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Fuchsia: a new operating system

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Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#61

Post by Touche »

VonGuard wrote: post #19

Capability-based operating systems must be the future. If they are not, then we are all doomed to continue to exist in a messy world where security problems crop up every minute. Capability-based access controls are one of the best options for getting out of our current mess, but they're also the type of thing that must be implemented very low in the system in order to work. Hopefully, when we start ripping out *nix…

> If they are not, then we are all doomed to continue to exist in a messy world where security problems crop up every minute.

Side-tangent, but security enthusiasts need to calm down on the "world is ending" talk. Those of us who lived through Windows ME, where logging on IRC basically gave you a 25% chance of having your computer hijacked by some random script kiddie, think it's laughable to say that security is anywhere near as bad as it used to be. Night and day.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#62

Post by cwyers »

jcoffland wrote: post #12
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UNIX, as a viable OS model, isn't the last word in operating system design. It has too much design decisions and other baggage rooted in technology dating back to the 1970s. As Rob Pike, one of the people who worked on UNIX, said " Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad. " On top of that, Linux essentially sucked all the air out of the UNIX development space by killing off all the commercial UNIXes.…

> Linux essentially sucked all the air out of the UNIX development space by killing off all the commercial UNIXes. Only because they have done a really good job.

Eh. The biggest thing Linux had going for it in terms of winning market share was running on commodity x86 parts in a time period when the commercial Unices weren't touching it, and x86 made really strong gains in beating everybody else at performance per dollar.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#63

Post by Touche »

> This is a new take on open-source development where it is out in the open, yet secret.

Hasn't this always been the way Android operates? Developed in secret, source thrown over the wall every release?

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#64

Post by riffraff »

swiley wrote: post #53

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.

I don't recall this happening, are you referring to chromeos and android? Can you share some links if you're not?

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#65

Post by ealexhudson »

wyldfire wrote: post #4
londons_explore wrote: post #2

While this is a cool project, I can't really see it making financial sense... > Lets throw away the last 20 years development on the linux kernel by thousands of people, and rewrite our own. > How much will it cost? > Ooh - I dunno - If you lend me 1000 engineers, we should be done in about 10 years, cos we're really smart and don't need to implement legacy SCSI support...

> How much will it cost? Good thing it's funded by someone who has lots and lots of money! > Lets throw away the last 20 years development on the linux kernel by thousands of people, and rewrite our own. To suggest that linux is as good as it gets is a mistake. Operating systems are challenging to write, but certainly not impossible. If you're Google, you see big security risks involved in Linux's design. Google trie…

Linux isn't as good as it gets, but it moves significantly faster than pretty much any other software project. The majority of the code is hardware driver/support, and it's relatively well understood in terms of performance now. Linux today is not much like Linux 10 years ago.

Making something better than Linux in some way isn't hard. Making something consistently and sustainably better in enough ways, at the rate Linux moves, is a very hard task.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#66

Post by puzzle »

VonGuard wrote: post #19

Capability-based operating systems must be the future. If they are not, then we are all doomed to continue to exist in a messy world where security problems crop up every minute. Capability-based access controls are one of the best options for getting out of our current mess, but they're also the type of thing that must be implemented very low in the system in order to work. Hopefully, when we start ripping out *nix…

The future? The System/38 (aka AS/400 aka iSeries aka System i) had capabilities from the beginning, almost 40 years ago.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#67

Post by ocdtrekkie »

puzzle wrote: post #66
VonGuard wrote: post #19

Capability-based operating systems must be the future. If they are not, then we are all doomed to continue to exist in a messy world where security problems crop up every minute. Capability-based access controls are one of the best options for getting out of our current mess, but they're also the type of thing that must be implemented very low in the system in order to work. Hopefully, when we start ripping out *nix…

The future? The System/38 (aka AS/400 aka iSeries aka System i) had capabilities from the beginning, almost 40 years ago.

It's not a new idea, but that doesn't mean it isn't perhaps the future of somewhere it hasn't been before.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#70

Post by cmrdporcupine »

I don't understand what the value is in writing a new original microkernel from scratch in this day and age when sel4* is free and open source, performance tuned for 20ish years, is security hardened, and is provably correct for both security and features?

This doesn't seem like a wise path to take.

* See http://sel4.systems/

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