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

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

#171

Post by lacksconfidence »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #167
jeffbee wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the cause of this phenomenon is that most HN readers are not qualified to comment on Fuchsia, are ignorant of any and all facts about it, but are also compelled to comment. So you get this thread, and most threads here. Actual technical exchange between people who are both not obviously wrong is rare here.

Googlers thinking non-Googlers are unqualified to comment on anything seems like a fairly common theme to me. I really wonder what caused this kind of ideological entitlement. Was it a company culture that never said "no"? Was it the constant talk of how Googlers are just smarter and more brilliant than everyone else? Genuinely curious.

It was the part where people decided to ignore what was actually being presented, and instead derailed every possible conversation about google into their predetermined track. Not you specifically, but this entire fuschia thread.

What is someone to think when every time their work is presented publicly the comments are all completed unrelated to what was presented? You too would conclude that group is unlikely to present meaningful feedback or thoughts.

(I have never, and will never, work for google).

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

#173

Post by lghh »

macspoofing wrote: post #158
lghh wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I have a conscience.

A little hyperbolic, don't you think? If you're writing Fuchsia OS, then you don't a conscience?

That's clearly not what I said. I was responding directly to my parent comment which said we should try to separate a work from the context in which it operates. It was not a value statement on Fuchsia OS, anyone who worked on it, or anyone on Google. It was simply a statement on separating work from the context in which it operates.

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

#174

Post by ziml77 »

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…

It sucks. They tried to pull me into the walled garden by ending Works With Nest and I still hate that I had to change to a different solution. The Nest thermostats are great, but having to go through the internet for any automation sucks.

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

#175

Post by rejectedandsad »

lacksconfidence wrote: post #171
rejectedandsad wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googlers thinking non-Googlers are unqualified to comment on anything seems like a fairly common theme to me. I really wonder what caused this kind of ideological entitlement. Was it a company culture that never said "no"? Was it the constant talk of how Googlers are just smarter and more brilliant than everyone else? Genuinely curious.

It was the part where people decided to ignore what was actually being presented, and instead derailed every possible conversation about google into their predetermined track. Not you specifically, but this entire fuschia thread. What is someone to think when every time their work is presented publicly the comments are all completed unrelated to what was presented? You too would conclude that group is unlikely to pre…

I agree, actually, but that's fundamentally different from saying people aren't "qualified".

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

#176

Post by unionpivo »

lacksconfidence wrote: post #168
unionpivo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Because, I don't want for it to be good, because its Google, but it probably is." That's what I have going in my mind and it's going to color any of my opinions on it, no matter how how objective I try to be. So I think It's important to discuss this openly, so we know where we are at. Looks like there is a growing minority of tech people who distrust Google and I am among them.

Minority? I feel like i can't read anything about google on HN without half the converstion being unrelated to the technology and strictly related to ads. The minority are the people that think "wow cool, another new shiny toy to investigate!".

HN is minority of tech people, and even on HN not everyone share same opinion, I doubt it's even 50%.

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

#177

Post by hollerith »

vbsteven wrote: post #45

What is interesting about Fuchsia is how Google first created Flutter and made it popular for Android/iOS and to a lesser extent the web. And now they start releasing Fuchsia OS/devices and developing apps/software for it will immediately feel familiar to many mobile developers. This could help adoption instead of yet another GUI framework to learn from scratch.

Similarly, free software running on proprietary Unix OSes became (during the years 1983 through 1991) very popular before any free Unix kernel started getting traction.

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

#178

Post by sanxiyn »

loudmax wrote: post #138
Google234 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no other micro kernel OS being developed with similar effort.

There is seL4: https://sel4.systems/ The resources going into seL4 appear to be nowhere near "similar effort" to what Google is putting into Fuchsia, but it is a legitimate alternative.

Sadly CSIRO axed entire seL4 team, "to focus on AI".

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

#179

Post by kerneis »

hutzlibu wrote: post #121
kerneis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The key concepts are documented here: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts

Some things that Fuchsia was able to do thanks to starting from scratch:

- The system is based on capabilities, a security model which is based on explicit tracking of permissions. It wouldn't be possible to change Linux to be capability-based because the ambiant-authority model has been used pervasively since it was conceived 30 years ago.

- Fuchsia provides a stable binary interface (like Windows, but unlike Linux). This lets you update your system while keeping some components unchanged, eg. binary drivers from a hardware manufacturer that wouldn't provide updates for them anymore. I think Linux could technically change this, but they have historically been unwilling to, and it is unlikely to change in the future.

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

#180

Post by ryukafalz »

kerneis wrote: post #129
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…

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…

Thanks, this is useful information.

> 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.

This is helpful so long as the interface does not change; do you anticipate ever having to change it or do you think it's pretty final at this point?

Regarding drivers, it's interesting that they're userspace services interacting with the rest of the system via IPC. Are there any sort of security guarantees to protect against malicious services? (Obviously a proprietary driver could do its job incorrectly, but if they can't otherwise mess with other parts of the system that's helpful.) EDIT: I suspect that as it's a capability-based system, there is a decent amount of isolation between drivers and the rest of the system, but I just want to be sure.

> 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?

Regarding Android drivers: my understanding is they sometimes do have proprietary userspace components. Any kernel-side components are necessarily FOSS however, as they are derivative of the Linux kernel and therefore GPL. (This doesn't mean that they're always easy to use though, as manufacturers seldom upstream them and the Linux kernel is a huge project.)

On the Android UI, you're correct; most often the UI on an Android phone is not FOSS. I suspect this is because, as that part of Android is permissively licensed, the device vendors don't have to release it. So they don't.

I've had mixed feelings with Fuchsia from a licensing perspective for that reason. On one hand, having a stable interface might make it easier to deal with proprietary drivers, provided that interface is locked in amber and never changes. On the other hand, Fuchsia's permissive licensing makes it more likely that manufacturers will make all their drivers proprietary, because they clearly do whenever they can. (At least the ARM vendors do; the x86 vendors seem to be a lot more open to working in public.)

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