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The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

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Re: The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

#21

Post by izacus »

petra wrote: post #15
cbhl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Control is all of it. Security on Android is a joke for 80%+ of users. They can't run on the latest version of Android, because various vendors' drivers are in out-of-tree kernel patches that are un-upstreamable for non-technical reasons. (By comparison, Chrome OS is also Linux-based, but, IIRC, it requires all shipping devices to have drivers upstreamed.) Owning an OS with a stable device driver ABI would allow Goog…

Wouldn't treble fix the Android fragmentation problem ? Why is this needed/better ?

It doesn't fix the underlying problem: kernel and drivers are still not updatable and will keep having security issues.

Re: The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

#22

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

cbhl wrote: post #9
jkmcf wrote: post #2

Aside from control, what does this provide over Linux? IMO, the Linux desktop problem is due partially to relying on the antiquated X Windows system, but mostly a lack of funding a good vision, e.g. Unity. After growing up with OpenLook, then Motif, the plethora of Linux window managers, and unhappy years with Windows, I noticed most of the elegant apps were being written for OSX. I’m not sure how much of this is due…

Control is all of it. Security on Android is a joke for 80%+ of users. They can't run on the latest version of Android, because various vendors' drivers are in out-of-tree kernel patches that are un-upstreamable for non-technical reasons. (By comparison, Chrome OS is also Linux-based, but, IIRC, it requires all shipping devices to have drivers upstreamed.) Owning an OS with a stable device driver ABI would allow Goog…

> un-upstreamable for non-technical reasons

It was my understanding that it was almost completely technical reason, i.e., vendors write drivers that mostly work but are completely terrible from a quality perspective.

Re: The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

#23

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

mamon wrote: post #16
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One feature that differentiates Linux from other systems is the sheer amount of choice that you get. For example, with Linux I can choose GNOME, KDE, a selection of other desktop environments, or I can choose a simple window manager like twm and sort of roll my own environment. Or maybe I could set my system up so that it runs without a window manager and just gives me a full-screen emacs environment. With Mac OS, fo…

This wide choice is actually putting Linux at disadvantage: instead of consolidating efforts to create one decent desktop environment we have half a dozen of half-assed ones. God, I've just recently have to downgrade to Gnome 3.24, because the latest 3.26 version kept crashing with the segfault error few times a day.

Do you not see the contradiction here? If there was only GNOME, then you'd be stuck with GNOME's failings (whether obvious bugs like segfaults, or more subjective failures like their attempts to kill tray icons). Choice and diversity are the strength of *nix.

Re: The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

#24

Post by blablabla123 »

jkmcf wrote: post #2

Aside from control, what does this provide over Linux? IMO, the Linux desktop problem is due partially to relying on the antiquated X Windows system, but mostly a lack of funding a good vision, e.g. Unity. After growing up with OpenLook, then Motif, the plethora of Linux window managers, and unhappy years with Windows, I noticed most of the elegant apps were being written for OSX. I’m not sure how much of this is due…

The Linux distributors might be able to solve this. Obviously there are tons of Window managers and a dozen of consistent, working Desktop Environments. Ubuntu already made clear that they are moving away from X and moreover that a better UX on the WM part will be a priority.

I use Linux again since this year after working almost only on OS X for 5 years or so. It has been more setup work than I wished but I'm really satisfied now. OS X just lacks the transparency and customizability that Linux easily provides.

Not sure how Fuchsia will evolve. There are more Operating Systems than Window Managers. But only 2 Operating Systems with good driver support. Their names are Linux and Windows - OS X runs only on a handful of configurations. Android's Hardware support is a mess.

Either they will support running Linux or Android drivers, or otherwise their system will be just useful for Marketing demos.

> something like a native Electron minus the memory and CPU overhead

I guess this is exactly what Chrome OS does. Or just use Firefox/Chrome on Linux. At least Firefox still has a working Marketplace...

Re: The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

#25

Post by aphextron »

jkmcf wrote: post #2

Aside from control, what does this provide over Linux? IMO, the Linux desktop problem is due partially to relying on the antiquated X Windows system, but mostly a lack of funding a good vision, e.g. Unity. After growing up with OpenLook, then Motif, the plethora of Linux window managers, and unhappy years with Windows, I noticed most of the elegant apps were being written for OSX. I’m not sure how much of this is due…

>The solution I want is a Linux OS, a WM with a good, cohesive, long term vision, and an easy way to build apps within at vision — something like a native Electron minus the memory and CPU overhead. I believe Google could do this.

