11 ms·

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

158 points by platinum1 9y ago

jkmcf 9y ago
Aside from control, what does this provide over Linux? IMO, the Linux desktop problem is due partially to relying on the antiquated X Windows system, but mostly a lack of funding a good vision, e.g. Unity. After growing up with OpenLook, then Motif, the plethora of Linux window managers, and unhappy years with Windows, I noticed most of the elegant apps were being written for OSX. I’m not sure how much of this is due to the devs or the OS/libraries, but probably both. The solution I want is a Linux OS, a WM with a good, cohesive, long term vision, and an easy way to build apps within at vision — something like a native Electron minus the memory and CPU overhead. I believe Google could do this.
- syshum 9y ago
  Personally I think it has more to do with Licensing, Google has long opposed GPL and user freedom They support Developer Centric Opensource, they do not support User Centric Free Software
- mtgx 9y ago
  It's uses a microkernel so probably around 100x-1,000x fewer lines of code, which should improve security. Smartphones are one thing, but I think the recent trend of using the Linux kernel in self-driving cars is a terrible idea that we'll only start regretting 10-15 years from now.
  - aceofspad3s 9y ago
    Using a microkernel just pushes the vulnerabilities to the userspace.
    - krylon 9y ago
      Yes. That is part of the idea. So the vulnerability is isolated and does not automatically compromise the entire system.
      - aceofspad3s 9y ago
        Who cares? In consumer devices, userspace is the entire system.
        greenhouse_gas 9y ago
        Well, not in i.e Android. For example, I have an app that has a vulnerability (let's say my alarm app accidentally runs unauthorized code). What can it do? Nothing. It can't read from my banking app, it can't get my SSH keys, it may not even be able to read from my SD card. But what happens when my Linux kernel is also compromised? Any app can get root.
        lobster_johnson 9y ago
        It's not just one userspace. Fuchsia is capabilities-oriented, when apps are sandboxed by default and only get access to the services it has been granted access to.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  > IMO, the Linux desktop problem is due partially to relying on the antiquated X Windows system, but mostly a lack of funding a good vision, e.g. Unity. What is funny is that Linux on the desktop was closest to actually happen when KDE was happy emulating Windows rather than being its own thing, and doing so quite well on top of X. As for X being antiquated, F that.
- openfuture 9y ago
  Capability based security and microkernel, both pretty substantial differences.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    Aside from the microkernel, doesn't Android already do capability based security?
    - afsina 9y ago
      I think this is a much lower level thing.
    - Rusky 9y ago
      No. It has a user-visible idea of "capabilities" in the sense that apps get a checklist of things they can and cannot access, but that's not "capability based security," just another access control list. Capability based security like Fuchsia has means that there is no ambient authority, or in other words no singleton resources. No fopen(), no connect(), etc. Instead, processes access everything through file-handle-like objects that are given to them by their creator, which can thus be sandboxed/mocked/revoked/etc without anything extra like containers or jails or VMs.
  - hacknat 9y ago
    Also seems like Magenta doesn’t have users and groups as a first class construct. It looks like there are primitives to create them in user space, but the kernel only has one construct (Jobs) by which security is administered, rather than the many different security paradigms of a nix system (i.e. a process can have access based on what user it’s running as, uid not, SecComp control, etc). This makes security much easier to manage at the kernel level as all security granted to processes is explicitly granted rather than inferred, as is often the case in nix. Honestly, I think the multi-user assumptions that *nix started with are largely irrelevant now. Most people don’t have multi-user needs on their devices (you can’t even do it on iOS), and even servers are moving towards single-user constructs with containers, etc. I think the an operating system built around a multi-user model will be viewed as the edge case in the coming decades rather than the norm.
- cbhl 9y ago
  Control is all of it. Security on Android is a joke for 80%+ of users. They can't run on the latest version of Android, because various vendors' drivers are in out-of-tree kernel patches that are un-upstreamable for non-technical reasons. (By comparison, Chrome OS is also Linux-based, but, IIRC, it requires all shipping devices to have drivers upstreamed.) Owning an OS with a stable device driver ABI would allow Google to fix the Android fragmentation problem, and make sure all devices stay up-to-date ala Chrome OS.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    >Owning an OS with a stable device driver ABI Are they actually doing that though? I haven't read anything along those lines, not that I have looked at Fuchsia in depth.
