[HN Gopher] Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
___________________________________________________________________
Playing around with the Fuchsia operating system
Author : tapper
Score : 280 points
Date : 2020-06-09 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.quarkslab.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.quarkslab.com)
| ikeyany wrote:
| I would love to see an interactive map of Zircon, similar to the
| one of the (older) Linux kernel -
| https://makelinux.github.io/kernel/map/
| t43562 wrote:
| C++....microkernel....reminds me of Symbian. :-)
| snarfy wrote:
| The technical reasons for Fuchsia to exist are debatable. The
| real reason it exists is because Linux is GPL.
| cxr wrote:
| If that were true, then Google could have picked BSD or Linux's
| progenitor Minix, like Apple and Intel did, instead of starting
| from near-scratch.
| aquabeagle wrote:
| Google is king of NIH.
| [deleted]
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Others seem to think the _real_ reason is DRM, which seems more
| googlish to me than Linux being GPL.
| malkia wrote:
| I can't get fuchsia to work anymore on my Acer device. It used to
| work just 10 days ago, hopefully gonna fixed soon :) -
| https://ci.chromium.org/p/fuchsia/builders/global.ci/worksta...?
|
| (e.g. I'm compiling for --release workstation.x64 --with-base ...
| the kitchen-sink)
| mlang23 wrote:
| Spooky. I predicted the double descriptor read bug before
| actually seeing the code. I am not an expert, and I definitely
| haven't written my own USB stack. Still, I wonder why the
| original code had this problem, given that this seems to be the
| classical example of how to attack a USB stack. Somehow reminds
| me what happened when Cisco started to ship a HTTP server with
| some switches. One of the first bugs was a buffer overflow on
| URLs longer then 255 bytes ...
| pier25 wrote:
| A couple of years ago it was believed that Fuchsia would replace
| Android and ChromeOS. Then, IIRC, it was said in a Google IO that
| it was just some sort of experiment to test new OS ideas.
|
| What do you think is Google's masterplan for Fuchsia?
| ensiferum wrote:
| Sometimes one can just wonder how many of these decisions to do
| something boil down to just one person being in the right place
| of the totem pole in order to
|
| a) sell the product to their superiors and get their buy-in
|
| b) drive their own resume for "being the guy who created X"
|
| rather than any technological reasons or valid business
| reasons.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| > What do you think is Google's masterplan for Fuchsia?
|
| I think they made it pretty clear that Fuchsia is not "an
| experiment to test new OS ideas".
|
| https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts
|
| Specifically:
|
| > Fuchsia's goal is to power production devices and products
| used for business-critical applications. As such, Fuchsia is
| not a playground for experimental operating system concepts.
| Instead, the platform roadmap is driven by practical use cases
| arising from partner and product needs.
| pier25 wrote:
| Thanks for the info.
|
| This totally contradicts what was said at Google IO's main
| keynote. Unless I'm remembering this wrong...
| kenforthewin wrote:
| Like most of their products, I don't think there is a master
| plan.
| pier25 wrote:
| I don't know. Fuchsia seems like a sufficiently massive
| effort to at least have some goal other than experimentation.
| jrsj wrote:
| At the very least I expect to see it used in "IoT" devices
| like Nest thermostats and stuff like that. Whether it ever
| replaces ChromeOS or Android is impossible to determine at
| this point though. Almost every attempt at running Android
| apps on another platform for compatibility has been a
| failure. Microsoft seems to have given up on it entirely.
| sk0g wrote:
| Wouldn't that be where Flutter could come in handy? If the
| same codebase cross compiles to Android and Fuchsia (hell,
| even iOS), lack of apps won't be an issue.
|
| The Android team doesn't seem fond of Dart/ Flutter, but
| that's not surprising. Who wants to voluntarily sign their
| death certificate, so to speak?
| pier25 wrote:
| I could be wrong, but I imagine at least some people in
| the Android team would like a fresh start.
| arexxbifs wrote:
| Avoiding GPLv2.
|
| What Google says about their plans and what their plans
| actually are does not necessarily have to converge.
| rvz wrote:
| > Then, IIRC, it was said in a Google IO that it was just some
| sort of experiment to test new OS ideas.
|
| That's a form of public denial on their side. Why would they
| upstream Chromium, LLVM, Rust and Android ART support then? It
| has first class support for Flutter as a way of running all
| Flutter apps from day 0.
|
| Don't be fooled too easily by that statement.
| AgloeDreams wrote:
| Totally agree, Steve Jobs bashed smartphones and making them
| in the early 2000s, said that 7 inch tablets made no sense
| then shipped the iPad Mini, MS bashed phones without physical
| keyboards then shipped the Zune HD and WP7. Companies will
| say anything as long as it gets the job done and the job is
| to maintain sales.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| The 7 inch tablets didn't ship until after Steve Jobs died.
| naasking wrote:
| And even then, maybe they didn't make sense given the
| technology of the time, but they could have made sense
| later.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Its a thorough experiment, sure. I'm not sure that proves
| secret master plans. That said, if it finds a market fit as
| they go along I'm sure they'd use it.
| dlojudice wrote:
| I believe the idea behind could be the same for Mindori project
| inside Microsoft years ago:
|
| "Midori was a research/incubation project to explore ways of
| innovating throughout Microsoft's software stack. This spanned
| all aspects, including the programming language, compilers, OS,
| its services, applications, and the overall programming models.
| We had a heavy bias towards cloud, concurrency, and safety. The
| project included novel "cultural" approaches too, being 100%
| developers and very code-focused, looking more like the
| Microsoft of today and hopefully tomorrow, than it did the
| Microsoft of 8 years ago when the project began." [1]
|
| Later some of this ideas became core features on Windows.
|
| For a great overview about Mindori project: [1]
| http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/
| sterlind wrote:
| It never shipped. A lot of beautiful code and proven
| concepts, and it just got tossed in the dustbin.
|
| Hopefully Fuchsia doesn't succumb to the same second-system
| effect.
| Novukus wrote:
| > It never shipped. A lot of beautiful code and proven
| concepts, and it just got tossed in the dustbin.
|
| It doesn't sound it was ever planned to be shipped? It was
| for experimentation, research and development. And some of
| that work made its way into Windows. Seems like a success
| to me.
|
| edit:
|
| > Midori was the code name for a managed code operating
| system being developed by Microsoft with joint effort of
| Microsoft Research. It had been reported[2][3] to be a
| possible commercial implementation of the Singularity
| operating system, a research project started in 2003 to
| build a highly dependable operating system in which the
| kernel, device drivers, and applications are all written in
| managed code. It was designed for concurrency, and could
| run a program spread across multiple nodes at once.[4] It
| also featured a security model that sandboxes applications
| for increased security.[5] Microsoft had mapped out several
| possible migration paths from Windows to Midori.[6] The
| operating system was discontinued some time in 2015, though
| many of its concepts were rolled into other Microsoft
| projects.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midori_(operating_system)
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I fully welcome some more competiton on the operating system
| front.
