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Google’s Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google’s Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook

#31

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

liuw wrote: post #17
mtgx wrote: post #14

Short review: Another OS written in C/C++ that will have a million and one bugs over the next 3 decades.

Why focus on the language and the possibility of a million and one bugs but not the architecture and design choices?

Because it's an easy indicator of someone who has no idea what they're doing in OS development. Choosing the wrong tool for the job is meaningful. Have you ever looked through Chromium's C++ codebase? The same people are working on this and it tells us that they haven't learned their lesson (or they want to tightly integrate Chrome with Fuschia, which is also a foreboding sign).

Edit: I should clarify that I think C is the only rational choice and that Rust is ill suited to osdev as well. I'm only talking about C++ here.

Re: Google’s Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook

#32

Post by stusmall »

faitswulff wrote: post #25
eddieh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has dabbled in OS development over the years, you'd be a fool to use anything other than C (I suppose you could use a restricted subset of C++ if you really don't want to write anything but a toy OS) or assembly if you have something to prove.

What about Rust disqualifies it? Let's say besides ecosystem immaturity (lack of libraries). As a non-systems programmer, I'm curious.

They do have some rust showing up in their repos. It looks like its mostly bindings needed to run rust on the OS. I don't know what their long term goals with it are. I'm guessing they want it for writing high performance user space daemons or whatever the fuchsia equivalent is.

https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=&type=&la...

Re: Google’s Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook

#33

Post by bitmapbrother »

Jesus_Jones wrote: post #2

There's no point to these early Fuschia review attempts. I don't see how it demonstrates anything. It's like looking at the famous first email from Linus Torvald and figuring out what the os would be in the end. So it boots, it has windows, but not apps, and prints some things to the screen. It tells us nothing about real intentions, future capabilities, etc.

I disagree. It allows people that are interested in Fuchsia, but don't have the skills, time or hardware to build it, an opportunity to visually follow its progression.

Re: Google’s Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook

#34

Post by mempko »

Jesus_Jones wrote: post #2

There's no point to these early Fuschia review attempts. I don't see how it demonstrates anything. It's like looking at the famous first email from Linus Torvald and figuring out what the os would be in the end. So it boots, it has windows, but not apps, and prints some things to the screen. It tells us nothing about real intentions, future capabilities, etc.

There are already important signals here.

1. Your login is tied to your google account. Want to use the computer in any real capacity? Google account.

2. They think bringing back multi tasking from the 90s is important.

3. People will want to control their computer views.

4. They are making a new kernel.

5. They believe in the capabilities based security model.

6. They believe in micro kernels.

7. They don't have any NEW ideas yet (otherwise we would see them in early stages). Maybe they will come up with something, it's research right?

Re: Google’s Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook

#35

Post by greenhouse_gas »

mtgx wrote: post #14

Short review: Another OS written in C/C++ that will have a million and one bugs over the next 3 decades.

Just want to point out that not that long ago redox-os (the microkernel OS in Rust) asked people to test it.

People were able to kernel panic it, get privilege escalations, and DDoS it. In short, it had the same same issues a C based kernel would get.

It's true that it's still heavily in development and doesn't offer any guarantees whatsoever, but I think that it should be pointed out that just because your language is good, doesn't mean that your end result will be good (and vice-versa, C based kernels like l4 and C based projects like SQLite have been formally verified (at least SQLite was verified after compilation, so they check for undefined language constructs.))

Re: Google’s Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook

#36

Post by greenhouse_gas »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #31
liuw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why focus on the language and the possibility of a million and one bugs but not the architecture and design choices?

Because it's an easy indicator of someone who has no idea what they're doing in OS development. Choosing the wrong tool for the job is meaningful. Have you ever looked through Chromium's C++ codebase? The same people are working on this and it tells us that they haven't learned their lesson (or they want to tightly integrate Chrome with Fuschia, which is also a foreboding sign). Edit: I should clarify that I think C…

I know you're a prolific commentator here, so if you don't mind me asking ... Which operating systems have you designed (or worked on) to say that writing a microkernel in C is a symptom that they don't know anything about OS development?

Re: Google’s Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook

#38

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

greenhouse_gas wrote: post #36
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's an easy indicator of someone who has no idea what they're doing in OS development. Choosing the wrong tool for the job is meaningful. Have you ever looked through Chromium's C++ codebase? The same people are working on this and it tells us that they haven't learned their lesson (or they want to tightly integrate Chrome with Fuschia, which is also a foreboding sign). Edit: I should clarify that I think C…

I know you're a prolific commentator here, so if you don't mind me asking ... Which operating systems have you designed (or worked on) to say that writing a microkernel in C is a symptom that they don't know anything about OS development?

Writing a microkernel in C is fine. I said _C++_. But for the record, I built this:

https://github.com/KnightOS/kernel

And I've worked on toy kernels here and there and studied more serious kernels in depth.

Re: Google’s Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook

#39

Post by aidenn0 »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #30
aidenn0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the kernel is based on L4, which has at least one bug-free implementation[1]. 1: http://sel4.systems/

The Ziron microkernel is based on Little Kernel[1]. One of the main authors of Fuchsia was the developer of LK. [1] https://github.com/littlekernel/lk/wiki/Introduction

Thanks for the correction

Re: Google’s Fuchsia OS on the Pixelbook

#40

Post by jsgo »

Unkechaug wrote: post #12

What is this supposed to become, exactly? Google hasn't said much about it and speculators are making big claims like how this will replace ChromeOS and Android. I don't see that happening any time soon considering how deeply entrenched both OSes are, but Google's dedication mixed with the lack of comments makes me think again.

well, based on the demo there, I'd almost only want it is a Google Assistant version of Amazon's Show where it could be an assistant for various users (and guests). Outside of that, I'm not sure.

Obviously, it has to be more with all of the aspects of it, but in its current state, that's the only thing I can envision.

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