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Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers [video]

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Re: Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers [video]

#21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's technically a general-purpose OS. They had a workstation build target sometime ago which was used for the desktop use-case. They've shipped only for an IoT device so far (Google Nest Hub). Main goal would be to replace the core of AOSP considering the main work that's being done, but it seems like Google isn't convinced it's there yet.

Hasn't this project been running for (checks notes) almost ten years now? Isn't that enough runway to determine that it's never going to replace AOSP at this rate?

How long does it take to develop a general purpose, fully capable OS, from scratch? Not a *NIX / POSIX variant, but brand new?

(IIUC, it's brand new?)

Re: Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers [video]

#22
post #21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't this project been running for (checks notes) almost ten years now? Isn't that enough runway to determine that it's never going to replace AOSP at this rate?

How long does it take to develop a general purpose, fully capable OS, from scratch? Not a *NIX / POSIX variant, but brand new? (IIUC, it's brand new?)

Yeah, it's brand new as far as you would consider in practice (they use existing libraries and the like).

The answer is not much time. The real question is how long to develop good quality drivers for a give platform (say, an x64 laptop)? How long to port/develop applications so that the OS is useful? How long to convince OEMs, app developers and such folks to start using your brand new OS? It's a bootstrap problem.

Re: Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers [video]

#23
post #5

I'm surprised this is still being worked on I was under the impression that Google abandoned this. Also, I would be interested to see a comparison to the wasm component model as it also seems to want to do the same things docker containers do.

Fuchsia has been on life support for a few years now, but not completely dead yet

Re: Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers [video]

#24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long does it take to develop a general purpose, fully capable OS, from scratch? Not a *NIX / POSIX variant, but brand new? (IIUC, it's brand new?)

Yeah, it's brand new as far as you would consider in practice (they use existing libraries and the like). The answer is not much time. The real question is how long to develop good quality drivers for a give platform (say, an x64 laptop)? How long to port/develop applications so that the OS is useful? How long to convince OEMs, app developers and such folks to start using your brand new OS? It's a bootstrap problem.

> The answer is not much time.

That would be surprising. Where do you get that? I don't mean toy OSes or experiments. Linux, MacOS and Windows are still in development and I can't imagine the number of hours invested.

> they use existing libraries and the like

Where can I find out about that? Thanks.

Re: Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers [video]

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's technically a general-purpose OS. They had a workstation build target sometime ago which was used for the desktop use-case. They've shipped only for an IoT device so far (Google Nest Hub). Main goal would be to replace the core of AOSP considering the main work that's being done, but it seems like Google isn't convinced it's there yet.

Android is very unapologetically Linux and it's unlikely anyone seriously proposed doing anything other than use Linux. Fuchsia more likely was for all the stuff that Google kept experimenting with using Android just because it was there rather than because it was a good fit - wearables, IoT, AR/VR, Auto, etc...

> wearables, IoT, AR/VR, Auto, etc...

Why would Android be a poor fit for those?

Re: Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers [video]

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but it is allowed, at least as far as I understand, to phone home if it otherwise needs network access. In practice it’s really hard to prevent unauthorized semantic network access once you allow any network access. The main benefit is that kernel space is drastically smaller which means that the opportunity for a kernel-level exploit is minimal vs something like the Linux kernel that a single device exploit co…

The joy of having a properly implemented capability system is that, well, you can create arbitrary capabilities. You don't need to give a process/component the “unrestricted network access capability” -- you could give it a capability to eg “have https access to this (sub)domain only” where the process wouldn't be able to change stuff like SSL certificates. EDIT: and to be clear, fuchsia implements capabilities very…

In my experience lots of folks simply won't work with capability systems no matter how good the implementation is or whatever level of security and configuration granularity is provided.

For many people it's just extra friction in search of a use case.

