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Fuchsia overview

fuchsia.dev

151–160 of 235 posts

Re: Fuchsia overview

#151
post #35

>Fuchsia aims to provide drivers with a binary-stable interface. In the future, drivers compiled for one version of Fuchsia will continue to work in future versions of Fuchsia without needing to be modified or even recompiled. This approach means that Fuchsia devices will be able to update to newer versions of Fuchsia seamlessly while keeping their existing drivers. This is a massive step back for open source. The fa…

I would say this is one of their biggest advantage over Linux.

>> This would allow for a much more competitive, and higher quality, software, and hardware ecosystem on mobile platforms.

I have no idea why you think that. Any proof? How would you measure it?

>> It makes it possible to build proprietary drivers

End users do not care about opensource vs closed source, they care about the user experience. Based on your thesis, Linux would be the best operating system with the most market share out there because it features everything you say, yet it has a negligible share on desktop. Empirically proving your thesis being wrong.

Re: Fuchsia overview

#152
post #57
post #35

>Fuchsia aims to provide drivers with a binary-stable interface. In the future, drivers compiled for one version of Fuchsia will continue to work in future versions of Fuchsia without needing to be modified or even recompiled. This approach means that Fuchsia devices will be able to update to newer versions of Fuchsia seamlessly while keeping their existing drivers. This is a massive step back for open source. The fa…

sorry but that's just naive idealism, my wife has android flagship, a Samsung s10, she will receive one more year of updates, then she will be on her own, my daughter has iPhone 6S, this old device will receive iOS 14 soon. my wife do not care about updates, she will not hesitate a second to get iPhone once she knows her social media or pictures is not safe on her android device, this is the issue Android have and Fu…

Exactly. It is kind of funny how IT people look through their tech glass and think that the rest of the world (99.9999%) does the same. Nobody cares about software, everybody cares about user experience. Linux proved the point that having unstable driver interface has nothing to do with the success of the platform.

Re: Fuchsia overview

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuchsia could have fixed it by being copyleft licensed. That doesn't preclude in any way having a stable interface for drivers.

Hardware vendors are under no obligation to use Fuschia. Therefore, you have still not compelled hardware vendors to provide open source drivers. Linux has not compelled Nvidia to produce good OpenGL drivers. No, really, walk me through this.

Nvidia actually DOES have good OpenGL drivers that are unfortunately proprietary. AMD GPU drivers have been getting progressively better to where they represent a valid alternative for gaming. Intel GPU drivers have long been good enough for general use.

I think the principal is that if Google had licensed Fuchsia in such a way as to require release of source code to kernel modules that companies would rightly fear being sued for violating the copyright of a mega corp like google in a way that GPL violators don't fear say the free software foundation.

Re: Fuchsia overview

#154
post #35

>Fuchsia aims to provide drivers with a binary-stable interface. In the future, drivers compiled for one version of Fuchsia will continue to work in future versions of Fuchsia without needing to be modified or even recompiled. This approach means that Fuchsia devices will be able to update to newer versions of Fuchsia seamlessly while keeping their existing drivers. This is a massive step back for open source. The fa…

Everyone is having their go at this, blame younger generations for fighting GPL, while favouring other license models.

GPL is the only reason Linux still exits, not for long though, when even Linux Foundation has decided to go with something else for IoT, namely Zephyr, which is neither Linux based, nor under GPL license.

In about 20 years we will be back at shareware and public domain, enjoy what is left while it lasts.

It doesn't matter if Fucschia is a success, Android is already like this, since Project Treble, Linux drivers are "legacy" drivers on Android, all new drivers use a microkernel approach with Android IPC, basically how Fuschia drivers work.

Re: Fuchsia overview

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not say that is a fundamental reason. They have been willing to do it when the proper incentives are there. The incentive to keeping it closed source is primarily part of a strategy to sabotage their competitors, which I hope is not a behavior that anyone here is complicit in. Please don't work for hardware companies that do this, there are plenty of companies out there that know how to spend their money in o…

That is an assumption. I think the simpler case is it's more work and exposes potential security vulnerabilities they don't care to patch or maintain. Function > all.

[deleted]

Re: Fuchsia overview

#156
post #154
post #35

>Fuchsia aims to provide drivers with a binary-stable interface. In the future, drivers compiled for one version of Fuchsia will continue to work in future versions of Fuchsia without needing to be modified or even recompiled. This approach means that Fuchsia devices will be able to update to newer versions of Fuchsia seamlessly while keeping their existing drivers. This is a massive step back for open source. The fa…

Everyone is having their go at this, blame younger generations for fighting GPL, while favouring other license models. GPL is the only reason Linux still exits, not for long though, when even Linux Foundation has decided to go with something else for IoT, namely Zephyr, which is neither Linux based, nor under GPL license. In about 20 years we will be back at shareware and public domain, enjoy what is left while it la…

The Linux Foundation has a misleading name: it's essentially the Megacorporations Linux User Group. It wants whatever its member companies want. It does not really want to promote Linux or, say, enforce the GPL.

Re: Fuchsia overview

#157
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand why you want open source drivers, the situation hasnt improved for 10 years, and this is one of the major reasons many phones end up not getting Android updates, which makes Google/Android look bad.

> the situation hasnt improved for 10 years But it has. * I remember having major issues with printer drivers on Linux 10 years ago. Nowadays thanks to IPP support I don't need any drivers any more. I had to help my dad with installing a windows driver while on my Linux laptop it just worked. * My Laptop from 13 years ago didn't have free network drivers. I had to jump through hoops to install them. Now they are all…

> AMD has started maintaining really good open source driver support for their GPUs

Still waiting for them to reach parity for my laptop GPU, it used to be OpenGL 4.1 with hardware video decoding, nowadays I just get OpenGL 3.3 with the open source driver, the antithesis of really good.

Re: Fuchsia overview

#158
Haven't checked Fuchsia in a while, very glad to see that they have extended the documentation.

Did they improve the initial steps to get up and running too?

(I remember it took hours to clone all the subprojects and most of the times something failed along the way, even worse than downloading the Android sources)

Re: Fuchsia overview

#159
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We already have a high quality kernel: Linux. Linux is full of security bugs. It is ludicrous to suggest Linux is high quality. OpenBSD, maybe. Not Linux.

Citation needed :) Seriously, all software has bugs, how do you judge the quality of an operating system that is not finished?

Does Google itself help?

https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...

https://outflux.net/slides/2019/lss/kspp.pdf

Slides from 2018 and 2019 talks.

Re: Fuchsia overview

#160
post #35

>Fuchsia aims to provide drivers with a binary-stable interface. In the future, drivers compiled for one version of Fuchsia will continue to work in future versions of Fuchsia without needing to be modified or even recompiled. This approach means that Fuchsia devices will be able to update to newer versions of Fuchsia seamlessly while keeping their existing drivers. This is a massive step back for open source. The fa…

> It makes it possible to build proprietary drivers. Even worse, Fuchsia aims to be BSD License, not GPL. Fuchsia is a complete disaster for hobby OS makers.

Apparently everyone is unhappy with GPL.

In a couple of years the same people will understand why it exists in first place.

I guess they are having fun running FreeBSD on their PS4s, thanks to Sony, hence why they aren't paying attention.

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