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Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

blog.quarkslab.com

231–240 of 285 posts

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#231
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.

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).

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#232
Ex BeOS developers are the core team behind Fuchsia (Travis Geiselbrecht and Brian Swetland). Travis wrote NewOS which was adapted to be the Haiku kernel (and Travis still hangs around the Haiku IRC channels every now and then). I wouldn't be suprised to see Haiku R2 transition to Fuchsia kernel since they share the same DNA.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#233
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditionally, large money-making companies liked having big, obvious loss areas, so that when the hard times come, they can just cut that and restore the illusion of growth on Wall Street. It only buys you a couple of quarters of fake growth, but for Wall Street, that's often enough.

People like to claim these things anecdotally but if you sit down for a few minutes and think about it then it doesn't really make sense. By doing something like that you'd sacrifice current growth, and since money today is worth more than money in the future cutting dead weight now would be more valuable to the shareholders (not to mention the fact that the losses accumulate each year as cash being drained from your…

Shareholders are not rational, and CEOs believe shareholders to be even more irrational than they actually are. There's plenty of research showing that CEOs do things they think looks good to investors, despite evidence to the contrary. What happens to come to mind is research of FIFO v. LIFO inventory. One understates income at the benefit of having a lower tax liability, and the other overstates income to investors at the cost of paying more in taxes. Statistically, investors punish CEOs for leaving tax cuts on the table for an amount greater than the value of the supposed tax savings, while CEOs insist the opposite is true and that investors are rewarding them for overstating income. Managing your books is widespread and commonplace. People downsize, hide liabilities, massage earnings, and do irrational things regardless of not just long-term consequences, but often on the basis of perceived consequences.

In this particular case, though, you're probably right. Android itself was one of those whacky ideas that no one expected to gain any traction. Google funds moonshot projects as a matter of company culture and self-identity and it seems to actually make them money. Of course, the possibility still exists to cut them for short-term gain and I doubt no one factors that into their equation at all.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#234
post #221
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#235
post #161
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bloomberg, 2018: > One person who has spoken to Fuchsia staff described the effort simply: "It’s a senior-engineer retention project." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-19/google-te... Fuchsia’s greatest value is letting senior devs solve fun puzzles without the burden of shipping anything customers want.

Sounds like unix during the period when bell labs was prohibited from entering the computer market by the consent decree.

You're going to compare that to Fuchsia, an OS that will compete in an already occupied space?

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#236
post #221
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

As others have mentioned, it's an officially supported feature and it's well integrated into ChromeOS itself. It's still "Beta", but it's now in a really solid state.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#238
post #5

I'm both very excited someone is taking a shot at trying something new on kernel side. But i can't help wonder about what would a future look like where 90% of hardware run on a Google-owned operating system.

Given our experience Google so far it probably wouldn't be that great.

Re: Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Desktop environment that matches or surpasses Mac OS in quality, performance and UX design. I've got Plasma setup to take advantage of a decade of Mac muscle memory, and think it does "macOS" better than macOS itself. > Apps are sandboxed, similarly to Android or iOS Install firejail, and its wrapper scripts. The wrapper will automatically wrap common commands and apps in a sandbox, and you can use the firejail CLI…

> I've got Plasma setup to take advantage of a decade of Mac muscle memory Care to elaborate or share? I’ve recently moved from macOS to Linux.

Latte-dock with auto-hide for a dock, and custom KWin button arrangements to mimic macOS. A top panel with Window Title + Window Appmenu Plasmoids for a global menu. System Tray and Event Calendar Plasmoids on the same panel, the latter of which has a drop down calendar like in macOS. KRunner, or either the Search or Application Launcher Plasmoids to replace Spotlight. The Screen Edges setting can mimic macOS hot corners. Widgets on the desktop is a compromise for a Dashboard replacement, as is the Launchpad Plasma Plasmoid. Workspaces, Activities and various Screen Edges views can replace Mission Control. Dolphin can be configured to look like Finder, and you can set Finder keyboard shortcuts, too. There's a setting somewhere to make menus transparent and blurred, as well.

Most of these are extensible or scriptable, and have actions that can be triggered with custom shortcuts. KRunner in particular is extensible. Plasma lets you change or set shortcuts for everything, so, for example, you can mimic the Mac screenshot shortcuts well, since KDE's Spectacle is comparable to the latest updates to screenshot functionality in macOS.

Oh, and symlink 'xdg-open' to 'open', or create an alias.

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