"Fuchsia is a new operating system developed by Google"- and I'm out.
Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
91–100 of 285 posts
Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
BSD was around!
It was, but it was in legal limbo.
After the legal limbo came a whole bunch of fractious disputes within and between multiple core teams -- initially FreeBSD (concentrating on PC-derived platforms) and NetBSD (cross-platform), both having some roots in the earlier, troubled 386BSD project led by Bill Jolitz, with some later forks from each group (most notably OpenBSD). Those persisted long after the legal issues were effectively settled, and really hindered the BSDs in general from keeping up with Linux-based OS distributions.
Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
#93This debate about monolithic vs. micro-kernels has been had many times. Maybe this time the resolution is different, who knows. But FWIW Linux didn't reach its success because someone made a feature comparison between it and what else was out there in a spreadsheet and somehow discovered how Linux was so much better. Instead, Linux won (and continues to win) because it's the Rocky Balboa of operating systems. It may…
Fuchsia/Zircon claims not to be a microkernel. It definitely isn't a classic microkernel like Mach or L4; Zircon is still responsible for a very large number of syscalls.
However, core components such as graphics, file systems, hardware devices, etc. are moved into userland, so in that sense it follows the microkernel idea of putting as little as possible in the kernel itself.
Personally, I love the design, and hope it takes off. We really need to get away from letting kernels and devices have elevated privileges in an OS.
As far as I'm concerned, Tanenbaum won the monolith/microkernel debate — Minix 3 is a true microkernel, and is currently a popular niche OS — and the success of Linux does not diminish the argument. (The infamous failure of GNU Hurd doesn't, either.)
Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
#94I fully welcome some more competiton on the operating system front. I am sad to see WindowsNT, Linux and macOS be the only dominant operating systems. My personal very perhaps unpopular view is that Windows NT has a better technial implentation than Linux. Linux does most things well, form small devices to big iron. That is true now. But when it started, it was as a learning experiment, and damn good one too. An amaz…
> My personal very perhaps unpopular view is that Windows NT has a better technial implentation than Linux.
I actually don't think it's that uncommon to see people who think the NT kernel is a superior implementation than the Linux kernel. There does seem to be a sentiment that the Linux kernel has a history of adopting features later than other OSes, and often using a worse implementation (epoll is one of the more infamous cases).
Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
#95This debate about monolithic vs. micro-kernels has been had many times. Maybe this time the resolution is different, who knows. But FWIW Linux didn't reach its success because someone made a feature comparison between it and what else was out there in a spreadsheet and somehow discovered how Linux was so much better. Instead, Linux won (and continues to win) because it's the Rocky Balboa of operating systems. It may…
I think it’s a bit early to declare Linux’s market victory here.
The obvious thing for Google to do is to use this in Android, and this will solve a number of big problems for them (specifically, binary-only drivers and a better security model). They might even have some success in the server or desktop spaces as well.
I worry a bit that Linux will be the next Firefox.
Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. I mean a full-fledged alternative to the major operating systems. Do people in charge of Chrome OS say "In 5 years, we want developers, designers and project managers at Google use this OS"? I don't think so - it's not their ambition to compete with Mac OS or Linux.
why 5 years? They can already if they want to.
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Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
ChromeOS has some pretty serious limitations that make it DOA as a Mac OS / Windows / Linux alternative.
I believe Linux (Beta) for ChromeOS[1] should eliminate most of these limitations. There is also Fedora Silverblue[2], which is an immutable desktop OS. [1] https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/
But that would basically make it an awkward Linux distribution that doesn't have much benefits over the existing ones. It seems like an afterthought, a second class citizen.
Where's the documentation for Chrome OS SDK (for native apps)?
Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you mean Chrome OS? Google is a web company; they want people to use the web. They made a laptop/desktop operating system built around their web browser, because they want everything to be on the web. It does most of the things you list, including synchronizing between devices since your data is all "in the Cloud". As for market share, I'm not sure what power you think Google has, but getting 10% of the desktop OS…
No. I mean a full-fledged alternative to the major operating systems. Do people in charge of Chrome OS say "In 5 years, we want developers, designers and project managers at Google use this OS"? I don't think so - it's not their ambition to compete with Mac OS or Linux.
They don't say that, because that's not their goal. Google makes money from consumers being online, searching, browsing the internet, and using Google apps. It doesn't matter if that person is using Windows, Mac, Linux, or some imaginative Google OS to connect to the internet. They profit either way.
Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Keep in mind, too, that path dependence plays a huge role here. Linux took off when the alternatives were Windows NT, Novell Netware, or commercial Unixes running on underpowered RISC hardware.
Late 1990s,a huge amount of linux installs in the business happened because of Samba and Apache
Right! It takes nothing away from the Linux developers to acknowledge the enormous role of contingency in Linux' initial adoption.
Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
#100This debate about monolithic vs. micro-kernels has been had many times. Maybe this time the resolution is different, who knows. But FWIW Linux didn't reach its success because someone made a feature comparison between it and what else was out there in a spreadsheet and somehow discovered how Linux was so much better. Instead, Linux won (and continues to win) because it's the Rocky Balboa of operating systems. It may…
Fuchsia/Zircon claims not to be a microkernel. It definitely isn't a classic microkernel like Mach or L4; Zircon is still responsible for a very large number of syscalls. However, core components such as graphics, file systems, hardware devices, etc. are moved into userland, so in that sense it follows the microkernel idea of putting as little as possible in the kernel itself. Personally, I love the design, and hope…
> Minix 3 is a true microkernel, and is currently a popular niche OS
Isn't it the most widely deployed operating system in the world? It's embedded in basically every Intel CPU