Only developers without Android experience think that.

Android is all about Java.

The NDK is there as layer for implementing Java native methods, games and high performance audio, and general purpose native libraries from other OSes.

This is what you are allowed to call from C and C++ on Android:

https://developer.android.com/ndk/reference/index.html

https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis.html

Trying to call anything else terminates the application as of Android 7.

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/nougat/android-...

As of the upcoming Android 8, calling syscalls outside of what libc requires leads to application termination as well.

https://developer.android.com/preview/behavior-changes.html#...

Basically nothing really UNIX specific and could be implemented with any other kind of kernel (hence Fuchsia).

"Only developers without Android experience think that."

Think what? That Linux is malware-free? If you're addressing me only, I'm just asking for clarity on the dataset in question, not expressing an opinion about the safety of the platform.

No, that Android having Linux as kernel is actually relevant to Android programming.

Given the OS architecture Google can easily announce a version using other kernel, given that there is very little UNIX specific on what can be done with public NDK APIs.

Only those customising Android builds would be impacted.

I meant to say irrelevant, edit does not work any longer.

That's disingenuous. The fact that the Linux kernel powers Android is totally besides the point.

The Android eco-system does everything it can to bury the fact that it uses Linux under the hood, and it is relegated to the role of a fancy HAL.

The main reason Android has more malware than other kinds of Linux is because Android is extremely popular. Malware writers just target the systems with the most users so they can have the biggest impact.