How to get into Android Operating System

[Infinityexists]

So I am a Android Developer (basic stage)
and learning developing Apps/Games but this is not what I am interested in because i am limited to use Eclipse only and that doesn't allow me to get into the actual Android Operating System , it just allow me to develop Apps for Android Operating System.
Rather developing for Android I want to get into the Operating System (the linux side)


Do anybody have an idea of that ?

[ande]

I believe you have to root your device and then you can do C/C++ etc as on a "normal" linux system.

[Kulverstukas]

Developing for linux if it's gonna run on android only is an overkill, because one has to have a rooted device with busybox installed and a terminal emulator to execute commands as a linux user. Plus you would have to cross-compile shit for a specific phone (I think) because not all phones have the same processor type.
Take PIPS as a very good example. The real NMAP was cross-compiled to run on android and a frontend was created to interact with NMAP, so that I don't have to go to a terminal and run it from there (might look cooler tho ).
It is just better to make a frontend in Java that can interact with a linux side on android, I mean the android app.
I don't code for android, but I want to start maybe one day...

[xor]

Pretty sure you don't have to use Java to develop for android. Just get the NDK instead of the SDK.

The Android NDK is a companion tool to the Android SDK that lets you build performance-critical portions of your apps in native code. It provides headers and libraries that allow you to build activities, handle user input, use hardware sensors, access application resources, and more, when programming in C or C++. If you write native code, your applications are still packaged into an .apk file and they still run inside of a virtual machine on the device. The fundamental Android application model does not change.

http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html