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Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

9to5google.com

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Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#121

Post by hutzlibu »

kerneis wrote: post #69
Grazester wrote: post #63

I came here for a technical discussion about Fuchsia and it's microkernel approach instead this is mostly fill with complains about Google as a company. Is there a social justice forum I can visit where I may be able to have a technical discussion about Fuchsia?

For what it's worth, a few Google engineers are hanging around so if you have any specific technical question I think we'd be glad to answer it :-)

Could you say something, how the kernel is different from linux for example? Why would I want to choose Fuchsia for a smartphone, for example. Where is the advantage?

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#122

Post by raptor99 »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #96
piokoch wrote: post #2

10 years ago I would be really excited, as I could expect some groundbreaking tech like search engine or revolutionary approach to something, like Gmail (no ads sent to users, great UI, hige disk space). Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from…

I'm so done with this smart home stuff. "Alexa, turn on Living Room." "I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding now." I mean, yeah, I can toggle the light switch to get it to turn on, but then it gets screwed up and I need to go into the app to reset it when the internet comes back on. I don't even want to think about a smart thermostat. My dumb thermostat from 10 years ago let's me set timers which is all I reall…

Check out Home Assistant. Not sure how well voice controls work with it but my automation is flawless so far. Really seems to help using local only open source firmware where I can and Zigbee for any sensors that aren't hard wired in (mostly for battery efficiency.)

I just read yesterday that Home Assistant is now automatically included in Raspian (Raspberry Pi targeted OS). I run my home and shop automation on Pi's but ultimately a NUC is probably a better long term solution.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#123

Post by luma »

Semaphor wrote: post #105
DebtDeflation wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so done with this smart home stuff. "Alexa, turn on Living Room." "I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding now." I mean, yeah, I can toggle the light switch to get it to turn on, but then it gets screwed up and I need to go into the app to reset it when the internet comes back on. I don't even want to think about a smart thermostat. My dumb thermostat from 10 years ago let's me set timers which is all I reall…

You don’t want a remote-controlled smart (actually: dumb) home. You want a fully local solution, then you can add remote, internet-dependent functionality like alexa to it. That way your primary mode of control will always work.

Agreed. I'll add to that a healthy application of the Principle of Least Astonishment. If you have a light, there should be an obvious light switch nearby that turns the light on and off, and does so even if your home automation system is offline for whatever reason.

"Smart" devices should, wherever possible, function as dumb devices if for whatever reason they can't be smart. There are a whole lot of devices that simply become bricks.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#124

Post by toyg »

Semaphor wrote: post #105
DebtDeflation wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so done with this smart home stuff. "Alexa, turn on Living Room." "I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding now." I mean, yeah, I can toggle the light switch to get it to turn on, but then it gets screwed up and I need to go into the app to reset it when the internet comes back on. I don't even want to think about a smart thermostat. My dumb thermostat from 10 years ago let's me set timers which is all I reall…

You don’t want a remote-controlled smart (actually: dumb) home. You want a fully local solution, then you can add remote, internet-dependent functionality like alexa to it. That way your primary mode of control will always work.

This is how the Honeywell stuff seems to work, at least for my thermostat. As long as there is some local wifi, thermostat and controlling unit will work, even if you cannot contact them from the internet.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#125

Post by luma »

IntelMiner wrote: post #13
piokoch wrote: post #2

10 years ago I would be really excited, as I could expect some groundbreaking tech like search engine or revolutionary approach to something, like Gmail (no ads sent to users, great UI, hige disk space). Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from…

To add to the pot of cynics I wonder how much of it is driven to supplant Linux's "viral" GPL-ness

It may also have been a play to remove Java as a fundamental requirement due to their experience with Oracle and Android.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#126

Post by tapoxi »

criddell wrote: post #103

What problem does Fuchsia solve? Google already has at least three other operating systems to use. On the other hand, Google has never seemed particularly shy about starting something new rather than work on something old. I'm thinking of their messaging systems that they start every couple of years. Also, the branding isn't great. The top image in the linked story immediately makes me think this has something to do…

It's capability based, so instead of this weird hodgepodge we have in the Linux world that resulted in Docker containers it's natively a part of the OS design.

Also its not GPL, so we will see actual binary drivers instead of GPL proprietary shims in Linux that need to be recompiled on kernel upgrade.

