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Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

blog.quarkslab.com

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Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#141

Post by StreamBright »

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…

> I don't understand why Google hasn't done this yet

What would be the financial incentive?

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#142

Post by idoby »

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…

If something works in your Android dev environment, it is absolutely not guaranteed to work everywhere, or work the same everywhere. Differences exist between vendors, and every between different models by the same vendor.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#143

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #27
logicprog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would that really ever happen? Microsoft - a company so dominant it got an antitrust lawsuit - hasn't even been able to get 90% of the market share. No operating system since the very early days of computing has. Not only that, but other older operating systems are always going to have an advantage here anyway: they'll have support, ecosystems, documentation, and people with years of experience with them. Google isn'…

87% of the market is a monopoly by any legal definition.

The legal definition mentions market share? I find that hard to believe.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#144

Post by mav3rick »

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)?

Linux Files and Apps are first party citizens in the OS. They appear in all menus and settings. You'd develop apps as usual for a Debian distribution. Nothing needs to change.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#145

Post by Koshkin »

giantrobot wrote: post #116
Koshkin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 onbo…

So the idea is similar to the one at the base of (the original) OpenGL, i.e. that of a hardware API that can be used by any OS.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#146

Post by tomjakubowski »

earthboundkid wrote: post #77
apozem wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bloomberg, 2018: > One person who has spoken to Fuchsia staff described the effort simply: "It’s a senior-engineer retention project." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-19/google-te... Fuchsia’s greatest value is letting senior devs solve fun puzzles without the burden of shipping anything customers want.

Traditionally, large money-making companies liked having big, obvious loss areas, so that when the hard times come, they can just cut that and restore the illusion of growth on Wall Street. It only buys you a couple of quarters of fake growth, but for Wall Street, that's often enough.

Ah, the corporate Speed-Up Loop.

https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#147

Post by quicklime »

cycloptic wrote: post #127
quicklime wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>binary-only drivers If by this you're referring to their promises of a stable driver ABI, I can't understand what problem this is supposed to solve compared to Linux. There are plenty of binary drivers already shipped on Linux. IOT device vendors don't care about a stable ABI because they just pin to their kernel version. Android device vendors don't care because either way they will stop updating their kernels afte…

> Android device vendors don't care because either way they will stop updating their kernels after a number of years

This one seems like a big problem to me. Maybe the handset manufacturer doesn’t care because they already made their profit, but this pushes the support burden onto app developers (including Google itself) who have to maintain support for these old Android devices that the manufacturers don’t care about.

This seems like a real issue to me, is there something I’m missing?

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#148

Post by CountSessine »

close04 wrote: post #134
geodel wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the one side you have Samsung, who are unhappy enough with their dependence on Google that they'll not likely eat the cost of moving from Android to something else... Strange argument. Maybe they will move all their devices to their own superior OS Tizen. Or maybe they tried and it did not turn out very well. So whichever side Samsung is it does not affect Google. There are many phone makers not that many phone…

> Maybe they will move all their devices to their own superior OS Tizen. Or maybe they tried and it did not turn out very well. Google (via the Open Handset Alliance) managed to enforce the current status quo. Manufacturers can't simultaneously ship their own OS like forked versions of Android, or presumably Tizen, and still be allowed to use Google Play Services. It's all-Google or nothing. I don't know whether Tize…

Samsung has 20% of the market and a lot more of the high end market. Going with "not Google" means a lot of users no longer using Google Play Store and services. It most certainly would "affect" Google.

It’s a game of chicken and one Samsung can’t win, but Google probably doesn’t want to inflict on them. Look at how well Huawei is doing outside China without google services (they’re dead in the water). Samsung doesn’t want that and can’t build an app ecosystem on their own. If Google pulls them and android and more importantly the android SDKs and dev tools toward Fuschia, I guarantee you that Samsung will follow.

At the same time I think Google would be foolish to intentionally antagonize one of their most successful partners. If Samsung’s bungled reaction was to try to go it alone with Tizen or hold out upgrading their phones to a new android, it only helps Apple and iOS, and that’s the last thing google wants.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#149

Post by cycloptic »

quicklime wrote: post #147
cycloptic wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>binary-only drivers If by this you're referring to their promises of a stable driver ABI, I can't understand what problem this is supposed to solve compared to Linux. There are plenty of binary drivers already shipped on Linux. IOT device vendors don't care about a stable ABI because they just pin to their kernel version. Android device vendors don't care because either way they will stop updating their kernels afte…

> Android device vendors don't care because either way they will stop updating their kernels after a number of years This one seems like a big problem to me. Maybe the handset manufacturer doesn’t care because they already made their profit, but this pushes the support burden onto app developers (including Google itself) who have to maintain support for these old Android devices that the manufacturers don’t care abou…

I agree that is a real issue. By my point is that the proposed solution is now that Google itself is now going to have to maintain support for old Fuschia devices because the burden is now on them to maintain this stable ABI. How is this going to solve anything compared to just making a support promise about a particular Linux version? Nothing here seems like it would improve for the app developers.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#150

Post by themacguffinman »

ForHackernews wrote: post #71
justaguyhere wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Google will take a bit out of Windows marketshare? It really sucks that we only have three options now - windows, mac and Linux. Two of these are owned by mega corps and the last one isn't as user friendly as the others

So is a world with 4 options, 3 owned by megacorps, that much better? I guess you could argue competition is always good for consumers, but it starts to just be an oligopoly rather than real competition.

No one except megacorps is going to build and maintain any alternative. Yes, it'd be much better than maintaining the status quo where the two user-friendly operating systems are either hardware-locked or riddled with bugs, vulnerabilities, and Candy Crush.
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