|
| I am sad to see WindowsNT, Linux and macOS be the only dominant
| operating systems.
|
| My personal very perhaps unpopular view is that Windows NT has a
| better technial implentation than Linux.
|
| Linux does most things well, form small devices to big iron. That
| is true now.
|
| But when it started, it was as a learning experiment, and damn
| good one too. An amazing achievement. A lot of work my haorsd of
| people have since built on top of it, replaced things, epanded
| things, hardening things, adding drivers, etc. And it has come a
| long way, but to me as an operating system, technically it is not
| that inspiring.
|
| I wish we had maybe 10 competitve opearing systems, some brand
| new off the presses.
|
| I have run Linux in one form or another since the first Yggdrasil
| release at the end of 1992. (not very early).
|
| It was amazing. Running it on my PC at home and it was faster
| than the terminals at school (well all shared a few servers so
| always a lot going on, I am sure if you had it all to yourself it
| would be faster. I guess that is why some people spent the nights
| there is they had demanding tasks to run, but htye were not a
| priority to get access to the better, newer and a lot more
| dedicated hardware. (It was a complicated process).
|
| I could do 90% of what was needed at home, woot.
|
| I was very happy when I get my paws on the first WindowsNT
| release back in 1994 I think. I had preordered it.
|
| I cold not wait to install it.
|
| processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating
| system the end of 1992.
|
| After having suffered through the pain that was Widows that had a
| kinda sorts maybe a little multitasking. Finally an improvement.
| OF course, a lot of my software refused to run on it, or it
| refused to run it
|
| The first Mac I had with macOS was also very cool, since then
| OpenBSD, I had NextStep when they released it for Intel. Very
| cool.
|
| Anyways I have been waiting since to get a new operating system
| that levels up the game, as much as WindowsNT did for Windows
| 3.11, 95, 98, me.
|
| I have not yet had that privilege.
|
| I had good hopes for Plan9, QNX, a reimplementation fo BeOS that
| is still ongoing. (I might have the wrong name on that one. I
| remember a demo I had at the university of a BeBox with the BeOs
| and how well it multitasked what backed then seemed like very CPU
| intensive graphics manipulation while playing a video and some
| other stuff -at the time-... I never got a BeBox and havent run
| its OS)
|
| There have been, and are some solid research OSs but they have
| never made it out into the real world.
|
| WindowsNT, Linux and macOS cannot be all we are given. What
| replaces them?
|
| Where is WindowsNTNT.
|
| Will it take quantum computers to become the norm before we get
| it? Maybe Linux already runs on that too.
|
| (if quantum computers ever become viable or even a good fit for
| everyday boring computer stuff).
|
| Give me a new operating system, written from scratch, to
| implement every secure feature it should have, harden it,
| eliminate even the possibility of buffer overflows and assorted
| tasks, or create them so that the elements that are exposed can
| fail gracefully and non-destructbily and not leak data or allow
| inputting of data.
|
| I forgot about Qubes OS, that is very interesting. Maybe that is
| it.
| jayd16 wrote:
| 10 OSes would be really cumbersome in current toolchains. If we
| got that far, hopefully there would easier ways to cross
| compile code.
|
| Even for the big three I'd like to see some shared container
| runtime or something.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > My personal very perhaps unpopular view is that Windows NT
| has a better technial implentation than Linux.
|
| I actually don't think it's that uncommon to see people who
| think the NT kernel is a superior implementation than the Linux
| kernel. There does seem to be a sentiment that the Linux kernel
| has a history of adopting features later than other OSes, and
| often using a worse implementation (epoll is one of the more
| infamous cases).
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| The BeOS "reimplementation" is called Haiku. It is a pretty
| remarkably mature project, though unfortunately not what I'm
| looking for in a new OS personally.
|
| The reason we don't see new OSs is pretty simple: there is
| entirely too much hardware you have to accommodate to be
| usable. There are klocs of actual kernel code in Linux, and
| Mlocs of driver code.
| Koshkin wrote:
| I think the answer is to have device drivers implemented as
| part of device firmware.
| giantrobot wrote:
| That becomes extremely problematic as a lot of devices
| anymore ship with bare minimum firmware to turn themselves
| on and require the host to upload firmware to actually
| work. The "drivers" on disk are then the modules required
| by the OS and a big blob of firmware.
|
| Other times devices are just a thin PHY interface and all
| of the work is done in software inside the driver. There's
| nothing on the device to even run onboard firmware.
|
| So many devices _can 't_ store their own drivers for the
| host to use, let alone store drivers for multiple operating
| systems.
| Koshkin wrote:
| So the idea is similar to the one at the base of (the
| original) OpenGL, i.e. that of a _hardware_ API that can
| be used by any OS.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Oh, like UEFI or openfirmware drivers? That's... a pretty
| neat idea, actually. That would lower the barrier to entry,
| certainly. About the only issue I see is then trusting
| _those_ drivers (I don 't really trust hardware mfgs, and
| you'd have to update them somehow), but that seems doable.
| cletus wrote:
| Ah, Fuchsia... another of Google's solutions looking for a
| problem.
|
| I remember hearing about it and immediately asking "what is the
| market for this?" and not being satisfied with the answer.
|
| On the one side you have Samsung, who are unhappy enough with
| their dependence on Google that they'll not likely eat the cost
| of moving from Android to something else that has no strategic
| benefit to them (as far as I could tell, anyway).
|
| So what does that leave? Google making its own devices. I don't
| know this to be the case but I strongly suspect the intent was
| for the Pixel line was (and may still be?) intended to be the
| spark for Google being a vertically integrated first-party seller
| of mobile devices. What I mean is these aren't just proof-of-
| concept or developer devices.
|
| The problem there is by doing that they'll hurt their
| relationships with Android OEMs and it'd take a long time to fill
| that void, if that's even possible.
|
| So where else? The obvious answer is... Chromecast. This is a
| hardware product Google has had a good amount of success with.
| It's already first-party.
|
| A recently leaked report [1] seems to indicate that the next
| Chromecast will be Android TV. That is (IMHO) _bad_ news for
| Fuchsia.
|
| You have to also take into account that during the time Fuchsia
| has been around (which must be 4+ years by now?) there's been a
| change at the top with Sundar replacing Larry. That's always a
| dangerous time for high-profile and high-cost (literally
| $billions) projects with no customers. Sundar came from Chrome.
| Fuchsia didn't. You have to ask questions about who was the
| original (SVP+) cheerleader who got it off the ground and funded
| it? Was larry on board? Is Sundar/ Does that sponsor enjoy the
| same support under Sundar that they did under Larry?
|
| I don't know the answer to these questions, just that they
| matter. marissa Mayer's departure from Google was largely a
| product of a change at the top as she enjoyed Eric's favour but
| all signs pointed to Larry not being as big as a fan.
|
| Fuchsia probably should've been called Graphene. Graphene can do
| everything but leave the lab, after all.
|
| [1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/googles-leaked-tv-
| do...
