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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

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does Kate have a different file picker than Gimp? Why does LibreOffice give me yet another file picker? On MacOS and Windows, the file picker is a solved problem. Because these file pickers are implemented by two different GUI toolkits that have a different idea of how file picking should be done. This isn't anything new, Xaw programs used their own (handmade) file dialogs, Motif had its own, Java/Awt had its o…

You're absolutely right that the problem isn't unique to Linux, it was just the easiest example I had on hand and was relevant to the discussion. I could just as easily fire up a variety of programs on my Mac that feature different file pickers and GUI conventions. Windows, as you point out, is kind of thrashing around when it comes to what it wants its GUI to be. I don't think the situation will ever improve there a…

> Windows, as you point out, is kind of thrashing around when it comes to what it wants its GUI to be. I don't think the situation will ever improve there as Microsoft is very reluctant to break backwards compatibility.

I don't think they need to break backwards compatibility, they just need to focus on one of their existing tech and try to make the other stuff behave similarly. There is no reason for example why they cannot provide new window classes (as in RegisterClass) that implement controls that look and behave similar to the UWP stuff - after all there are already a bunch of 3rd party "Metro/UWP style" components for other toolkits. It is just that none is "official".

They need to provide some unification (even if underneath things are less than ideal) and this needs to cover all the tech they've made so far - Win32, MFC (which can build on Win32), WinForms and WPF (and others, if i forget anything).

> I will admit that I haven't dug into Wayland very much, but this is my impression as well. I try it (the Wayland KDE on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) periodically, but it seems a lot crashier than X.

The implementation aren't really a problem since they can be fixed, the issue is at the protocol level and even some of the goals/mindset that lead to it (e.g. the inability of clients to talk or share resources is considered a feature, but this is one of the thing that you need to implement reusable programs that work as components).

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

#72
post #38

From Wikipedia: Chrome OS is an operating system designed by Google that is based on the Linux kernel and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interface. OK so why not Google Chrome web browser on top of Fuchsia, instead of Linux kernel and the usual user space stuff? Google can call that retrofit anything they want, so it could still be Chrome OS.

Fuchsia can display web content, it has a web view that currently webkit based not chrome/blink. I think the plan is to use chrome/chromium web browser, once/if arrives in fuchsia,that will be interesting.

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

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wish more distros would start supplying packages for Pantheon. I'm not interested in a distro that forks Ubuntu LTS + specially patched packages (because Gnome3 refuses to merge changes that fix problems, but only really benefit non-Gnome3 desktops (completely against the spirit of open source and GNU + FDO)), but I would love it to be based on a distro that is kept up to date (such as Debian or Arch).

Yeah I pretty much disregard any distro that's based on 16.04, too many ancient packages

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

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is because someone's great feature is another's broken mess. For example, i cannot stand vsync anywhere with the only exception being video playback. I want my windows to follow the mouse precisely, not lag behind a few pixels, i want my games to react instantly, not lag a few milliseconds, etc. Yet GNOME, elementaryOS and even Wayland's whole design force it (well, Wayland could be implemented without vsync, bu…

I wasted the last two hours pinpointing what was causing my firefox instance to be stuck with the mouse cursor hand icon. Turns out drag and dropping url shortcut to a nautilus window freezes ff (well, it freezes the mouse cursor. edit: so firefox has to be killed because it doesn't respond to click or keyboard inputs anymore).

That's not a broken mess being someone's great feature.

It is (should be) a showstopper; in 2017, in Ubuntu. I found mention of the bug as early as march 2017 in fedora 2x (I think). I believe it's now lost in triage after not being taken care of then closed because that version of the distro is eol (until someone resubmit). How such a bug is shipped is beyond me. But hey, I could hack a patch.

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

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a lot more going on than they are publicly letting on. If the general public starts to believe that there is an Android successor in the works, many people will stop buying Android devices until further notice. This could be absolutely catastrophic for the Android device market. If I were Google, I would bury the name Fuchsia, call the thing Android 10, and let it be known that it's years out.

>If the general public starts to believe that there is an Android successor in the works, many people will stop buying Android devices until further notice. The bigger danger is the response by android developers. Will you invest in a soon-to-be-deprecated Android Native app written in a soon-to-be-deprecated API (because, at least according to the Internet rumors, Fuchsia will be using Dart instead of Java and will…

>Fuchsia will be using Dart instead of Java

The current sysui is flutter/dart based, Flutter is google's newish mobile app sdk, the guys who started it have work on the chrome team, it's in alpha and has support android and ios.

https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/sysui "Armadillo is currently the default system UI for Fuchsia. Armadillo is written in Flutter"

Here is an example of a rust programme, Xi editor, using flutter for the ui. https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/xi

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

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And the same vendors will suddenly write better drivers with a new unfamiliar OS?

No, but the drivers and kernel will be updatable independently, and the drivers will be sandboxed to their own process with limited permissions.

The quality of the user experience will be better as a driver crash won't bring down the device.

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

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is because someone's great feature is another's broken mess. For example, i cannot stand vsync anywhere with the only exception being video playback. I want my windows to follow the mouse precisely, not lag behind a few pixels, i want my games to react instantly, not lag a few milliseconds, etc. Yet GNOME, elementaryOS and even Wayland's whole design force it (well, Wayland could be implemented without vsync, bu…

The Right Way (TM) to do it is to always have V-SYNC but use a screen with high enough refresh where you can't notice the latency. 60 Hz is probably good enough for 95% of people, and Apple is moving to 120 Hz in devices like the iPad Pro.

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

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wish more distros would start supplying packages for Pantheon. I'm not interested in a distro that forks Ubuntu LTS + specially patched packages (because Gnome3 refuses to merge changes that fix problems, but only really benefit non-Gnome3 desktops (completely against the spirit of open source and GNU + FDO)), but I would love it to be based on a distro that is kept up to date (such as Debian or Arch).

> because Gnome3 refuses to merge changes that fix problems, but only really benefit non-Gnome3 desktops (completely against the spirit of open source and GNU + FDO)

This is actually what I most like about Google's OS initiative. The fact we'll have ONE and ONLY ONE desktop environment and all the political infighting of the last 30 years won't matter any more.

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

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a lot more going on than they are publicly letting on. If the general public starts to believe that there is an Android successor in the works, many people will stop buying Android devices until further notice. This could be absolutely catastrophic for the Android device market. If I were Google, I would bury the name Fuchsia, call the thing Android 10, and let it be known that it's years out.

>If the general public starts to believe that there is an Android successor in the works, many people will stop buying Android devices until further notice. The bigger danger is the response by android developers. Will you invest in a soon-to-be-deprecated Android Native app written in a soon-to-be-deprecated API (because, at least according to the Internet rumors, Fuchsia will be using Dart instead of Java and will…

This is silly. No way they would launch such a thing without ART support. Even ChromeOS is running Android apps now.
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