    - kyrra 9y ago
      I haven't read this yet, but they have docs outlining driver development. Note that it is called a "driver development kit" which may imply it's more stable. https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/HEAD/docs/ddk/overview.md https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/HEAD/docs/ddk/over...
  - petra 9y ago
    Wouldn't treble fix the Android fragmentation problem ? Why is this needed/better ?
    - izacus 9y ago
      It doesn't fix the underlying problem: kernel and drivers are still not updatable and will keep having security issues.
    - Someone1234 9y ago
      The two aren't mutually exclusive. Treble attempts to fix fragmentation by re-standardizing and more loosely coupling between the driver layer and system APIs. We won't know if this is a solution until later and this XKCD[0] kind of explains why. This is a real time OS from the ground up. Some have SPECULATED it might be run in a VM/container rather than directly on hardware, effectively further standardizing in a similar way to Treble but via a virtual machine's interface instead of a series of system APIs. That would allow Google to ship Fuchsia VM/container images that could run in every single handset no matter the hardware, and therefore every Android device could be updated directly by Google at the same time. Meaning Fuchsia may not replace Linux, it might run above Linux and therefore above Treble. That's why the two aren't mutually exclusive. PS - This is how Microsoft's XBox One platform is engineered currently. [0] https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
- ricardobeat 9y ago
  Elementary is the OS you're looking for: https://elementary.io 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-2017-wrap-up-3ab050256069 https://medium.com/elementaryos/appcenter-spotlight-2017-wra...
  - exceptione 9y ago
    I don't get the hype for elementary. It looks like an other gtk-themed os. I swear by Manjaro kde now, it looks gorgeous out of the box.
  - DiabloD3 9y ago
    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).
    - Asooka 9y ago
      > 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.
      - DiabloD3 9y ago
        That's all great and all, but why pick Gnome3 to rally behind? I literally know no one that can stand that desktop environment, and it has become part of this weird systemd/pulseaudio cult that is slowly destroying any chance of moving forward and producing a modern desktop environment for Linux that average people will accept, due to a constant (and ignorant) political war against pretty much anyone else that isn't part of that particular groupthink. The irony here, I think, is Pantheon actually completed this goal with a much smaller team, with no political bullshit, and is a clearly superior product. By virtue of this fact, and by your reasoning, Gnome3 has no reason to continue to exist at all and should end development if, truly, Linux is meant to have a One True Desktop Environment (tm).
- Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
  One feature that differentiates Linux from other systems is the sheer amount of choice that you get. For example, with Linux I can choose GNOME, KDE, a selection of other desktop environments, or I can choose a simple window manager like twm and sort of roll my own environment. Or maybe I could set my system up so that it runs without a window manager and just gives me a full-screen emacs environment. With Mac OS, for example, someone else made all of the choices and I have to live with them. What Google is doing will probably end up getting pretty close to your vision, but I suspect that the end result will be very similar to Android - a system that's technically Linux at its core, but where all of the choices have been made for you.
  - mamon 9y ago
    This wide choice is actually putting Linux at disadvantage: instead of consolidating efforts to create one decent desktop environment we have half a dozen of half-assed ones. God, I've just recently have to downgrade to Gnome 3.24, because the latest 3.26 version kept crashing with the segfault error few times a day.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
      Do you not see the contradiction here? If there was only GNOME, then you'd be stuck with GNOME's failings (whether obvious bugs like segfaults, or more subjective failures like their attempts to kill tray icons). Choice and diversity are the strength of *nix.
      - Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
        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.
        badsectoracula 9y ago
        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, but is anyone doing it?). At the same time you have people complaining about tearing and when they force composition everywhere to fix it, they do not mind (or sometimes, even notice) the lag. Similarly, i like how X allows composing applications and environments out of individual components (ironically this sort of application composition lends itself to the Unix idea of one app per role, but most modern toolkits ignore that feature so we ended up with almost nothing really supporting it unless you go raw Xlib or ancient toolkits like Xaw or Motif). Others see it as anathema and the root of all evil (ok, i cannot put some more concrete negatives for this as i cannot comprehend how someone would dislike it, yet i always end up arguing with people - especially GNOME/Gtk+ people /for some reason/ - over at Reddit about it :-P). There is no way to please everyone, so you have to allow for choices. Or deal with people constantly complaining about their lost choices, that works too i suppose :-P.
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 9y ago
  Here’s a list of syscalls: https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/magenta/blob/master/docs/syscalls.md https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/magenta/blob/master/docs/s...
  - jstarks 9y ago
    Interesting. More influence from Windows (NT) than I expected.
  - swetland 9y ago
    That's a bit outdated (magenta was renamed zircon a while back and that mirror is overdue for deletion). Try: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/master/docs/syscalls.md https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/master/docs/syscal... https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/master/docs/concepts.md https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/master/docs/concep...
- blablabla123 9y ago
  The Linux distributors might be able to solve this. Obviously there are tons of Window managers and a dozen of consistent, working Desktop Environments. Ubuntu already made clear that they are moving away from X and moreover that a better UX on the WM part will be a priority. I use Linux again since this year after working almost only on OS X for 5 years or so. It has been more setup work than I wished but I'm really satisfied now. OS X just lacks the transparency and customizability that Linux easily provides. Not sure how Fuchsia will evolve. There are more Operating Systems than Window Managers. But only 2 Operating Systems with good driver support. Their names are Linux and Windows - OS X runs only on a handful of configurations. Android's Hardware support is a mess. Either they will support running Linux or Android drivers, or otherwise their system will be just useful for Marketing demos. > something like a native Electron minus the memory and CPU overhead I guess this is exactly what Chrome OS does. Or just use Firefox/Chrome on Linux. At least Firefox still has a working Marketplace...
  - tw04 9y ago
    >Either they will support running Linux or Android drivers, or otherwise their system will be just useful for Marketing demos. Are you just saying that, or do you actually believe it? You think all of the phone vendors that write custom closed source drivers for Android will abandon Android if the core is no longer Linux? Seriously? And what, move to tizen? Windows phone? Be reasonable... Google can and will move to a different core, and all of their partners will move with them.
    - bitmapbrother 9y ago
      Not only will their partners move with them, but they'll probably offer any assistance to accelerate the process. Android OEM's and Linux have a complicated relationship.
    - blablabla123 9y ago
      Ok yeah maybe I don't believe it. But then we have to throw away all other (incl older/non-Google partner) hardware to use this system. Could work, but not sure if the user really benefits of that in terms of freedom or garbage.
- aphextron 9y ago
  >The solution I want is a Linux OS, a WM with a good, cohesive, long term vision, and an easy way to build apps within at vision — something like a native Electron minus the memory and CPU overhead. I believe Google could do this. This is literally MacOS/Cocoa/AppKit minus Linux plus BSD
  - lobster_johnson 9y ago
    Or GNUStep, if it had ever taken off. API-compatible with lots of Cocoa code. Unfortunately, it's not a complete reimplementation, and nobody uses it.
  - jkmcf 9y ago
    More or less. Not sure about appkit, but the Apple dictatorial control bothers me. E.g., Apple apps on iOS have tight integration unavailable to other apps, and they don’t improve their apps for power users or broader use cases. Also, the first thing I do on non-GNU/Linux systems is install GNU tools :)
    - aphextron 9y ago
      >More or less. Not sure about appkit, but the Apple dictatorial control bothers me. E.g., Apple apps on iOS have tight integration unavailable to other apps, and they don’t improve their apps for power users or broader use cases. This is what drove me away from the whole ecosystem, iOS included. The fact that all of their APIs are closed source headers only is a complete nightmare. I'd rather spend my time working with open Web standards than digging through some arcane Apple manual page.
- grahamburger 9y ago
  Isn't that basically Android?
- stewbrew 9y ago
  Things are changing. Gnome shell with Wayland is quite ok from a user perspective. It took me a while but I personally learned to like the bunch of gnome apps.