| rakoo wrote:
| What was the market for Linux when it came out ? The thing was
| a copy of an existing OS, made by a guy in his spare time.
|
| What was the market for php when it came out ? It was just a
| few helpers to write web pages, simpler to use than perl that
| already existed at the time
|
| What was the market for go when it came out ? Yes, it did have
| a few modern things built-in, but there were already tons of
| widely deployed languages.
|
| And yet here we are. I don't need to tell you how successful
| each of those is today. I don't mean to say that Fuchsia will
| definitely be useful or deployed in any large fashion; just
| that "there is no market" is not a valid counterpoint to the
| development of a new project.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > What was the market for Linux when it came out ? The thing
| was a copy of an existing OS, made by a guy in his spare
| time.
|
| > What was the market for php when it came out ? It was just
| a few helpers to write web pages, simpler to use than perl
| that already existed at the time
|
| The markets were _clearly_ there (and _huge_!) for a free
| Unix-like OS and for a better replacement for CGI scripts.
| The fact that some people didn 't see the potential for Linux
| or PHP, is wholly separate from their market opportunities.
|
| The question here remains: where is the market today for a
| new micro-kernel OS? The likely answer would have to be
| device-makers... but which ones can actually benefit from
| Fushcia?
| lima wrote:
| > Sundar came from Chrome. Fuchsia didn't.
|
| Fuchsia appears to be really close to Chrome/Chrome OS - they
| even share the build system and many components.
| deathgrips wrote:
| The market is enforcing DRM at the operating system level. Look
| it up in the documentation, search "DRM".
| adrianmonk wrote:
| I don't know if this is Google's intention, but I could
| certainly see Fuchsia being used for IoT devices.
|
| IoT devices have a big problem with software updates. The
| people who make them are primarily interested in selling
| hardware, not supporting it for the many years it will probably
| be in your home. (You might replace a smartphone every two
| years, but how often do you replace a light switch or
| thermostat?)
|
| Google says Fuchsia is built to be easy to update. Different
| components are able to be upgraded independently. There is a
| stable binary API for drivers.
|
| Imagine a world where IoT devices are built to some Fuchsia-
| based standard which allows them to continue to be updated even
| when the manufacturer inevitably abandons the devices and their
| users. You could get more out of the devices, and you could
| worry less about security.
|
| It wouldn't solve 100% of the problem, though, because there
| would always be some device-specific code, including device
| drivers and any software that enables unique capabilities of
| the device.
| atombender wrote:
| Apparently Google is already running Fuchsia (or at least
| Zircon) internally on several smart home devices, such as the
| Home Hub. Here [1] is an article from last year, still
| relevant.
|
| [1] https://9to5google.com/2019/02/08/fuchsia-friday-home-
| hub-ma...
| pvarangot wrote:
| Which several ones? The old puck shaped access points don't
| run it, and the Hub is the only other device with a
| processor that's capable or running it.
| atombender wrote:
| Internally. Not on any released products.
| beckler wrote:
| I don't see that... yet. It sounds like Fuschia doesn't
| support ARM at the moment, and that would be a crucial first
| step.
| tbodt wrote:
| *Fuchsia
| monocasa wrote:
| Not publicly, but there's a suspicious amount of arm
| support up and down the stack. Like aarch64-fuchsia target
| in upstreamed stable Rust.
| apozem wrote:
| 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.
| m463 wrote:
| Sounds like unix during the period when bell labs was
| prohibited from entering the computer market by the consent
| decree.
| noobermin wrote:
| People seem to forget this is Google. Yes, this take might be
| a bit cynical but given Google's track record of projects
| that sound great but then burn and die, how sure are we that
| this won't be another one? Google working on something and it
| becoming the next Chrome or Android isn't a sure bet given
| history. It's more like a >60% probably it will become
| abandoned at some point after enough careers from within the
| company are advanced.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| 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.
| nv-vn wrote:
| 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 accounts).
|
| The reality is probably that companies are making a bet on
| some far fetched technology, so for example Fuschia or the
| developers behind it could lead to something insanely
| profitable, but there's only a 20% chance. If you're in a
| good year then the investment is worthwhile because the
| expected value is still positive. If you're in a bad year
| you can't afford to wait for the investment to pan out (not
| to mention your risk model goes totally out of whack; if
| the market is doing poorly consumers won't shell out cash
| for this new tech) so you have to cut costs in that area.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Ah, the corporate Speed-Up Loop.
|
| https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Speedup-Loop
| pvarangot wrote:
| Ah, the "senior-engineer retention project". And when they
| need those senior engineers, or they get bored and retire or
| go to another company, only the senior engineers that were
| not that good will keep on working on that thing. That's
| usually when the useless by design project starts getting
| pressure to show that's actually useful and when it's
| surprisingly not it gets the axe.
|
| And while that happens all the cream of the crop of the top
| talent already left or leaves because of the bullshit that
| comes with the pressure to show marketability for a research
| project.
| geodel wrote:
| > On the one side you have Samsung, who are unhappy enough with
| their dependence on Google that they'll not likely eat the cost
| of moving from Android to something else...
|
| Strange argument. Maybe they will move all their devices to
| their own superior OS Tizen. Or maybe they tried and it did not
| turn out very well.
|
| So whichever side Samsung is it does not affect Google. There
| are many phone makers not that many phone OS makes. And with
| chinese manufacturers already pounding them they have no
| leverage on Google.
| close04 wrote:
| > Maybe they will move all their devices to their own
| superior OS Tizen. Or maybe they tried and it did not turn
| out very well.
|
| Google (via the Open Handset Alliance) managed to enforce the
| current status quo. Manufacturers can't simultaneously ship
| their own OS like forked versions of Android, or presumably
| Tizen, and still be allowed to use Google Play Services. It's
| all-Google or nothing. I don't know whether Tizen is superior
| or not but one could assume it isn't simply due to the
| lacking ecosystem. Windows Phone was a good OS. It was shot
| in the foot by a weak app ecosystem.
|
| > So whichever side Samsung is it does not affect Google.
|
| Samsung has 20% of the market and a lot more of the high end
| market. Going with "not Google" means a lot of users no
| longer using Google Play Store and services. It most
| certainly would "affect" Google.
| notyourday wrote:
| > Samsung has 20% of the market and a lot more of the high
| end market. Going with "not Google" means a lot of users no
| longer using Google Play Store and services. It most
| certainly would "affect" Google.
|
| That will make Samsung phones very pretty door stops. Users
| do not care about phones. Users care about apps that run on
| those phones. Samsung has no apps that users care about (
| IG/Facebook/TikTok/Snapchat/Banking/News/Tinder/etc )
| without Google Play.
| close04 wrote:
| That's the point I made in the comment. Having no apps
| will shoot even good OSes in the foot. This being said
| all Samsung needs is for an antitrust investigation to
| break the exclusivity clause.
