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Fuchsia: a new operating system

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Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#111

Post by bitmapbrother »

norswap wrote: post #3
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...

Linux is humongous. I don't know about what Google is trying to achieve with Fuschia, but I if you're willing to make trade-offs, I believe you can make an OS that is multiple order of magnitudes smaller than Linux (or other Unixes, or Windows) and still makes a lot of practical sense.

Reducing the attack surface of the kernel is one of the primary benefits. Companies like Qualcomm are a constant source of exploits due to the amount of buggy drivers they introduce into the kernel each year.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#112

Post by bitmapbrother »

gsnedders wrote: post #17
bitmapbrother wrote: post #11

People that question the existence of Fuchsia need only remember why Chrome was created. A lot of people thought Google was wasting their time by building a browser, including Eric Schmidt, and look how that turned out. Now, I'm not saying that Fuchsia will have the same success as Chrome, but it's clear that they think that having an OS that they can control the direction of is important to them.

It's also interesting that there's a lot of long-term web guys, almost all of them ex-Chrome (and some who were working on Firefox at Google before Chrome was a thing), many of them pretty senior at the point they left Chrome.

Two of the Fuchsia members also worked on BeOS if I recall correctly.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#113

Post by tapoxi »

Touche wrote: post #61
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 any…

But there are significantly more devices out there these days, that we don't traditionally think of as "computers". Cable boxes/DVRs, webcams, vacuum cleaners, mobile phones, routers, hell a directory traversal bug was found in a dishwasher.

Many of these devices aren't patched after they're sold, and can be compromised within minutes of being assigned a publicly routable IP - this is what happened with Mirai.

Security is better for desktop computers, but if you include everything with an operating system, it's much, much worse.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#114

Post by aanm1988 »

spdionis wrote: post #109
aanm1988 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty ridiculous statement. Amazon won't dump money into BS just because, but they are absolutely willing to take big risks if the payoff is there.

Both big risk and long term? I don't think so. They're not a company with much philosophical vision. They provide good, useful, services to make money. That's not enough to start a successful operating system. I don't mean to bash Amazon. They do well what they do, at the scale they have. I only think the project would not fit the company as it is now.

I'm saying you fundamentally misunderstand Amazon. The entire thing is based on long term thinking. It's why they spent decades building out a massive logistics infrastructure instead of turning a profit. It's why they spend tons on robotics, drones, and grocery stores that can eb run without people. They have been manufacturing tablets for years. They built kindle. They built a (disaster of a) phone.

Amazon doesn't waste money just because. But if they saw the potential return in developing an OS (say they decide that having a custom OS as their base for AWS) they are absolutely the type of company that would pursue it.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#115

Post by naasking »

Touche wrote: post #61
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 any…

> 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.

Those were people just messing around. Annoying and harmful to your local machine certainly, but the harm that was caused was localized.

Security vulnerabilities are now industrialized, with large-scale public attacks and widespread silent compromises used to gather and sell your information for profit. The situation is still bad, it's just bad in a different way.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#116

Post by spdionis »

aanm1988 wrote: post #114
spdionis wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both big risk and long term? I don't think so. They're not a company with much philosophical vision. They provide good, useful, services to make money. That's not enough to start a successful operating system. I don't mean to bash Amazon. They do well what they do, at the scale they have. I only think the project would not fit the company as it is now.

I'm saying you fundamentally misunderstand Amazon. The entire thing is based on long term thinking. It's why they spent decades building out a massive logistics infrastructure instead of turning a profit. It's why they spend tons on robotics, drones, and grocery stores that can eb run without people. They have been manufacturing tablets for years. They built kindle. They built a (disaster of a) phone. Amazon doesn't…

Maybe you're right and I'm mistaken.

That said, I'd like to note that a custom OS for AWS (servers), and a user OS (desktop or mobile) are extremely different things.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#117

Post by pjmlp »

mtgx wrote: post #27
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…

Looks like it's written in C++. Regardless of how "clean" the code is right now, it's only a matter of time because it becomes roughly as bad as any other OS written in C++ in terms of vulnerabilities found in it per million lines of code.

Android and ChromeOS also have several components written in C++, yet the majority of userspace is only available to Java or Web applications.

On modern OSes, that aren't plain UNIX clones, C and C++ are being pushed down the stack just to provide some hardware abstraction layer, with everything else being done in more safer, productive, languages.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#118

Post by rbanffy »

jjuel wrote: post #59
ge96 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Egacs. Eight Gigabytes And Constantly Swapping.

Moore's Law. Give it another decade and it'll be Etacs.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#119

Post by greenhouse_gas »

iainmerrick wrote: post #74
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?

I think this is a symptom of internal rivalries at Google. Seems like a combination of Dart (arch-rival to Go) and ChromeOS (arch-rival to Android). That's not necessarily a bad thing -- Google's M.O. has always been to try lots of different things at once. But it may mean they literally don't have a solid long-term plan for it yet.

Yup, and the end user/developer suffers.

Why should I rewrite my Android app just because Google can't work out their internal politics?

And yes, I know that you'll probably be able to run Android apps on Fuchsia, but what about bitrot? Will JVM-language based Android be put on Life Support?

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#120

Post by rbanffy »

protomyth wrote: post #107
puzzle wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I sometimes wonder if addition to a Ethics class, Computer Science students need to take a Computer Archaeology class. It might not be a bad thing to bring up a lot of the concepts that aren't in the main stream anymore that have been tried.

We certainly should. We've been through a lot of ideas that were not practical at the time that could be practical again in the future.
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