Fuchsia: a new operating system • Hacker News Board

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#291

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 6:07 PM UTC

bonzini wrote: post #273

pjmlp wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the amount of shipped embedded systems and the hybrid designs from OS X and Windows, I would say Tanenbaum won. The majority of embedded OSes have a microkernel design. Also Windows and OS X have a kind of hybrid design, even if not a proper mikrokernel. On Windows case,there are now a sandboxed kernel and drivers. https://channel9.msdn.com/events/Ignite/2016/BRK4010 https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/windowsserve…

Even with new features like Device Guard, Windows is all but a microkernel; parts of the GUI high-level primitives (like fonts) are in WIN32K.SYS. Even OS X moved a lot of drivers to kernel space, it's not a pure microkernel design like the Hurd. If anything, the closest thing to a microkernel that is in wide use is Xen, or Hyper-V.

Which is why I said hybrid, I didn't say it is a mikrokernel.

In any case it is better than Linux will ever be.

Regarding Xen and Hyper-V, there is a systems paper that states hypervisors are the revenge of mikrokernels.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#292

Post by ge96 » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 6:22 PM UTC

jorvi wrote: post #186

deno wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not very fast, but it’s surprisingly easy on the resources, especially memory. Compare using VS Code w/ Typescript Language Service to any type of dev stack that includes the word “Scala.”

> It’s not very fast, but it’s surprisingly easy on the resources, especially memory. Open VS Code and then Sublime and be amazed. Atom and VS Code can never be 'easy on the memory' because they have to load an entire Electron instance just to idle.

It costs MONEY!!! Noooo.... haha

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#293

Post by ge96 » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 6:23 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #166

ge96 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

I recently tried Geany as the chromebook I bought is ARM-based so VS code wouldn't work on it. It's alright.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#294

Post by ge96 » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 6:23 PM UTC

stirner wrote: post #189

ge96 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Vim is well known for its bloated, messy codebase. I'd hardly call it "lean".

I wasn't aware, I just think it's command line so it must be "lean" right? No GUI. I don't know.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#295

Post by ge96 » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 6:27 PM UTC

khedoros1 wrote: post #164

ge96 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ol' learning curve

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#296

Post by thomastjeffery » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 6:34 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #226

thomastjeffery wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the GPL mafia is right, and hardware vendors will continue to abuse their users with proprietary blobs unless they are forced into change.

How long has the GPL Mafia been saying this? Do you see many vendors being forced into change?

AMD is finally changing. Unfortunately, The amdgpu-pro limbo right now is not ideal... but I am very excited for the future.

AMDGPU is already very usable. I remember ~5-10 years of waiting to use my Radeon 9600 with a recent kernel until the free Radeon driver was finally up to snuff. Catalyst and fglrx were awful.

Proprietary drivers just don't make sense. They are practically unmaintainable.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#297

Post by lern_too_spel » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 6:38 PM UTC

krisdol wrote: post #217

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Fuchsia, is in fact, GNU/Fuchsia, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Fuchsia. Fuchsia is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run…

It's built with Clang and has a mostly BSD userspace.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#298

Post by catern » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 7:33 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #161

catern wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I explicitly mentioned Plan 9. Plan 9 doesn't do anything to make it fundamentally easier to write a filesystem, it just takes the (wise) approach of standardizing a simple filesystem protocol. (Which is a big help practically of course.) Nevertheless, actually implementing that protocol is still difficult. While it would be nice to represent a filesystem as a nested hashtable, 9P doesn't give you that for free: you need to keep track of fids you hand out.

Plash uses capabilities aggressively and only gives subprocesses access to what they need to access. But it doesn't make it any easier to write new applications which construct namespaces and proxy access.

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#299

Post by tyingq » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 7:35 PM UTC

techenthusiast wrote: post #282

tyingq wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link in the bottom of your first article was very helpful, and seems to confirm ChromeOS and Android would be the likely targets. https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/magenta/+show/master/docs/m...

Thanks. Yeah, they really could not be more transparent about that. Most of the bring-up is on mobile + PC silicon as well. There's no need to kill Chrome OS for the education, mind.

Looked at it again, and it could be an old comment about magenta, and maybe not applicable to fuchsia?

Re: Fuchsia: a new operating system

#300

Post by remir » Sat, Apr 01, 2017, 7:41 PM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #213

Klathmon wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. Perhaps "embedded" is the wrong term, but more and more devices have full touchscreens on them, and if you are selling a high end device like a refrigerator, having the UI be fluid and feel high end is important as well. Not to mention TVs, car UIs, security system pads, and more.

Its rendering pipeline uses Vulkan which requires a very capable GPU. I'm sure you could put an expensive SoC into a refrigerator or TV, but it's going to cost you.

Can't wait to play games on my fridge!