|
| Samsung doesn't need to drop Android, they need to be
| able to sell phones with other OSes. Tizen probably fits
| the bill for low-end, cheap phones. With the exclusivity
| clause in place Samsung would have to bridge the canyon
| between the current Tizen ecosystem and where Samsung
| would want it in one step. Removing the limitation just
| gives them the chance to take it one step at a time with
| building their ecosystem (not a pleasant thought looking
| at the state of their software but hey...).
| notyourday wrote:
| I would argue that it is not possible to slowly built
| that ecosystem. Samsung apps are crap and popular apps
| that people want create no motivation from developers to
| support yet another platform.
|
| That's why the Windows Phone failed -- even though
| Microsoft offered shops with reasonably popular apps both
| money and placement to make them available in their store
| at the end the cost of supporting another platform was
| too high.
| CountSessine wrote:
| _Samsung has 20% of the market and a lot more of the high
| end market. Going with "not Google" means a lot of users no
| longer using Google Play Store and services. It most
| certainly would "affect" Google._
|
| It's a game of chicken and one Samsung can't win, but
| Google probably doesn't want to inflict on them. Look at
| how well Huawei is doing outside China without google
| services (they're dead in the water). Samsung doesn't want
| that and can't build an app ecosystem on their own. If
| Google pulls them and android and more importantly the
| android SDKs and dev tools toward Fuschia, I guarantee you
| that Samsung will follow.
|
| At the same time I think Google would be foolish to
| intentionally antagonize one of their most successful
| partners. If Samsung's bungled reaction was to try to go it
| alone with Tizen or hold out upgrading their phones to a
| new android, it only helps Apple and iOS, and that's the
| last thing google wants.
| tbodt wrote:
| *Fuchsia
| close04 wrote:
| > It's a game of chicken and one Samsung can't win
|
| Indeed, they most likely can't (easily) make Tizen a
| commercial success to rival Android, and even using an
| Android fork would still be far from ideal without
| Google's Play Services.
|
| But Google probably can't legally sustain this position
| for long and hold OEMs hostage, especially with all the
| antitrust scrutiny they are facing now. Conditioning
| access to the Play Services on using exclusively Google
| on every device sounds like something that could be
| considered anti-competitive.
| sk0g wrote:
| I thought it was going to be some boring material UI screenshots,
| but this is so much more interesting! Susceptible to the usual C
| bugs, albeit with minor impact. I thought they were switching
| most of the kernel and drivers to Rust, for some reason.
|
| Edit: not a Rust fanboy by any means, hell, I've never even
| opened a Rust file.
| est31 wrote:
| > I thought they were switching most of the kernel and drivers
| to Rust, for some reason.
|
| Note that zircon itself is not allowed to contain any Rust [0].
| It's not exactly specified what they mean by the kernel, but it
| seems that this includes not just the microkernel but also
| everything that lives in the zircon top level directory, which
| is enough to boot the system. tokei says there is not a single
| line of Rust in that entire directory (but about 1 million
| lines of C/C++).
|
| [0]:
| https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/cb20372465f875ff4...
| sk0g wrote:
| I wonder what the ratio of C:C++ is. Sounds like they're
| using C as a restricted C++ anyway, which is interesting.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I know what it means to use C++ as a nicer C, but what does
| it mean to use C as a restricted C++?
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| Zircon, the kernel, is written in C++. There's no programming
| language requirement for components, e.g. the network component
| is written in Rust.
| miohtama wrote:
| Assuming most (not all) vulnerabilities are C-style use after
| free and buffer overflows. If kernel were written in Rust these
| vulnerabilities would not be issues? Meaning microkernels only
| make sense in C world. What am I missing?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| As you implicitly note yourself; even if "most ( _not all_ )
| vulnerabilities are C-style use after free and buffer
| overflows" - well, if you reasonably can do something to defend
| against the things that _aren 't_ memory issues, then that will
| catch those. Also, even Rust lets you use "unsafe" code, and an
| OS will probably contain some; even if it's minimal, even if
| it's reviewed, you want any extra protections that you can get.
| wackget wrote:
| "Fuchsia is a new operating system developed by Google"- and I'm
| out.
| harryf wrote:
| Didn't see the article address power management in the context of
| things that might be running idle in the background. That would
| seem to be to be a major incentive for an OS that's going be used
| on mobile, which needs to respond to changes in environment on
| the move (changing WLAN, network, beacons etc.)
|
| Blackberry's QNX ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX ) is a
| microkernel architecture and was designed with this in mind -
| https://www.qnx.com/developers/docs/6.3.0SP3/neutrino/sys_ar...
| ...
|
| > Traditional power management (PM) is aimed at conserving the
| power of computers that are usually left on. The general-purpose
| approach to PM for desktop PCs -- or even for "mobile" PCs, such
| as laptops -- doesn't take into account the specific demands of
| embedded systems, which can be off (or on standby) much of the
| time, yet must respond to external events in predictable ways.
|
| I don't know if it's inherently more efficient to implement this
| type of thing with a microkernel but given the iBeacons and
| similar effectively "failed" (
| https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/27/why-android-nearby-ibeaco...)
| due to power and sensitivity, this could be a big enough
| incentive to start a new OS
| li4ick wrote:
| Greg Kroah-Hartman told me it's 40 times slower than Linux, at
| least that's what he told me 1 year ago. Wonder how that's
| changed...
| [deleted]
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| What does that even mean? What specifically was slower?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| CTRL-F dart
|
| No matches.
|
| I wonder how many people can look past the kernel when discussing
| what this is and how it's different from Android?
| kyaghmour wrote:
| This debate about monolithic vs. micro-kernels has been had many
| times. Maybe this time the resolution is different, who knows.
| But FWIW Linux didn't reach its success because someone made a
| feature comparison between it and what else was out there in a
| spreadsheet and somehow discovered how Linux was so much better.
| Instead, Linux won (and continues to win) because it's the Rocky
| Balboa of operating systems. It may loose the first round, but it
| always come back. And the reason for that is that Linux's biggest
| feature isn't necessarily technical. Rather, it's the community
| of people around it, the fact that it can tolerate a healthy dose
| of disagreement and infighting before eventually finding and
| settling on whatever best solution solves the next immediate
| problem, not some far-into-future idealistic goal. The downside
| to that development model is that radical changes take several
| iterations/years while in a centrally-managed OS development
| model can be shoved in "atomically" -- ex: real-time, tracing,
| etc. You can devise many a great OSes on paper and even implement
| them. Bootstrapping an entire ecosystem and, effectively,
| institutionalize a completely open and nimble development model
| such as that of the Linux kernel is a whole other story.
| weego wrote:
| And here's me thinking it was just because shared hosting
| providers didn't have to deal with insane and onerous licensing
| costs and vm isolation problems
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| That also would have been true for BSD.
|
| Linux probably also had good timing while the Unix wars were
| fought.
| dekhn wrote:
| Yep. I remember choosing Linux in '93 because it had a huge
| momentum behind it (the hacker literally asked me "Linux or
| BSD" before handing me 4 floppies). I didn't really
| understand the technical or legal differences at the time,
| but it was clear that BSD wasn't as "hot".