- criddell 9y ago
  > Aside from control, what does this provide over Linux? More software (eventually) for end users? And maybe since it's a RTOS, perhaps this is also to be used by Waymo?
- kardianos 9y ago
  I Disagree. I run Linux desktop on all my computers. I think you don't understand how much Google works to have security from design. Windows, Linux, OS X can all be fine "traditional" desktop systems (though the lack of a unified vision on Linux hurts it incredibly). I see Fuchsia as a desktop system that (a) has a native, fundamental concept of graphical desktop and (b) has deep sandboxing on a level similar to Chrome, but for the entire OS, meaning -> it could become an all purpose platform for thick client applications that isn't reliant or the web and still unable to be exploited. I suspect they are not satisfied with any of their desktop options. I doubt this has anything to do with Android or Chrome OS within the next 10 years. They just want a desktop that sucks less and they can guarantee follows their own security practices (not FIPS, but process isolation and capability injection).
  - bitmapbrother 9y ago
    I completely agree with this. Google wants a desktop class OS that they have complete control over and the ability to implement whatever features they want without any friction or compromises. I also think they also want an OS that has great interoperability with Android so that they can do a lot of the things Apple is doing with iOS and Mac OS. The RTOS capability is another benefit as it'll allow Fuchsia to be used in areas where Android may not well be suited such as the OS for self driving cars.
- dmitriid 9y ago
  > I believe Google could do this. I keep seeing people day this, and yet: Is there any evidence at all that Google can pull off designing something like this?
  - kyrra 9y ago
    If it's worth anything, they do have some people on board that have done OS dev before [0]. Swetland had commented in this thread and other Fuchsia discussions on HN. [0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/15/googles_new_os_could_replace_android/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/15/googles_new_os_coul...
  - bitmapbrother 9y ago
    I'd be more interested in why you think Google can't. They have some of the best OS developers working on it in addition to a small army of developers working on it day and night.
    - dmitriid 9y ago
      1. Google's only consumer OS is Android. Even after literally years of development it's still riddled with inconsistencies (visual and behaviour), performance issues, security issues etc. 2. It took them literally years to arrive at Material UI design, which is a vast sprawling document which is often internally inconsistent, and even Google can't adhere to it a lot of the time. 3. Their best customer-facing products have traditionally been third-party acquisitions (such as Docs). They have a very inconsistent approach to UI/UX across all of their products. (I had more, but it's hard to concentrate on the first of January :) ) They can still pull it off, but it's definitely not a given.
      - bitmapbrother 9y ago
        >Google's only consumer OS is Android And why exactly is ChromeOS not a consumer OS? >Even after literally years of development it's still riddled with inconsistencies (visual and behaviour), performance issues, security issues etc. You make it sound as if inconsistencies, performance and security issues are isolated to Android. Which is ridiculous considering the plethora of inconsistencies, performance issues and security exploits on other platforms. As for security issues, no Pixel has ever been hacked at a PwnToOwn event while iOS devices consistently are. >It took them literally years to arrive at Material UI design, which is a vast sprawling document which is often internally inconsistent, and even Google can't adhere to it a lot of the time. Have you looked at iOS recently? Apple doesn't even follow their own guidelines nor do the vast majority of the special snowflakes on the App store. And I won't even go into the disaster that is Metro/Modern or whatever they're calling it now on the Windows platform. >Their best customer-facing products have traditionally been third-party acquisitions (such as Docs). They have a very inconsistent approach to UI/UX across all of their products. Mac OS was a third party acquisition and iOS was created from that so you could make the argument that even iOS is the result of a third party acquisition. The fact is these products would never be as successful as they are today without the resources and money its taken to get them to this point. >They can still pull it off, but it's definitely not a given. It's not really a question of if they can pull it off, but rather when they'll pull it off. If nothing else Fuchsia will be the new OS used by Google internally replacing their current customized Linux distribution. And if that's the extent of Fuchsia's use then it'll still be considered a win, but that's not where it's going to end in my opinion. I see Fuchsia surpassing Linux in desktop OS market share rather quickly and eventually challenging Mac OS in the long term.
kyrra 9y ago
The actual commit includes some details on disk paver. https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/docs/commit/520ed01fd6f2585bd75607e3671604b5de7998fa https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/docs/commit/520ed01fd6f258...
krylon 9y ago
I wish Google was more outspoken about their plans for Fuchsia. So far, all we have is a lot of speculation.
