title: Android vs Linux for embedded touchscreen application
body: <p>I'm look at a embedded project that needs a LCD multitouch screen, LCD driver, a webkit browser, Avahi, a web server, and our engine written in C++.</p>
  
  <p>Android on first glance looks like it has most of the right components out of the box with the least modification... But the use of a JVM seems to be heavyweight for a small memory footprint embedded device (128-196MB min) and besides our code is C++. It looks like you can't yank the JVM out because major OS components are running in Java (true?).</p>
  
  <p>Linux appears to have most of the pieces that can be put together, without the unnecessary cruft. Here are the major questions:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Once the GUI pieces are put together, is linux still a significantly smaller memory footprint than Android assuming the the JVM and application components in Android aren't useful to the project (right now our GUI-less linux build is around 24MB)?</li>
  <li>Can Android be run without the JVM components to reduce memory footprint if you don't need any user applications running in Java?</li>
  <li>Can you write first class C++ applications in Android? </li>
  <li>Does linux have a mature multitouch interface with system-wide touch keyboard, touch GUI, touchable broswer gestures (scroll, zoom, etc). Or does it require a lot of custom UI coding?</li>
  </ul>