|
| In retrospect I really liked BSD for a lot of the ways it
| did things (more stable, excellent long-term backwards
| compatibility).
| kakwa_ wrote:
| If I recall correctly, at the time, BSD was stuck in a
| lawsuit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX_System_Laboratories,_I
| nc.....
|
| I'm wondering if it had a detrimental effect on adoption
| of *BSD, and thus increased Linux popularity at this
| early and critical time.
| dekhn wrote:
| Many BSDheads I know from that time believe that was the
| case (I was asked by them "why didn't you go with BSD"
| and TBH I just liked the GPL license since I had recently
| read the section about Stallman in Hackers).
|
| I think another issue is that linux added new features
| rapidly which probably helped adoption.
| 762236 wrote:
| That so many OS developers are working on Fuchsia and other
| kernels suggests that the Linux community hasn't been very
| successful with inclusion and handling disagreement and
| infighting.
| panpanna wrote:
| I agree with you on the first part: Linux's best weapon is its
| community and strong leadership.
|
| But in my opinion, the second most important feature of Linux
| is in fact its ability to change large parts of the kernel when
| and if needed. And do it very very quickly.
|
| And this something microkernels cannot do. They are just slower
| when doing major changes that touch many parts of there OS.
| surajrmal wrote:
| Isn't this more so related to having all relevant code in the
| same repo rather than about being a monolithic kernel? As
| long as an OS's out of tree contract with out of tree users
| is well defined, refactoring code within the repo shouldn't
| be any more difficult. The fact that Linux's contract is the
| very obvious division between kernel and userspace doesn't
| much matter.
| panpanna wrote:
| I am sure having all code in the same repo helps but I was
| mainly thinking about how changes across multiple services
| is often very time consuming in microkernel designs and
| requires very careful analysis.
| atombender wrote:
| Fuchsia/Zircon claims not to be a microkernel. It definitely
| isn't a _classic_ microkernel like Mach or L4; Zircon is still
| responsible for a very large number of syscalls.
|
| However, core components such as graphics, file systems,
| hardware devices, etc. are moved into userland, so in that
| sense it follows the microkernel idea of putting as little as
| possible in the kernel itself.
|
| Personally, I love the design, and hope it takes off. We really
| need to get away from letting kernels and devices have elevated
| privileges in an OS.
|
| As far as I'm concerned, Tanenbaum won the monolith/microkernel
| debate -- Minix 3 is a true microkernel, and is currently a
| popular niche OS -- and the success of Linux does not diminish
| the argument. (The infamous failure of GNU Hurd doesn't,
| either.)
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > Minix 3 is a true microkernel, and is currently a popular
| niche OS
|
| Isn't it the most widely deployed operating system in the
| world? It's embedded in basically every Intel CPU
| teho wrote:
| This keeps getting repeated, but I don't understand how
| that would lead to it being the most popular OS there is.
| There is way more embedded systems than there is Intel CPUs
| on the market and they often run Linux. Android phones are
| sold more than four times the amount of PCs a year. I'd
| assume that most Intel CPUs are deployed in the data
| centers... that run Linux.
| atombender wrote:
| But they said "widely deployed", not "popular". No one is
| claiming Minix is the most popular OS in the world.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| but the cpus deployed in datacenters also run minix. even
| the ones running linux. or windows
| teho wrote:
| Yeah, but the point was that there is without a doubt
| more Linux instances running on ARM than there is Intel
| CPUs in total. Then even from the Intel processors that
| do have Minix, a sizable amount is running Linux.
| Therefore Minix can't be nearly as widely used as Linux.
| ardacinar wrote:
| What about the ones that are on fridges?
| zucker42 wrote:
| There are far more phones than desktops, and far more
| desktops than servers, so I doubt it. Especially if you
| count by OS instance (counting VMs) rather than by machine.
| atombender wrote:
| True!
| quicklime wrote:
| I think it's a bit early to declare Linux's market victory
| here.
|
| The obvious thing for Google to do is to use this in Android,
| and this will solve a number of big problems for them
| (specifically, binary-only drivers and a better security
| model). They might even have some success in the server or
| desktop spaces as well.
|
| I worry a bit that Linux will be the next Firefox.
| cycloptic wrote:
| >binary-only drivers
|
| If by this you're referring to their promises of a stable
| driver ABI, I can't understand what problem this is supposed
| to solve compared to Linux. There are plenty of binary
| drivers already shipped on Linux. IOT device vendors don't
| care about a stable ABI because they just pin to their kernel
| version. Android device vendors don't care because either way
| they will stop updating their kernels after a number of
| years. Enterprise users don't care because they also pin to a
| kernel version and backport what fixes they want.
|
| It also does not seem to solve any problem for Google because
| they still have to make the same stability/support promises
| and deal with the same accumulation of legacy code either
| way. Yes, this is necessary to stop fragmentation but the
| problem is nothing really changes here compared to what they
| would do if they were going to take on the cost of
| backporting Linux kernel fixes. The only realistic cost
| saving for them I could see is if the greater stability came
| from reducing the total amount of hardware that is supported
| compared to Linux. Which makes sense for them but at the same
| time completely eliminates the possibility of them ever
| seriously touting this as a Linux replacement.
| quicklime wrote:
| > Android device vendors don't care because either way they
| will stop updating their kernels after a number of years
|
| This one seems like a big problem to me. Maybe the handset
| manufacturer doesn't care because they already made their
| profit, but this pushes the support burden onto app
| developers (including Google itself) who have to maintain
| support for these old Android devices that the
| manufacturers don't care about.
|
| This seems like a real issue to me, is there something I'm
| missing?
| cycloptic wrote:
| I agree that is a real issue. By my point is that the
| proposed solution is now that Google itself is now going
| to have to maintain support for old Fuschia devices
| because the burden is now on them to maintain this stable
| ABI. How is this going to solve anything compared to just
| making a support promise about a particular Linux
| version? Nothing here seems like it would improve for the
| app developers.
| tbodt wrote:
| *Fuchsia
| jfb wrote:
| Keep in mind, too, that path dependence plays a huge role here.
| Linux took off when the alternatives were Windows NT, Novell
| Netware, or commercial Unixes running on underpowered RISC
| hardware.
| p_l wrote:
| Late 1990s,a huge amount of linux installs in the business
| happened because of Samba and Apache
| jfb wrote:
| Right! It takes nothing away from the Linux developers to
| acknowledge the enormous role of contingency in Linux'
| initial adoption.
| wbl wrote:
| BSD was around!
| messe wrote:
| It was, but it was in legal limbo.
| cesarb wrote:
| I have also read that, back then, Linux was better at
| supporting common hardware than the BSDs
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21420338). My
| personal experience at the time is that I didn't even
| consider the BSDs; Linux had UMSDOS, which allowed me to
| try it out without having to repartition and/or reformat
| (then later I noticed that I was nearly always on Linux,
| so I reformatted a whole partition as ext2 and dedicated
| it exclusively to Linux).
