python. And I mean we all know that Java developers are the renown worldwide for their quality especially considering how wonderfully over designed everything needs to be.
Your writing this from a Macbook so no offense I doubt you have any idea how Linux works deeply or have seriously developed something like say Robotics(http://www.ros.org/wiki/), or drivers, or the kernel.
It's true that the kernel is the most important part of the OS, but the total sum of all aspects of a OS especially for a consumer oriented product is vastly greater than just what the kernel provides.
I'd also like to add that just because something is open-source doesn't mean it's a net positive for the community or the consumers for that matter. Just look at Oracle, hell just look at Android. There is no diversity hence there is no evolution and if developers aren't going to get better at solving harder problems all I see is a sinking ship.
To be fair though, it's vastly closer than anything else around. You can get shell access—and it's a bourne shell, with environment variables, piping, control-structures, etc (it even has emacs-style command-line editing!)—add a C compiler, etc, on an unrooted Android phone.
It's not really Linux the way we usually know it (just the non-standard filesystem layout ensures that), but typing "cat /proc/meminfo" into a shell and seeing the expected result, and using ls, printenv, df, etc, to explore, really makes it feel pretty familiar to someone used to Linux or other unix-style systems. [It also seems to use the standard linux/unix group mechanism for granting app permissions: if you type "id" to the shell, you'll see the permissions the terminal app holds listed as groups it belongs to.]
The end result is that it really does feel like "Linux with a twist" rather than something alien.
I mean in a technical sense that is true since well it is the Linux kernel. But there is the argument that Linux is not Linux without GNU tools, build systems, terminals and *root access. I stress the last one, the day I can ssh into my phone and install/add repositories, setup scripts, who knows I might actually make my life easier and for god sakes develop with whatever I want, whether it be C, Clojure or Python. And I mean we all know that Java developers are the renown worldwide for their quality especially considering how wonderfully over designed everything needs to be.
Your writing this from a Macbook so no offense I doubt you have any idea how Linux works deeply or have seriously developed something like say Robotics(http://www.ros.org/wiki/), or drivers, or the kernel.
It's true that the kernel is the most important part of the OS, but the total sum of all aspects of a OS especially for a consumer oriented product is vastly greater than just what the kernel provides.
I'd also like to add that just because something is open-source doesn't mean it's a net positive for the community or the consumers for that matter. Just look at Oracle, hell just look at Android. There is no diversity hence there is no evolution and if developers aren't going to get better at solving harder problems all I see is a sinking ship.