Put buttons at bottom of screen with LinearLayout?

You need to ensure four things:

• Your outside LinearLayout has layout_height="match_parent"
• Your inside LinearLayout has layout_weight="1" and layout_height="0dp"
• Your TextView has layout_weight="0"
• You've set the gravity properly on your inner LinearLayout: android:gravity="center|bottom"

Notice that fill_parent does not mean "take up all available space". However, if you use layout_height="0dp" with layout_weight="1", then a view will take up all available space (Can't get proper layout with "fill_parent").

Here is some code I quickly wrote up that uses two LinearLayouts in a similar fashion to your code.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/db1_root"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    android:orientation="vertical" >

    <TextView
        android:id="@+id/textView1"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:gravity="center"
        android:text="@string/cow"
        android:layout_weight="0"
        android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceLarge" />

    <LinearLayout
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="0dip"
        android:layout_weight="1"
        android:gravity="center|bottom"
        android:orientation="vertical" >

        <Button
            android:id="@+id/button1"
            style="?android:attr/buttonStyleSmall"
            android:layout_width="145dp"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal|center"
            android:text="1" />

        <Button
            android:id="@+id/button2"
            style="?android:attr/buttonStyleSmall"
            android:layout_width="145dp"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal|center"
            android:text="2" />

        <Button
            android:id="@+id/button3"
            style="?android:attr/buttonStyleSmall"
            android:layout_width="145dp"
            android:layout_height="wrap_content"
            android:layout_gravity="center_horizontal|center"
            android:text="3" />
    </LinearLayout>

</LinearLayout>

The result looks like similar to this:

You can use a RelativeLayout and align it to the bottom with android:layout_alignParentBottom="true"