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Fuchsia: a new operating system

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Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#161

Post by naasking »

catern wrote: post #137
naasking wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Namespaces are really useful, and are probably here to stay. But as long as things can be accessed by names, the access will need to be controlled by something like an ACL. Not necessarily. If your system supports first-class namespaces, then you can just build a namespace consisting of only the objects to which a program should have access. No need for any further access control. A file open dialog from a program…

>Not necessarily. If your system supports first-class namespaces, then you can just build a namespace consisting of only the objects to which a program should have access. No need for any further access control. Unfortunately this is usually quite heavyweight. In Unix-like systems, and in Plan 9, the canonical way to do this is to implement a filesystem. "Filesystem" is the universal IPC layer. But implementing a fil…

> "Filesystem" is the universal IPC layer. But implementing a filesystem usually takes quite a lot of effort.

It needn't be. A file system is just a set of nested hashtables. The complexity of traditional file systems comes from the durable representation, but that isn't necessarily needed for first-class namespaces. You can just serialize and deserialize a namespace as needed on top of an ordinary file system.

> Do you know of any systems where this can be done easily enough for it to be used ubiquitously?

Plan 9 obviously. The Plash capability secure shell [1]. There are probably a couple of others, but not too many overall.

[1] http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~seaborn/plash/plash-orig.html

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#162

Post by remir »

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…

The modular approach seems interesting. Call by meaning?

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#163

Post by icebraining »

cbsmith wrote: post #105
michaelmrose wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make open source drivers sound like a bad thing.

No, but pushing that agenda via architectural level changes is not exactly a way to get a good architecture.

An architecture is a structural design made to achieve certain goals. They just happen to have another goal to achieve.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#164

Post by khedoros1 »

ge96 wrote: post #98
jjuel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah I used to use Atom. I know Vim is what I should use for "lean" but it's not easy to use. I did see some pretty themes 'space wrap' or something like that.

> I know Vim is what I should use for "lean" but it's not easy to use.

It's easy to use, but it's not easy to learn.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#165

Post by weberc2 »

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.

"arch-rivals"? That's overly dramatic. Go and Dart are hardly competing with each other, as are ChromeOS and Android.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#166

Post by icebraining »

ge96 wrote: post #98
jjuel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah I used to use Atom. I know Vim is what I should use for "lean" but it's not easy to use. I did see some pretty themes 'space wrap' or something like that.

There are plenty of "mid-range" editors and IDEs: mousepad, gedit, geany, kate..

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#167

Post by icebraining »

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.

The Future of Programming would be a good introduction: https://vimeo.com/71278954

It's both inspiring and depressing.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#168

Post by socmag »

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…

Yes I'm quite excited as well.

Building user land OS's is a fascinating (if not new) idea that I really love to tinker with a myself. It really would be nice if they can pull it off.

Read through what I could find of the IPC code a while back. Currently it seems workable but a bit "baroque", then again if, as you say, it is working inside Chrome, I guess it is battle tested.

Messaging has always and still is the future for very loosely coupled systems, and driving it all the way down would be really great.

Been following this for a while and can't wait to give it a whirl. Plus everyone likes to root for shiny new OS design projects.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#169

Post by socmag »

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…

Yes I'm quite excited as well.

Building user land OS's is a fascinating (if not new) idea that I really love to tinker with a myself. It really would be nice if they can pull it off.

Read through what I could find of the IPC code a while back. Currently it seems workable but a bit "baroque", then again if, as you say, it is working inside Chrome, I guess it is battle tested.

Messaging has always and still is the future for very loosely coupled systems, and driving it all the way down would be really great.

Been following this for a while and can't wait to give it a whirl. Plus everyone likes to root for shiny new OS design projects.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#170

Post by nickpsecurity »

staticassertion wrote: post #155
CalChris wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we know that C is not secure. We also know that C++ is not secure and moreover it definitely isn't C, now with security . It's just more bigger C. So use your phrase, you can still fuck up with C++ . You can just do it in more clever and insidious ways. seL4, a third-generation microkernel is 8,700 lines of C code and 600 lines of assembler. http://web1.cs.columbia.edu/~junfeng/09fa-e6998/papers/sel4.... So we a…

I wouldn't use SEL4 as an argument. It is completely unreasonable to build a production kernel the way they did - it took them ages to get what they had. Google is probably looking to develop features/ move code a lot faster than is possible using their technique. Good coding practices take no time to implement, you learn it once and you write that way. It is not bullet proof, neither are capabilities. Still, at leas…

How about Muen separation kernel in SPARK Ada with automated prover eliminating many classes of undefined behavior? Or C with tools like Frama-C and Astree Analyzer (like SPARK for C)? C++ can't reach the safety of its competition due to more complexity and less tooling.
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