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Fuchsia: a new operating system

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Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#51

Post by peter-m80 »

desdiv wrote: post #39
kardianos wrote: post #5

What makes Fuchsia different then so many other attempts at writing a new OS? They aren't writing a new OS, at least, not in the complete sense. They are using the IPC system developed in and extracted from Chrome. They are drawing everything in userspace with fast graphics render but the logic for all system components written in Dart from the Flutter project. They use musl for the libc. They are using the little ke…

>They are drawing everything in userspace with fast graphics render... Dumb question, does this mean that it's limited to software rendering only? You need to go through the kernel to talk to the GPU, right?

"The graphics drivers for Fuchsia also exist as user-space services. They are logically split into a system driver and an application driver. The layer of software that facilitates communication between the two is called Magma, which is a framework that provides compositing and buffer sharing. Also part of the graphics stack is Escher, a physically-based renderer that relies on Vulkan to provide the rendering API"

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#52

Post by rayiner »

desdiv wrote: post #39
kardianos wrote: post #5

What makes Fuchsia different then so many other attempts at writing a new OS? They aren't writing a new OS, at least, not in the complete sense. They are using the IPC system developed in and extracted from Chrome. They are drawing everything in userspace with fast graphics render but the logic for all system components written in Dart from the Flutter project. They use musl for the libc. They are using the little ke…

>They are drawing everything in userspace with fast graphics render... Dumb question, does this mean that it's limited to software rendering only? You need to go through the kernel to talk to the GPU, right?

What happens these days is that GPU buffers are mapped into user space, where they are filled with textures and drawing commands. Then, they are submitted to the kernel GPU scheduler for execution. See e.g. https://lwn.net/Articles/283798.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#53

Post by swiley »

Google has repeatedly prommised, and failed to build a lightweight open OS. Every time they have produced one it was full of bizzare political constraints and closed source spyware. I would be shocked if this time was any different.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#54

Post by mankash666 »

I see great advantages to offering a POSIX compatibility layer. It can be sand-boxed to the app's context instead of making it a system wide dependency. Getting existing apps to run out of the box, and then convincing them to adapt a leaner, narrower set of system calls is probably more valuable than requiring from-the-scratch development.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#55

Post by Arizhel »

wyldfire wrote: post #32
Arizhel wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because all the stupid vendors refuse to share anything, and won't publish their sources for the various device drivers needed. So every time there's some new flash chip or whatever, there's a custom closed-source device driver for it which doesn't get mainlined or updated for newer kernel revisions, and devices with that chip are forever stuck on an ancient kernel version. There's only two ways around this: 1)…

> It's because all the stupid vendors refuse to share anything I'm not going to defend the vendors (much). But it's not free to upstream your code. It's work. And I'd argue that it's an investment that will pay off, but you can't fault others much for seeing it differently.

I disagree. It's not free (usually) to upstream your code yourself, but there's nothing preventing you from publishing it for anyone to use. With a popular mobile phone, that'll very likely end up with someone else grabbing it and upstreaming it for you.

There's no guarantee some unpaid volunteer is going to do this kind of work for your company, but the chances are much higher if it's some kind of popular device.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#56

Post by swiley »

maxerickson wrote: post #21
sdegutis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what about ChromeOS? Do you think they're trying to build a "full-fledged" OS for the modern era, with safety and security in mind, but not as lightweight as ChromeOS?

It's likely to be lighter than ChromeOS. ChromeOS was a locked down userspace on top of Linux. Fuchsia gets rid of the Linux.

Linux was the only remotely useful, sane, and lightweight part of ChromeOS.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#57

Post by jnwatson »

If I had to guess, this looks to be a strong candidate for the embedded OS market. There are still lots of folks running VxWorks, QNX, ThreadX, Mentor Graphics' Nucleus, Green Hills' Integrity.

In fact, it looks a lot like the same general design as Integrity, a microkernel capability-based architecture with as much as possible in user space.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#58

Post by ClashTheBunny »

desdiv wrote: post #39
kardianos wrote: post #5

What makes Fuchsia different then so many other attempts at writing a new OS? They aren't writing a new OS, at least, not in the complete sense. They are using the IPC system developed in and extracted from Chrome. They are drawing everything in userspace with fast graphics render but the logic for all system components written in Dart from the Flutter project. They use musl for the libc. They are using the little ke…

>They are drawing everything in userspace with fast graphics render... Dumb question, does this mean that it's limited to software rendering only? You need to go through the kernel to talk to the GPU, right?

In addition to the other comments, I would be excited about a graphics driver not being able to take out my system.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#59

Post by jjuel »

ge96 wrote: post #50
kardianos wrote: post #5

What makes Fuchsia different then so many other attempts at writing a new OS? They aren't writing a new OS, at least, not in the complete sense. They are using the IPC system developed in and extracted from Chrome. They are drawing everything in userspace with fast graphics render but the logic for all system components written in Dart from the Flutter project. They use musl for the libc. They are using the little ke…

Curious on advantages besides being secure. I normally have garbage computers so I like to run lean on stuff. Not to the point of using Arch but Ubuntu with i3. Also will "regular" programs still run. Like as a developer I need VS Code, Filezilla, file manager, Kate, LAMP stack installed. Are there concerns on non-dedicated graphics cards, or running say an ARM-based processor. Also I'm not sure what you mean by '...…

Not often someone says lean and VS Code in the same statement.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#60

Post by techenthusiast »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #46
tyingq wrote: post #10

Are there enough clues to figure out if this is intended to eventually displace Android, ChromeOS, the Ubuntu distribution most googlers use on their company machines, or the Linux they run their data centers? As far as I know, Google hasn't telegraphed the purpose of it. I can't tell if it's targeted at all, none, or some of the above.

Your guess is as good as mine, but there are some clues: https://techspecs.blog/blog/2017/2/14/googles-not-so-secret-... https://techspecs.blog/blog/2017/2/15/proof

Thanks, but would sooner recommend my third article: https://techspecs.blog/blog/2017/3/15/fuchsias-hypervisor.
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