| setpatchaddress wrote:
| Linux also had a very clear story for access to source
| code and a clear structure for accepting/rejecting
| contributions.
| rst wrote:
| After the legal limbo came a whole bunch of fractious
| disputes within and between multiple core teams --
| initially FreeBSD (concentrating on PC-derived platforms)
| and NetBSD (cross-platform), both having some roots in
| the earlier, troubled 386BSD project led by Bill Jolitz,
| with some later forks from each group (most notably
| OpenBSD). Those persisted long after the legal issues
| were effectively settled, and really hindered the BSDs in
| general from keeping up with Linux-based OS
| distributions.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| Linux won because of Steve Ballmer trying to torpede it in any
| conceivable manner. Those brave people contributing to and
| using into developed a kind of Robin Hood mentality.
|
| Without a hate figure like Steve Ballmer net relative momentum
| will decline. It just happens that so many other big players
| joined the band wagon and contribute, that you don't notice
| that relative decline.
| brmgb wrote:
| No, when Ballmer decided to torpedo Linux, it was starting to
| make inroads into the server markets. Momentum had been there
| for some times already.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Would an OS like this mean really really tough DRM?
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Hmm I was looking at this expecting GUI screenshots, but
| interesting non-the less/beyond me my scope at this time but neat
| to read about.
| SeanFerree wrote:
| Love it!!
| bsaul wrote:
| 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.
| logicprog wrote:
| Would that really ever happen? Microsoft - a company so
| dominant it got an antitrust lawsuit - hasn't even been able to
| get 90% of the market share. No operating system since the very
| early days of computing has.
|
| Not only that, but other older operating systems are always
| going to have an advantage here anyway: they'll have support,
| ecosystems, documentation, and people with years of experience
| with them.
|
| Google isn't even a monopoly in _search_ for heaven 's sake!
| Only 87% of people use Google Search. If they can't get a
| monopoly there - and you really can't get a monopoly in almost
| any industry without government help - what makes you think
| they can get a near-monopoly in operating systems?
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > Only 87% of people use Google Search.
|
| Note that some ostensible competitors like Startpage are
| still powered by Google under the hood.
| logicprog wrote:
| Ah, interesting.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| 87% of the market is a monopoly by any legal definition.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The legal definition mentions market share? I find that
| hard to believe.
| mrep wrote:
| A monopoly is the sole supplier of a product or service and
| the fact that bing exists makes search not a monopoly. In
| the concept of antitrust, the United States Department of
| Justice does not use that term directly and instead talks
| about power and the Supreme Court has defined market power
| as "the ability to raise prices above those that would be
| charged in a competitive market," and monopoly power as
| "the power to control prices or exclude competition" [0].
| Google does not posses monopoly power over search as they
| do not exclude you from using bing, nor do they control
| prices (bing in fact sets a lower price than Googles free
| in that they will pay you to use their search engine). They
| do have market power though.
|
| [0]: https://www.justice.gov/atr/competition-and-monopoly-
| single-...
| asah wrote:
| bing has under 3% marketshare vs 92.06% for google. As an
| advertiser or app/publisher, google has "the power to
| control prices or exclude competition."
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=bing+market+share
| mrep wrote:
| From Section IV of the Justice Departments article:
|
| The Supreme Court has noted the crucial role that
| defining the relevant market plays in section 2
| monopolization and attempt cases. The market-definition
| requirement brings discipline and structure to the
| monopoly-power inquiry, thereby reducing the risks and
| costs of error. The relevant product market in a section
| 2 case, as elsewhere in antitrust, "is composed of
| products that have reasonable interchangeability for the
| purposes for which they are produced--price, use and
| qualities considered." Thus, the market is defined with
| regard to demand substitution, which focuses on buyers'
| views of which products are acceptable substitutes or
| alternatives.
|
| For search advertising, they will likely find other forms
| of advertising such as Facebook as a good enough
| substitute and thus the market definition will include
| other forms of advertising and not just search. For app
| publishing, you can publish your app for android yourself
| which Fortnite did.
|
| iOS distribution on the other hand can probably be argued
| for that and in fact they are getting sued for their
| "abusive monopoly in iOS app/in-app distribution
| services" [0].
|
| [0] (PDF):
| https://www.hbsslaw.com/uploads/case_downloads/apple-
| dev/201...
| bsaul wrote:
| "For search advertising, they will likely find other
| forms of advertising such as Facebook as a good enough
| substitute and thus the market definition will include
| other forms of advertising and not just search."
|
| Nope, they won't. because 92% of people search the web on
| google.
| [deleted]
| logicprog wrote:
| I don't understand why people think monopoly means "big
| company," especially when size is contingent on
| continuing to serve customers better than competitors.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This is fundamentally untrue. Monopoly has nothing to do
| with product or service quality. This is proven by
| Google, which both has bad products and terrible service.
| Monopoly is built by using network effects and illegal
| business arrangements to gut competitors such that a
| better product cannot win in the market.
| dkersten wrote:
| Yeah, I'm really happy someone with enough clout to possibly
| make it reality is doing it, but I don't really want a future
| where everything runs on google stuff (like with android, now)
| justaguyhere wrote:
| Maybe Google will take a bit out of Windows marketshare? It
| really sucks that we only have three options now - windows, mac
| and Linux. Two of these are owned by mega corps and the last
| one isn't as user friendly as the others
| ForHackernews wrote:
| So is a world with 4 options, 3 owned by megacorps, that much
| better? I guess you could argue competition is always good
| for consumers, but it starts to just be an oligopoly rather
| than real competition.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| No one except megacorps is going to build and maintain any
| alternative. Yes, it'd be much better than maintaining the
| status quo where the two user-friendly operating systems
| are either hardware-locked or riddled with bugs,
| vulnerabilities, and Candy Crush.
| modeless wrote:
| It seems such a waste to spend all the effort to write a whole
| new OS and all these drivers with the same old buffer overflow
| bugs we've been fighting since the dawn of time. It doesn't have
| to be this way anymore!
| logicprog wrote:
| Indeed. I wonder why they didn't go with Rust? They seem to be
| trying to make the perfect architecture from scratch without
| worries about complexity or how experimental it is or even how
| long it'll take, and yet they don't go with a language that'll
| solve a whole other class of problems? Seems like an odd
| choice.
|
| Maybe they're just making use of the existing C++ talent pool
| at Google.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Lots of the userland pieces are in Rust. I don't think Rust
| gives you much advantage for kernel code (esp. in a
| microkernel), because most of it is unsafe anyway. And Rust
| has some missing pieces for this kind of code (for example,
| using custom allocators on a per-data structure basis is
| still difficult).
| modeless wrote:
| I've heard this kind of argument a lot and it's getting
| tiresome when we just keep seeing the same old preventable
| bugs being a problem time and time again. Yes, a kernel
| written in a safe language will still have security bugs.
| But it would absolutely have a very large positive impact.