- Shoothe 9y ago
  I think they don't know themselves what will become of it. It's more a research project similarly to Midori.
  - blablabla123 9y ago
    Yes, and there are tons of research OSs. Most of them suffer from a lack of Hardware support. I'd be ready to switch to OpenBSD/Solaris/QNX/other fancy OS tomorrow if all my HW components were supported. I doubt anything non-Linux based is ever becoming popular within the next 100 years. ;)
    - e1ven 9y ago
      If you're manufacturing the hardware as well as the software , this is less of an issue. Getting a new OS to run on a new cellphone, or laptop is a surmountable task.
    - Shoothe 9y ago
      They don't need to replace Linux in one big event. They'll probably test and safely move some working ideas to their production OSes (similarly as Span was introduced in .NET from Midori). There is also some effort in abstracting device drivers in Android (Project Treble) but how it could be used in Magenta is not clear. Personally I'd be really interested in seeing this OS deployed in production. I like Linux but it's XXI century, we should be slowly adopting basic security principles in our OSes (capabilities, microkernels). But I fear that Magenta will look similar to Android, while it is open source Google will internally use a customized version that the customers will not be able to compile themselves.
      - blablabla123 9y ago
cmurf 9y ago
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.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  Not an expert on ChromeOS but it has more than simply Chrome right now, for example it can run Android apps. It is although true that Google could replace the low layers of Chrome OS as long as it replicates most of the user facing features. If Google intends to make Fuchsia some kind of Android successor (we have no way to know if that's the plan though), this feature is utterly needed anyway : an Android VM for 'legacy' apps and Flutter for the future.
- sebe 9y ago
  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.
  - fabrice_d 9y ago
    There is actually a fuchsia port in the upstream chromium tree.
- sseth 9y ago
  I have been following Chrome development, and one of the things being done there is "servicification" of the blink engine - i.e. breaking it up into services accessed using Mojo. Fuchsia is also built with Mojo as the IPC mechanism. So reading the tea leaves, it seems to me that a "servicified" Chrome will be fully integrated into Fuchsia. Besides this of course, Fuchsia shared many other components with chrome (the use of Skia for example). If we look at the direction for Flutter, Fuchsia and Chrome, it is clear that this is not some casual side-show but a very well thought out strategy.
nickthemagicman 9y ago
I would love this so much. A Linux OS with the support of a major company and decent UI/UX? Yes please.
- hobo_mark 9y ago
  Except it's not Linux?
jancsika 9y ago
Under this OS, who decides what capabilities an app has?
sitkack 9y ago
Linux is the last Unix and that is ok. Unix is a philosophy, not an implementation. Linux mocked Mach, but was usurped by the hypervisor, violently corralling Linux in a microkernel environment anyway. Lots of things are in the kernel that don't need to be, making them non-updatable, as someone else controls the keys. That past, present and future is awesome. But lets build from the past and build the future. Not saying Fuschia is it, but as Unikernels and Exokernels have shown us, Linux itself is just an app in the stack. Unix is a framework for running processes. Your domain problems are the real problems, the OS is an implementation detail.

158 points by platinum1 9y ago

Aside from control, what does this provide over Linux? IMO, the Linux desktop problem is due partially to relying on the antiquated X Windows system, but mostly a lack of funding a good vision, e.g. Unity. After growing up with OpenLook, then Motif, the plethora of Linux window managers, and unhappy years with Windows, I noticed most of the elegant apps were being written for OSX. I’m not sure how much of this is due to the devs or the OS/libraries, but probably both. The solution I want is a Linux OS, a WM with a good, cohesive, long term vision, and an easy way to build apps within at vision — something like a native Electron minus the memory and CPU overhead. I believe Google could do this.

