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Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

blog.quarkslab.com

241–250 of 285 posts

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#241
post #209

Earlier 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.

I'm really enjoying ChromeOS for software dev. The Linux container is tightly integrated with the rest of the OS. On top of that I can run all my favorite Android apps as well, making it an excellent OS for personal use. One interesting example is that if I have a file I want to open, it doesn't matter if it's Chrome, Android, or Linux that has the executable to open it. I just click the file and it opens in the righ…

Ok, but the Linux container is completely at odds with Google's ChromeOS pitch.

Google says that ChromeOS has "simple setup" - but not the Linux parts. They say you can "search anything on your Chromebook" - but not Linux. They talk about "Chrome sync" - doesn't apply to Linux. Etc.

I think that ChromeOS has value as a web-browser host, and also as a development machine for vim-jockeys. What's missing is the middle part: a real desktop OS.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#242

Earlier 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.

Another data point: I was an intern at Google last year and they gave most of the interns Pixelbooks. It worked fine for development (granted, development consisted of SSHing into a dev box and using a web-based IDE).

ChromeOS is not compiled on those Pixelbooks.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another data point: I was an intern at Google last year and they gave most of the interns Pixelbooks. It worked fine for development (granted, development consisted of SSHing into a dev box and using a web-based IDE).

ChromeOS is not compiled on those Pixelbooks.

While true, it's equally true that chrome os usually isn't compiled on Google employees Linux workstations either.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Desktop environment that matches or surpasses Mac OS in quality, performance and UX design. Is there any evidence google can pull this off or wants to? I’d think they would want you in a browser.

I’d think they’d want you looking at ads.

No idea why you were downvoted, this clearly contributes to conversation.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#245
post #33
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.

As of commit cb20372465f875ff4fbf2a04f0951430207f7b7a, according to tokei, in all of fuchsia there are 792k lines of C, 880k lines of C header, 1.711M lines of C++, 10k lines of C++ header, and 2.585M lines of Rust. In the zircon subdir, there are 569k lines of C, 300k lines of C header and 473k lines of C++.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#246
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don't need to turn on dev mode and use crouton to install a chroot for Linux anymore?

No, it's as simple as "Turn On Linux" in your Settings menu

Let me guess, the user cannot "Turn on Linux" in developer mode, the user must "sign in" with Google.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another data point: I was an intern at Google last year and they gave most of the interns Pixelbooks. It worked fine for development (granted, development consisted of SSHing into a dev box and using a web-based IDE).

ChromeOS is not compiled on those Pixelbooks.

You don't think _Google_ has the resources for a proper build server? They're not doing builds on a dev machine anyway.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#248
post #74

Earlier 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.

Actually many engineers use chrome OS at google. Perhaps even a majority.

What makes it work is that everything you could possibly want to run either runs in the browser or in a remote machine.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#249
post #74

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…

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…

The problem with Chrome OS is that it's designed around treating your hardware like a kiosk. This is evident from design decisions like including an SSH console, but then disabling the escape sequences (see: https://codereview.chromium.org/5183004/).

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#250

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…

KDE does most of what you're talking about. Qt is a stable, established SDK, KDE Connect offers seamless integration, Plasma has a very good UX, and so on. Only thing missing is market share and a flagship distro.
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