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Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

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Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#111

Post by krn »

RivieraKid wrote: post #97
krn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)?

> But that would basically make it an awkward Linux distribution that doesn't have much benefits over the existing ones.

The main benefits of Chrome OS are immutability and zero-maintenance.

If Chrome OS added a native support for flatpak[1], it would cover most of the desktop use cases without losing any of its benefits.

[1] https://flatpak.org/

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#112

Post by teho »

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

This keeps getting repeated, but I don’t understand how that would lead to it being the most popular OS there is. There is way more embedded systems than there is Intel CPUs on the market and they often run Linux. Android phones are sold more than four times the amount of PCs a year. I’d assume that most Intel CPUs are deployed in the data centers... that run Linux.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#113

Post by kakwa_ »

dekhn wrote: post #81
johannes1234321 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That also would have been true for BSD. Linux probably also had good timing while the Unix wars were fought.

Yep. I remember choosing Linux in '93 because it had a huge momentum behind it (the hacker literally asked me "Linux or BSD" before handing me 4 floppies). I didn't really understand the technical or legal differences at the time, but it was clear that BSD wasn't as "hot". In retrospect I really liked BSD for a lot of the ways it did things (more stable, excellent long-term backwards compatibility).

If I recall correctly, at the time, BSD was stuck in a lawsuit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_Inc.....

I'm wondering if it had a detrimental effect on adoption of *BSD, and thus increased Linux popularity at this early and critical time.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#114

Post by Novukus »

sterlind wrote: post #109
dlojudice wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

It doesn't sound it was ever planned to be shipped? It was for experimentation, research and development. And some of that work made its way into Windows. Seems like a success to me.

edit:

> Midori was the code name for a managed code operating system being developed by Microsoft with joint effort of Microsoft Research. It had been reported[2][3] to be a possible commercial implementation of the Singularity operating system, a research project started in 2003 to build a highly dependable operating system in which the kernel, device drivers, and applications are all written in managed code. It was designed for concurrency, and could run a program spread across multiple nodes at once.[4] It also featured a security model that sandboxes applications for increased security.[5] Microsoft had mapped out several possible migration paths from Windows to Midori.[6] The operating system was discontinued some time in 2015, though many of its concepts were rolled into other Microsoft projects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system)

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#115

Post by zucker42 »

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

There are far more phones than desktops, and far more desktops than servers, so I doubt it. Especially if you count by OS instance (counting VMs) rather than by machine.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#116

Post by giantrobot »

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.

That becomes extremely problematic as a lot of devices anymore ship with bare minimum firmware to turn themselves on and require the host to upload firmware to actually work. The "drivers" on disk are then the modules required by the OS and a big blob of firmware.

Other times devices are just a thin PHY interface and all of the work is done in software inside the driver. There's nothing on the device to even run onboard firmware.

So many devices can't store their own drivers for the host to use, let alone store drivers for multiple operating systems.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#117

Post by panpanna »

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…

I agree with you on the first part: Linux's best weapon is its community and strong leadership.

But in my opinion, the second most important feature of Linux is in fact its ability to change large parts of the kernel when and if needed. And do it very very quickly.

And this something microkernels cannot do. They are just slower when doing major changes that touch many parts of there OS.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#118

Post by brmgb »

jhoechtl wrote: post #107
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.

No, when Ballmer decided to torpedo Linux, it was starting to make inroads into the server markets. Momentum had been there for some times already.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#119

Post by atombender »

teho wrote: post #112
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

This keeps getting repeated, but I don’t understand how that would lead to it being the most popular OS there is. There is way more embedded systems than there is Intel CPUs on the market and they often run Linux. Android phones are sold more than four times the amount of PCs a year. I’d assume that most Intel CPUs are deployed in the data centers... that run Linux.

But they said "widely deployed", not "popular". No one is claiming Minix is the most popular OS in the world.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#120

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

RivieraKid wrote: post #57

I'm more excited about the possibility of a high quality desktop OS rather than the kernel. The Linux kernel is great but a great open-source desktop OS doesn't exist today. Specifically, this product doesn't exist today: - Desktop environment that matches or surpasses Mac OS in quality, performance and UX design. - It includes seamless synchronization between devices. - Apps are sandboxed, similarly to Android or iO…

Hear hear. It seems to me that any such effort either has to be built on the Linux kernel (forgoing much of the horrid userland) or rely on a something like Fuchsia that's backed by a large corporate entity becoming so widely used as to have significant driver buy-in from hardware manufacturers.

Unfortunately, I don't believe that relying on a for-profit third party entity like Google is a good idea due to the conflict of interest, even if their OS is FOSS. Just look at what Google has done throwing its weight around as the big-man in browsers, even though the browser engine is FOSS.

Incidentally, this might be of interest to you:

https://github.com/probonopd/hello

Not much there yet, but I believe Probonopd's intent is to gather a community of people like ourselves.

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