| And any problems with safe languages can be worked around
| with a bit of imagination, especially with the level of
| effort already required to write a whole OS with a large
| number of hardware drivers.
| [deleted]
| naasking wrote:
| Rust would help with drivers, not so much with the kernel
| itself. Drivers run in user space in Fuschia, so you
| should be able to use any language you want.
| tbodt wrote:
| *Fuchsia
| fragmede wrote:
| If you turn off all the safety checks, is Rust still
| safe?
|
| It seems a microkernel architecture allows for the kernel
| to be as small as possible, with the scheduler and
| drivers and everything written in a safe language in
| user-space. In that case, it is anything other than
| vanity that says the kernel is better off being written
| in a "safe" language with all the safeties turned off,
| compared to a unsafe language?
| modeless wrote:
| 1. Fuchsia is not a microkernel, according to themselves.
| [1]
|
| 2. You don't have to turn off safety checks in all of the
| code. Only having to audit the unsafe code is still a
| huge win. You're vastly overstating the amount of code
| that can't be safe.
|
| 3. Fuchsia has many components outside of the kernel that
| should have been written in safe languages but weren't.
|
| 4. It's funny that you use the word vanity. I think it
| perfectly describes the attitude that you're smart enough
| to write a nontrivial project in C/C++ without any of the
| many classes of preventable bugs that safe languages fix.
| Or that a few parts of your code requiring unsafe
| behavior somehow elevate the whole project into an elite
| class that doesn't need safety.
|
| [1] https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts
| Iolaum wrote:
| I wonder if that's true for RedoxOS microkernel [0]? I m
| not technical enough to make the comparison myself.
|
| [0]: https://gitlab.redox-os.org/redox-os/kernel
| qchris wrote:
| I'm not a developer on it, but I've been following the
| development pretty closely for a while. IIRC, the lead
| developer Jeremy Soller states that even though the
| kernel code does require unsafe blocks, it's actually
| less common than you might think.
|
| I can't find the source, but for some reason I have it in
| my head that the percent of Redox kernel code that is
| unsafe sits at somewhere around 30%, which especially
| considering the actual LoC of the microkernel vs. a
| monolith, means much easier code coverage. Again, the
| exact number might be wrong, but I do know that the
| kernel is significantly less that 100% unsafe code.
| zepto wrote:
| Seems like it would be trivial for them to have extended
| rust, given the resources they are applying to this.
| phkahler wrote:
| There is an OS kernel being written in Rust.
| dkersten wrote:
| Sure, but if people don't make any serious attempts at creating
| something completely new, how do we know we're not stuck in a
| local minimum in terms of what OS tech we could have?
|
| Or do you mean in terms of not using a "safer" language like
| Rust? I assume its because its not what the devs working on it
| know.
| Leherenn wrote:
| It started at least 4/5 years ago, Rust 1.0 had just been
| released.
|
| I don't think it made sense to use Rust back when they started.
| It wasn't mature enough for such a big project.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| I'm more excited about the possibility of a high quality desktop
| OS rather than the kernel. The Linux kernel is great but a great
| open-source desktop OS doesn't exist today.
|
| Specifically, this product doesn't exist today:
|
| - Desktop environment that matches or surpasses Mac OS in
| quality, performance and UX design.
|
| - It includes seamless synchronization between devices.
|
| - Apps are sandboxed, similarly to Android or iOS.
|
| - There is a clearly defined platform / SDK, like in Android or
| iOS. If it works in your development environment, it's guaranteed
| to work everywhere.
|
| - You can easily make a commercial product, like in Android or
| iOS.
|
| - It has 10% on the market (or software creators believe it's on
| the trajectory to get there).
|
| I don't understand why Google hasn't done this yet. Of course,
| the answer could be that such project just doesn't have the
| required ROI.
| notyourday wrote:
| Has Google ever created any non-web product that it supported
| for more than a token amount of time, that it continued to re-
| iterate on for years that was not linked to Google properties?
| scythe wrote:
| Golang would qualify, but it's not really a "product" from
| the perspective of most users.
| zingermc wrote:
| Android, Maps, Chrome?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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 to launch apps that it doesn't
| wrap.
|
| I agree with your other points, however I lament that BSD-style
| licensing will prevent a lot of cool things from having their
| sources see the light of day or be upstreamed.
| [deleted]
| moron4hire wrote:
| You just described UWP apps on Windows 10.
|
| Developers flat out rejected it _because_ of the smartphone-
| like sandboxing.
| BubRoss wrote:
| I don't think anyone rejected it because of sandboxing. It is
| a new API that would only work on windows with that
| installed. Learning something completely new for a niche
| target is not very enticing. Also, if you can write something
| to be sandboxed, there is a good chance it can be a web page
| instead.
|
| Sandboxing also needs to come from the other direction.
|
| Having programs be made to be sandboxed defeats the purpose.
| What is needed is the ability to do contain all of a
| program's files in one place and isolate the access to the
| file system with permissions for other resources.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| I don't think that's very true. Smartphone-like sandboxing is
| widely praised for its security and stability benefits, UWP
| failed due to a lot of other factors (eg. Windows 10 Store,
| lack of Windows 7 support, etc.)
| pjmlp wrote:
| Which is why Microsoft went around and is incrementally
| merging Win32 and UWP, including sandboxing for Win32.
|
| Don't cry victory as you would be quite surprised how Windows
| will look like in 5 years or so.
| monadic2 wrote:
| Can you elaborate? What is UWP and why did devs not like it?
| All the critique i see with a quick google comes from game
| devs.
| [deleted]
| vezycash wrote:
| Developer push back first started with windows 8 with fears
| of lockdown. Valve's CEO was the most vocal because it
| looked like MS's end game would be to crush steam.
|
| Microsoft didn't help matters with the 99 dollars developer
| fee - not high per se but in an existing free for all
| operating, pushbacks would happen.
|
| Microsoft basically said to use this shiny new crippled
| toy, you must use our store and pay money.
|
| Microsoft also fanned the fire when they announced that
| only one metro browser was allowed. That is you could only
| use the metro browser of your default desktop browser.
| Others would be disabled
|
| For me as a user I hated/hate, UWP, metro and all it's
| incarnations because:
|
| UWP apps are slower than regular apps. In the early days
| they crashed a lot. They wasted desktop real estate with
| too much whitespace. Initially they were not resizable like
| normal windows application. Oh... The hidden settings menu
| sucked.
|
| Microsoft also consistently undermined the new format by
| limiting UWP to the latest operating system. Metro apps
| couldn't run on Windows 7. Most Universal apps made for
| Windows 10 won't work on Windows 8.1 and lower. Some
| wouldn't even work on some Windows 10 versions.
|
| For developers, having to maintain multiple versions
| written with different API's for "one operating system" is
| crazy.
|
| UWP apps are basically unusable without mouse or touch
| screen. Almost all the shortcuts we know and love don't
| work.