So it solves a lot of problems for Google and can replace Android/Chrome OS/Cast OS.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#127

Post by tmerc »

hibbelig wrote: post #108
ryukafalz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if I buy a device that runs Fuchsia (say, this Nest Hub), is enough of Fuchsia FOSS that I can run my own copy of it with e.g. a different UI and without Google services? This is true of Android devices by necessity as the kernel is GPL (bootloader locking aside); is it true of Fuchsia devices? As for bootloader locking, Google releases some Android devices with unlockable bootloaders. Can we expect the same of F…

Are unlockable bootloaders bootloaders that cannot be locked, or bootloaders that can be unlocked? Not a native speaker. Hm. I think it is about bootloaders that can be unlocked.

In this case, unlockable means it can be unlocked. As a native American English speaker, I have not seen unlockable used as "cannot be locked", but both definitions are in the Oxford dictionary. If I understand correctly, a locked bootloader prevents you from installing a different OS or rooting a device you might "own".

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#128

Post by scoutt »

Google234 wrote: post #7
wikibob wrote: post #5

A big success for Rust in the wild

I’m 99% sure it’s mostly C and C++

Being these two the most important functions [1], [2].

The rest is merely overhead :)

[1] https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/z...

[2] https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/z...

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#129

Post by kerneis »

ryukafalz wrote: post #91
kerneis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuchsia, like Chrome, has been open-source for years, and all commits and reviews as well as the bug tracker are public. It is a very different model from how Android releases work. (Disclaimer: I work on Fuchsia at Google.)

So, if I buy a device that runs Fuchsia (say, this Nest Hub), is enough of Fuchsia FOSS that I can run my own copy of it with e.g. a different UI and without Google services? This is true of Android devices by necessity as the kernel is GPL (bootloader locking aside); is it true of Fuchsia devices? As for bootloader locking, Google releases some Android devices with unlockable bootloaders. Can we expect the same of F…

There are several parts to your question, let me try and answer each of them as I understand them.

Fuchsia is built with a minimal core (sometimes called a microkernel) and many user-space services interacting with each other over an IPC protocol (called FIDL). The open-source part of Fuchsia, available on fuchsia.dev, is a standalone system which you can build and run on supported architectures. It contains all the services required to start a user interface, interact with the network, etc. Currently, the main supported hardware architecture for people wanting to build their own version of Fuchsia is the Intel NUC: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/hardware/intel_n....

For a retail devices, such as the Nest Hub, vendors can build a custom system with additional or different services from what is found in the open-source release. Thanks to stability of the FIDL interfaces, those closed-source services do not prevent the core system from being updated. For more information on services and packages, you can read https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/software_model and the pages linked from it.

Some of those services are drivers; others may be in charge of communicating with Google Services or customizing the UI; and not all of them are necessarily open-source. So if you wanted to build your own version of Fuchsia for a Nest Hub, you'd need to replace the closed-source components. As far as the Nest Hub is concerned, I'm not sure what the exact status is. I believe a significant part of the drivers have been developed in the open (which is how 9to5google was able to guess in the past that we would be targeting this platform), but take this with a grain of salt, I didn't work on drivers. The part that interacts with Google Services is closed source. I'm not sure this is much different from the situation with Android: not all drivers or UI used on Android devices are open source, are they?

Finally, as you note, the bootloader can be locked on retail devices, preventing you from reflashing the system with your own build unless it is signed by an authorized key (mostly for security reasons, as far as I understand it). This is a product decision that is not related to Fuchsia itself, it depends on each manufacturer. I don't think it has ever been supported to reflash a Nest Hub, and the migration to Fuchsia shouldn't change that.

Re: Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

#130

Post by toyg »

dkersten wrote: post #71
piokoch wrote: post #2

10 years ago I would be really excited, as I could expect some groundbreaking tech like search engine or revolutionary approach to something, like Gmail (no ads sent to users, great UI, hige disk space). Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from…

Don’t worry, they’ll abandon it in a year or two because not enough people use it.

Nah, it's an hardware-related project, so it will get entrenched even if it's fundamentally different from other hardware-related Google projects.

Eventually you'll be able to buy Google devices that run Android, Google devices that run ChromeOS, and Google devices that run Fuchsia. It will be confusing, but that's fine, because it will all work great as long as you stick to Google's cloud-based services, which is what really matters.

Directly or indirectly, OS fragmentation actually helps Google's business model.

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