Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system • Hacker News Board

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#101

Post by Koshkin » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #56

ThinkBeat wrote: post #46

I 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…

The BeOS "reimplementation" is called Haiku. It is a pretty remarkably mature project, though unfortunately not what I'm looking for in a new OS personally. The reason we don't see new OSs is pretty simple: there is entirely too much hardware you have to accommodate to be usable. There are klocs of actual kernel code in Linux, and Mlocs of driver code.

I think the answer is to have device drivers implemented as part of device firmware.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#102

Post by setpatchaddress » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

messe wrote: post #21

wbl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BSD was around!

It was, but it was in legal limbo.

Linux also had a very clear story for access to source code and a clear structure for accepting/rejecting contributions.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#103

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

miohtama wrote: post #64

Assuming most (not all) vulnerabilities are C-style use after free and buffer overflows. If kernel were written in Rust these vulnerabilities would not be issues? Meaning microkernels only make sense in C world. What am I missing?

As you implicitly note yourself; even if "most (not all) vulnerabilities are C-style use after free and buffer overflows" - well, if you reasonably can do something to defend against the things that aren't memory issues, then that will catch those. Also, even Rust lets you use "unsafe" code, and an OS will probably contain some; even if it's minimal, even if it's reviewed, you want any extra protections that you can get.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#104

Post by jcun4128 » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

Hmm I was looking at this expecting GUI screenshots, but interesting non-the less/beyond me my scope at this time but neat to read about.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#105

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #101

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BeOS "reimplementation" is called Haiku. It is a pretty remarkably mature project, though unfortunately not what I'm looking for in a new OS personally. The reason we don't see new OSs is pretty simple: there is entirely too much hardware you have to accommodate to be usable. There are klocs of actual kernel code in Linux, and Mlocs of driver code.

I think the answer is to have device drivers implemented as part of device firmware.

Oh, like UEFI or openfirmware drivers? That's... a pretty neat idea, actually. That would lower the barrier to entry, certainly. About the only issue I see is then trusting those drivers (I don't really trust hardware mfgs, and you'd have to update them somehow), but that seems doable.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#106

Post by yjftsjthsd-h » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

sk0g wrote: post #33

est31 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought they were switching most of the kernel and drivers to Rust, for some reason. Note that zircon itself is not allowed to contain any Rust [0]. It's not exactly specified what they mean by the kernel, but it seems that this includes not just the microkernel but also everything that lives in the zircon top level directory, which is enough to boot the system. tokei says there is not a single line of Rust in th…

I wonder what the ratio of C:C++ is. Sounds like they're using C as a restricted C++ anyway, which is interesting.

I know what it means to use C++ as a nicer C, but what does it mean to use C as a restricted C++?

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#107

Post by jhoechtl » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

kyaghmour wrote: post #4

This 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…

Linux won because of Steve Ballmer trying to torpede it in any conceivable manner. Those brave people contributing to and using into developed a kind of Robin Hood mentality.

Without a hate figure like Steve Ballmer net relative momentum will decline. It just happens that so many other big players joined the band wagon and contribute, that you don't notice that relative decline.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#108

Post by atombender » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #100

atombender wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

True!

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#109

Post by sterlind » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

dlojudice wrote: post #24

pier25 wrote: post #15

A couple of years ago it was believed that Fuchsia would replace Android and ChromeOS. Then, IIRC, it was said in a Google IO that it was just some sort of experiment to test new OS ideas. What do you think is Google's masterplan for Fuchsia?

I believe the idea behind could be the same for Mindori project inside Microsoft years ago: "Midori was a research/incubation project to explore ways of innovating throughout Microsoft’s software stack. This spanned all aspects, including the programming language, compilers, OS, its services, applications, and the overall programming models. We had a heavy bias towards cloud, concurrency, and safety. The project incl…

It never shipped. A lot of beautiful code and proven concepts, and it just got tossed in the dustbin.

Hopefully Fuchsia doesn't succumb to the same second-system effect.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#110

Post by pier25 » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 5:38 PM UTC

nightowl_games wrote: post #85

pier25 wrote: post #15

A couple of years ago it was believed that Fuchsia would replace Android and ChromeOS. Then, IIRC, it was said in a Google IO that it was just some sort of experiment to test new OS ideas. What do you think is Google's masterplan for Fuchsia?

> What do you think is Google's masterplan for Fuchsia? I think they made it pretty clear that Fuchsia is not "an experiment to test new OS ideas". https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts Specifically: > Fuchsia's goal is to power production devices and products used for business-critical applications. As such, Fuchsia is not a playground for experimental operating system concepts. Instead, the platform roadmap is d…

Thanks for the info.

This totally contradicts what was said at Google IO's main keynote. Unless I'm remembering this wrong...