This is literally MacOS/Cocoa/AppKit minus Linux plus BSD

Re: The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

#26

Post by Someone1234 »

petra wrote: post #15
cbhl wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Control is all of it. Security on Android is a joke for 80%+ of users. They can't run on the latest version of Android, because various vendors' drivers are in out-of-tree kernel patches that are un-upstreamable for non-technical reasons. (By comparison, Chrome OS is also Linux-based, but, IIRC, it requires all shipping devices to have drivers upstreamed.) Owning an OS with a stable device driver ABI would allow Goog…

Wouldn't treble fix the Android fragmentation problem ? Why is this needed/better ?

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Treble attempts to fix fragmentation by re-standardizing and more loosely coupling between the driver layer and system APIs. We won't know if this is a solution until later and this XKCD[0] kind of explains why.

This is a real time OS from the ground up. Some have SPECULATED it might be run in a VM/container rather than directly on hardware, effectively further standardizing in a similar way to Treble but via a virtual machine's interface instead of a series of system APIs.

That would allow Google to ship Fuchsia VM/container images that could run in every single handset no matter the hardware, and therefore every Android device could be updated directly by Google at the same time.

Meaning Fuchsia may not replace Linux, it might run above Linux and therefore above Treble. That's why the two aren't mutually exclusive.

PS - This is how Microsoft's XBox One platform is engineered currently.

[0] https://xkcd.com/927/

Re: The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

#27

Post by aceofspad3s »

krylon wrote: post #7
aceofspad3s wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a microkernel just pushes the vulnerabilities to the userspace.

Yes. That is part of the idea. So the vulnerability is isolated and does not automatically compromise the entire system.

Who cares? In consumer devices, userspace is the entire system.

Re: The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

#28

Post by aphextron »

ricardobeat wrote: post #13
jkmcf wrote: post #2

Aside from control, what does this provide over Linux? IMO, the Linux desktop problem is due partially to relying on the antiquated X Windows system, but mostly a lack of funding a good vision, e.g. Unity. After growing up with OpenLook, then Motif, the plethora of Linux window managers, and unhappy years with Windows, I noticed most of the elegant apps were being written for OSX. I’m not sure how much of this is due…

Elementary is the OS you're looking for: https://elementary.io I wish it had more adoption. Right now there are not a lot of apps written using it's UI guidelines/framework as most projects are worried about portability and/or have moved to Electron. It is slowly getting better though, and seems to be developing an ecosystem geared towards quality as OSX used to be: https://medium.com/elementaryos/appcenter-spotlight…

I really wanted to love Elementary. But the UI lag and general clunkiness compared to OSX is just too much for me. I think the world can only benefit from new operating systems completely free of Linux influence.

Re: The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

#29

Post by blablabla123 »

Shoothe wrote: post #11
krylon wrote: post #10

I wish Google was more outspoken about their plans for Fuchsia. So far, all we have is a lot of speculation.

I think they don't know themselves what will become of it. It's more a research project similarly to Midori.

Yes, and there are tons of research OSs. Most of them suffer from a lack of Hardware support. I'd be ready to switch to OpenBSD/Solaris/QNX/other fancy OS tomorrow if all my HW components were supported.

I doubt anything non-Linux based is ever becoming popular within the next 100 years. ;)

Re: The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS

#30

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #23
mamon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wide choice is actually putting Linux at disadvantage: instead of consolidating efforts to create one decent desktop environment we have half a dozen of half-assed ones. God, I've just recently have to downgrade to Gnome 3.24, because the latest 3.26 version kept crashing with the segfault error few times a day.

Do you not see the contradiction here? If there was only GNOME, then you'd be stuck with GNOME's failings (whether obvious bugs like segfaults, or more subjective failures like their attempts to kill tray icons). Choice and diversity are the strength of *nix.

I think what they were getting at is that instead of the community developing one really great desktop environment they have divided themselves and ended up developing two desktop environments that are merely OK.
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