Re: Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers [video]

#27
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I could tell, its main goal was to have fun writing an OS. At that, it seems to have succeeded for a number of the people involved? In terms of impact or business case, I'm missing what the end goal for the company or execs involved is. It's not re-writing user-space components of AOSP, because that's all Java or Kotlin. Maybe it's a super-longterm super-expensive effort to replace Linux underlying Android…

When I worked at $GOOG my manager left the team to work on Fuchsia and he described it as a "senior engineer retention project", but also the idea was to come up with a kernel that had a stable interface so that vendors could update their hardware more easily compared to linux. Many things that google did when I was there was simply to have a hedge, if the time/opportunity arose, against other technologies. For examp…

The problem with Fuchsia is it went from that to "We're taking all your headcount and rewriting your entire project on Fuchsia" and then started making deadline promises to upper management that it couldn't fulfill.

They seemed to have unlimited headcount to go rewrite the entire world to put on display assistant devices that had already shipped and succeeded with an existing software stack that Google then refused to evolve or maintain.

Fuchsia itself and the people who started it? Pretty nifty and smart. Fuchsia the project inside Google? Fuck.

Re: Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers [video]

#28

What are the target use cases? like mobile, servers, desktops, tablets?

I believe the only product that currently ships with Fuchsia is the Google Nest Hub. I could also imagine it running on meeting room hardware for Google Meet, although I don't believe that is true today. I would imagine this is largely a defense in depth type of security measure, where it limits the blast radius of vulnerabilities services. Beyond that, it is not hard to imagine use-cases that would benefit from running less-trusted code, especially if that code comes from third parties like an app store or some sort of company specific add-on.

Re: Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers [video]

#29
post #9
post #5

I'm surprised this is still being worked on I was under the impression that Google abandoned this. Also, I would be interested to see a comparison to the wasm component model as it also seems to want to do the same things docker containers do.

I think the lack of public information about their future plans for the project combined with the “killed by Google” meme got smashed together here and that is actually a really common perception but also one that is completely made up out of thin air. It has been under heavy heavy development for many years now. The fact that they are now starting to talk about it publicly now is probably a sign that they are lookin…

I think the problem is that "lack of public information about their future plans" is hard to differentiate from "no future plans exist". For a company that's in the past been known for their willingness to go for low-likelihood but high impact "moonshot" projects and seemingly open with some of their long-term plans (like everyone knowing that they were working on self-driving cars years before self-driving became a topic that people wouldn't be shocked to hear, like, their grandparents talking about), it's honestly pretty weird that the only device they've shipped with it was the Nest Hub, which apparently used to run on the same thing as a Chromcast (so which I don't even think was ChromeOS?).

If this were something that they were planning on using mainly for internal stuff, like for some sort of competitive advantage in data centers or something, I could understand the radio silence on future plans, but it's hard for me to imagine that's their main purpose when they're publicly putting it on stuff like the Nest Hub and Chromebooks (they didn't sell any with it afaik, but they published a guide for putting it on them). It really feels like they just don't know exactly what to do with it, and they're trying to figure that out as well. As for ChromeOS and Android, those already feel like a pretty good example of them not having a super clear initial product strategy for how they overlap (and more important, how they _don't_), so while having some sort of consolidation would make sense, it's not clear to me how Fuschia would help with that rather than just make things even murkier if they start pushing it more. I'd expect that consolidating them would start with the lower-level components rather than the UI, and my understanding is that Fuschia (as opposed to Zircon, which is the kernel) has quite a lot of UI-related stuff in it specifically with Flutter. I'm not saying you're wrong, since it sounds like you might have more relevant knowledge than me, but I can't help but wonder how much of this has really been planned in the long term rather than just been played by ear by those with decision-making power.

Re: Comparing Fuchsia components and Linux containers [video]

#30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's brand new as far as you would consider in practice (they use existing libraries and the like). The answer is not much time. The real question is how long to develop good quality drivers for a give platform (say, an x64 laptop)? How long to port/develop applications so that the OS is useful? How long to convince OEMs, app developers and such folks to start using your brand new OS? It's a bootstrap problem.

> The answer is not much time. That would be surprising. Where do you get that? I don't mean toy OSes or experiments. Linux, MacOS and Windows are still in development and I can't imagine the number of hours invested. > they use existing libraries and the like Where can I find out about that? Thanks.

IIRC it didn't take that long to develop first production versions of macOS? A couple of years maybe?

It's not like Fuschia was supposed to be a "fully capable OS developed from scratch", either? I mean it's "just" the kernel and other low level components, most of the software stack would remain same as Android/Linux at least for the time being.

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