|
| This flat UI nonsense that makes it difficult for users to
| detect the active menu or even clickable items was started
| by Microsoft with windows 8. Google and Apple take the
| credit cos Microsoft failed with mobile.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| I really doubt Google has any interest in building a "great
| open-source desktop OS". Everything they've done with Android
| suggests they'll throw releases over the wall, but keep any
| interesting or useful bits proprietary & closely tied to Google
| cloud services.
| mav3rick wrote:
| All of Chrome OS is open.
| gvjddbnvdrbv wrote:
| Android was a lot more open at first.
| hellcow wrote:
| You just described ChromeOS.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I use chromeOS as my daily driver but even with Linux and
| Android app support it doesn't work as a dev machine. The
| hardware isn't there and its just not positioned well enough
| for vendors to take it seriously.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| ChromeOS has some pretty serious limitations that make it DOA
| as a Mac OS / Windows / Linux alternative.
| krn wrote:
| I believe Linux (Beta) for ChromeOS[1] should eliminate
| most of these limitations.
|
| There is also Fedora Silverblue[2], which is an immutable
| desktop OS.
|
| [1]
| https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en
|
| [2] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-silverblue/
| RivieraKid wrote:
| But that would basically make it an awkward Linux
| distribution that doesn't have much benefits over the
| existing ones. It seems like an afterthought, a second
| class citizen.
|
| Where's the documentation for Chrome OS SDK (for native
| apps)?
| krn wrote:
| > But that would basically make it an awkward Linux
| distribution that doesn't have much benefits over the
| existing ones.
|
| The main benefits of Chrome OS are immutability and zero-
| maintenance.
|
| If Chrome OS added a native support for flatpak[1], it
| would cover most of the desktop use cases without losing
| any of its benefits.
|
| [1] https://flatpak.org/
| WanderPanda wrote:
| What about battery life? This seems to be a big
| disadvantage for most Linux distros
| mav3rick wrote:
| Linux Files and Apps are first party citizens in the OS.
| They appear in all menus and settings. You'd develop apps
| as usual for a Debian distribution. Nothing needs to
| change.
| dfasdjlf wrote:
| > Where's the documentation for Chrome OS SDK (for native
| apps)?
|
| https://developer.android.com/topic/arc
| monadic2 wrote:
| > Desktop environment that matches or surpasses Mac OS in
| quality, performance and UX design.
|
| Is there any evidence google can pull this off or wants to? I'd
| think they would want you in a browser.
| scythe wrote:
| >I don't understand why Google hasn't done this yet.
|
| If Google or some similar company were to make a desktop OS, it
| would probably be packed with so many monetization "features"
| that the free software community wouldn't be very interested
| and may even see it as a threat. Chrome OS already demonstrated
| most of this pattern.
|
| The elementary project has done some great work with their UI,
| but the limitations of a decentralized funding model mean that
| it just isn't as complete as the major OSes. Meanwhile the
| jousting between Red Hat and Canonical over control of the
| GNOME ecosystem alienates a lot of users. Meanwhile corporate
| control of Qt has limited KDE's popularity. In all three cases
| the organizational problems associated with developing a truly
| freedom-preserving OS in a profit-oriented world crop up in
| different ways. Google taking over doesn't sound like a
| solution to me.
|
| Some kind of alliance between free software developers and
| hardware manufacturers has long been dreamt about but hasn't
| materialized over the last two decades. All too often, Linux
| OEMs attach a half-baked homegrown distribution and their
| hardware tries to rely on it. We've also hoped that democratic
| countries will decide that a free and open-source operating
| system would be good for national security and fund
| development. In practice, interest has mostly come from Russia
| and China, with user freedom off the priority list.
|
| Google isn't a deity. They don't exist to serve humanity but
| rather their investors. The organization problem continues to
| be difficult.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Hear hear. It seems to me that any such effort either has to be
| built on the Linux kernel (forgoing much of the horrid
| userland) or rely on a something like Fuchsia that's backed by
| a large corporate entity becoming so widely used as to have
| significant driver buy-in from hardware manufacturers.
|
| Unfortunately, I don't believe that relying on a for-profit
| third party entity like Google is a good idea due to the
| conflict of interest, even if their OS is FOSS. Just look at
| what Google has done throwing its weight around as the big-man
| in browsers, even though the browser engine is FOSS.
|
| Incidentally, this might be of interest to you:
|
| https://github.com/probonopd/hello
|
| Not much there yet, but I believe Probonopd's intent is to
| gather a community of people like ourselves.
| StreamBright wrote:
| > I don't understand why Google hasn't done this yet
|
| What would be the financial incentive?
| sly010 wrote:
| > There is a clearly defined platform / SDK, like in Android or
| iOS. If it works in your development environment, it's
| guaranteed to work everywhere.
|
| Are iOS/Android SDKs good examples of stable platforms? They
| are just as much a moving target as anything else and the only
| thing certain about them is that they _will_ require
| maintenance.
| zerkten wrote:
| I think the poster means consistent, rather than stable, or
| backwards compatible.
| jpab wrote:
| 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 market has got to be
| pretty difficult for anyone. I do not know what share of the
| market Chrome OS has.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| 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.
| kgersen wrote:
| why 5 years? They can already if they want to.
| [deleted]
| Guest0918231 wrote:
| They don't say that, because that's not their goal. Google
| makes money from consumers being online, searching,
| browsing the internet, and using Google apps. It doesn't
| matter if that person is using Windows, Mac, Linux, or some
| imaginative Google OS to connect to the internet. They
| profit either way.
| skybrian wrote:
| It's already the case that ChromeOS can run a Linux
| environment in a VM. The question is whether this is enough
| for most developers?
| mav3rick wrote:
| Developers , PMs already use Chrome OS at Google. Designers
| can / will also happen.
| [deleted]
| pwdisswordfish2 wrote:
| Do you mean Chromium OS?
|
| Chrome OS is not 100% open source and the bits that are not
| in Chromium OS are significant. It is also effectively tied
| to certain hardware. Users cannot easily install it on
| whatever hardware they choose.
|
| The Chromium OS FAQ contains no link to download the source
| code and contains this little gem:
|
| "Keep in mind that Chromium OS is not for general consumer
| use."
|
| https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromium-os-faq
| idoby wrote:
| If something works in your Android dev environment, it is
| absolutely not guaranteed to work everywhere, or work the same
| everywhere. Differences exist between vendors, and every
| between different models by the same vendor.
| csomar wrote:
| A good functioning Desktop experience for Linux is impossible.
|
| - It requires a massive centralized investment.
| Microsoft/Apple/Google can do that. But Linux is run by
| amateurs (not talking about skills but rather guys who are not
| on a payroll).
|
| - Linux is for people who have rather weird setups. Apple uses
| limited hardware (ie: You have few Macbook Pros, etc...).
| Windows is supported by manufactures because it is the standard
| of Desktop computing for most of the world (and still can be a
| mess). Linux, on the other hand, has to do all that work alone.
|
| - Linux professional and profitable market is still in
| servers/deployment where you don't need a desktop space.
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-06-09 23:00 UTC)