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Fuchsia, a new operating system

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Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#51

Post by mckillop »

pavlov wrote: post #40

> Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System) Pink [1] and Purple [2] were both Apple codenames for operating systems. Probably not a coincidence, but I don't see an obvious connection... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent#Pink_and_Blue [2] http://www.phonearena.com/news/Did-you-know-that-the-codenam...

Purple - A system with high performance graphics, low-latency input, and a beautiful UI.

Pink - An incredibly modular system for developers and users.

If you hang out on #fuchsia long enough you will realize that we are all a bunch of OS nerds that have worked on many, many systems in the past (BeOS, ChromeOS, Android, webOS, QNX, DangerOS, iOS, MacOS, ...).

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#52

Post by steveklabnik »

oshepherd wrote: post #48
colemickens wrote: post #30

Written in C. What a shame. edit: Thank you to all of the repliers, I had no idea that most OSes were written in C. Er, actually, I'm more than well aware of that fact and I'm familiar with the number of CVEs that have occurred over the years because of the lack of memory safety involved in that C code. Sorry, I simply don't get the appeal of writing more operating systems and network-exposed code that isn't written…

I love Rust immensely, and it is perhaps my favorite programming language as of late. However. This is a microkernel. There is very, very little code inside a microkernel which, if written in Rust, would not end up inside an unsafe block. You are building the safe abstractions here; that code is inherently unsafe. You could use Rust as a C replacement, but it is a worse C than C, and unsafe rust contains more perils…

Redox is microkernelish, and used to have a lot of unsafe, but has cut it down significantly. You'd be surprised :)

That said, this is pretty much an open research question at this point, so you're right to be skeptical.

(I would also argue that unsafe Rust has more _unspecified_ behavior than C, but not more undefined behavior, but until we get those semantics truly nailed down, can't say for sure. See above "open research question" comment)

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#53

Post by pavlov »

mckillop wrote: post #51
pavlov wrote: post #40

> Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System) Pink [1] and Purple [2] were both Apple codenames for operating systems. Probably not a coincidence, but I don't see an obvious connection... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent#Pink_and_Blue [2] http://www.phonearena.com/news/Did-you-know-that-the-codenam...

Purple - A system with high performance graphics, low-latency input, and a beautiful UI. Pink - An incredibly modular system for developers and users. If you hang out on #fuchsia long enough you will realize that we are all a bunch of OS nerds that have worked on many, many systems in the past (BeOS, ChromeOS, Android, webOS, QNX, DangerOS, iOS, MacOS, ...).

That explains it. Thanks, congratulations on the release, and welcome to HN! :)

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#54

Post by hinkley »

vacri wrote: post #32

Well, if it takes off, it'll have the side-effect of getting more people to be able to spell 'Fuchsia' correctly...

Easy to remember if you know that fuchsia is named after a German botanist by the name of Leonhart Fuchs.

(Lionheart Fox, how badass is that name?)

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#55

Post by thekevan »

I have not looked in to this and don't have expertise, but my first split second thought was "how are they going to keep up with security exploits?" Sad when my first thought it that someone's going try to steal from people using it.

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#56

Post by ansible »

I'm calling it now: this is for augmented reality displays and similar. You want an RTOS for loss and predictable latency. And current GUIs aren't really suited to 3D environments you can walk around inside.

This is Google's next Android, with a low latency rendering pipeline for the next generation of mobile devices.

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#57

Post by swetland »

oshepherd wrote: post #48
colemickens wrote: post #30

Written in C. What a shame. edit: Thank you to all of the repliers, I had no idea that most OSes were written in C. Er, actually, I'm more than well aware of that fact and I'm familiar with the number of CVEs that have occurred over the years because of the lack of memory safety involved in that C code. Sorry, I simply don't get the appeal of writing more operating systems and network-exposed code that isn't written…

I love Rust immensely, and it is perhaps my favorite programming language as of late. However. This is a microkernel. There is very, very little code inside a microkernel which, if written in Rust, would not end up inside an unsafe block. You are building the safe abstractions here; that code is inherently unsafe. You could use Rust as a C replacement, but it is a worse C than C, and unsafe rust contains more perils…

The Magenta kernel is maybe a bit more of a minikernel (97% of drivers and services live in userspace, but the syscall surface provides a wider variety of primitives than just send/recv/exit that a hardcore microkernel design might embrace).

It inherits from LK, which was written in C, but the new surfaces in the Magenta kernel are written in C++ (a restrained, limited C++, intended to take advantage of nice things C++ brings without getting us in too much trouble in the controlled kernel environment).

The core Magenta userspace drivers and services are mostly C at the moment, some will shift to C++ over time, and provided they use the same RPC protocols there's nothing preventing one from building such components in other languages once those other languages are building suitable binaries for Magenta.

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#58

Post by abrookewood »

fixmycode wrote: post #14

I remember a post earlier today about how open source projects needed better marketing. prime example. I had to dive in to know what was the project all about...

It's a Google project with non-public members, so maybe it has only recently been opened up and before that it was subject to secrecy. https://flutter.io/

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#59

Post by themodelplumber »

pavlov wrote: post #47

The repo at https://fuchsia.googlesource.com reveals a rather interesting UI story for this new operating system. It seems like the intention is to use Flutter [1] as the UI layer. Flutter uses the Dart language, so there's a Dart environment included in Fuchsia too [2]. For rendering, Fuchsia includes a project called Escher [3] which is described as a physically based renderer that supports soft shadows, light diff…

> Shadows and subtle color reflections are a major part of that "layered paper" aesthetic.

They're a part of design language, raw elements of design. This can get much bigger than the Material Design of now. It can make sure that the subtle or even zany, domineering design of tomorrow has just the right level of refinement for its intended audience.

IMO as a graphic designer and as someone who has been doing 3D rendering as a hobby for 15 years, it's pretty awesome to think about PBR moving into the area of UI.

Re: Fuchsia, a new operating system

#60

Post by couchand »

jdoliner wrote: post #50
calinet6 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a problem somewhere in the system of open source and the people who use it, and everyone above me provided many examples of dysfunction. It's dysfunction of a system with a very unclear reward framework, primarily centered around curiosity, pride, and drive. Developers want to build something they consider good; often they want to build something that others will find good and use, and there's intrinsic value…

Admittedly my response is another extreme from the parent comment. I run an open-source project and certainly don't have a take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward it. Although I also run a company behind that project and do get paid for some small subset of the work I do on the project; it'd be a lot harder to maintain that attitude if I didn't. I don't think open-source is perfect, it could be better and in my opinion i…

Maybe it's useful to point out here that:

  - Chrome is built on Chromium, which is open source,
    but Chrome itself is not.
  - Android is based on open source technologies, but is,
    again, not itself open source in many cases.
  - Many, if not most, programming language implementations
    are not open source.  In fact, you're dating yourself
    with this claim, as those with more experience remember
    the dark days of paying for compilers.
    Even C compilers.
I wholly agree with your sentiment, that open source projects work very hard and get little credit. I'd expect the GP agrees as well.

Could you be a bit more generous to the author of the comment you responded to? Your point really lines up quite well with theirs, if you spend a few moments considering them.

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