syshum 9y ago
Personally I think it has more to do with Licensing, Google has long opposed GPL and user freedom They support Developer Centric Opensource, they do not support User Centric Free Software
mtgx 9y ago
It's uses a microkernel so probably around 100x-1,000x fewer lines of code, which should improve security. Smartphones are one thing, but I think the recent trend of using the Linux kernel in self-driving cars is a terrible idea that we'll only start regretting 10-15 years from now.
- aceofspad3s 9y ago
  Using a microkernel just pushes the vulnerabilities to the userspace.
  - krylon 9y ago
    Yes. That is part of the idea. So the vulnerability is isolated and does not automatically compromise the entire system.
    - aceofspad3s 9y ago
      Who cares? In consumer devices, userspace is the entire system.
      - greenhouse_gas 9y ago
        Well, not in i.e Android. For example, I have an app that has a vulnerability (let's say my alarm app accidentally runs unauthorized code). What can it do? Nothing. It can't read from my banking app, it can't get my SSH keys, it may not even be able to read from my SD card. But what happens when my Linux kernel is also compromised? Any app can get root.
      - lobster_johnson 9y ago
        It's not just one userspace. Fuchsia is capabilities-oriented, when apps are sandboxed by default and only get access to the services it has been granted access to.
digi_owl 9y ago
> IMO, the Linux desktop problem is due partially to relying on the antiquated X Windows system, but mostly a lack of funding a good vision, e.g. Unity. What is funny is that Linux on the desktop was closest to actually happen when KDE was happy emulating Windows rather than being its own thing, and doing so quite well on top of X. As for X being antiquated, F that.
openfuture 9y ago
Capability based security and microkernel, both pretty substantial differences.
- noobermin 9y ago
  Aside from the microkernel, doesn't Android already do capability based security?
  - afsina 9y ago
    I think this is a much lower level thing.
  - Rusky 9y ago
    No. It has a user-visible idea of "capabilities" in the sense that apps get a checklist of things they can and cannot access, but that's not "capability based security," just another access control list. Capability based security like Fuchsia has means that there is no ambient authority, or in other words no singleton resources. No fopen(), no connect(), etc. Instead, processes access everything through file-handle-like objects that are given to them by their creator, which can thus be sandboxed/mocked/revoked/etc without anything extra like containers or jails or VMs.
- hacknat 9y ago
  Also seems like Magenta doesn’t have users and groups as a first class construct. It looks like there are primitives to create them in user space, but the kernel only has one construct (Jobs) by which security is administered, rather than the many different security paradigms of a nix system (i.e. a process can have access based on what user it’s running as, uid not, SecComp control, etc). This makes security much easier to manage at the kernel level as all security granted to processes is explicitly granted rather than inferred, as is often the case in nix. Honestly, I think the multi-user assumptions that *nix started with are largely irrelevant now. Most people don’t have multi-user needs on their devices (you can’t even do it on iOS), and even servers are moving towards single-user constructs with containers, etc. I think the an operating system built around a multi-user model will be viewed as the edge case in the coming decades rather than the norm.
cbhl 9y ago
Control is all of it. Security on Android is a joke for 80%+ of users. They can't run on the latest version of Android, because various vendors' drivers are in out-of-tree kernel patches that are un-upstreamable for non-technical reasons. (By comparison, Chrome OS is also Linux-based, but, IIRC, it requires all shipping devices to have drivers upstreamed.) Owning an OS with a stable device driver ABI would allow Google to fix the Android fragmentation problem, and make sure all devices stay up-to-date ala Chrome OS.
- noobermin 9y ago
  >Owning an OS with a stable device driver ABI Are they actually doing that though? I haven't read anything along those lines, not that I have looked at Fuchsia in depth.
  - kyrra 9y ago
    I haven't read this yet, but they have docs outlining driver development. Note that it is called a "driver development kit" which may imply it's more stable. https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/HEAD/docs/ddk/overview.md https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/HEAD/docs/ddk/over...
- petra 9y ago
  Wouldn't treble fix the Android fragmentation problem ? Why is this needed/better ?
  - izacus 9y ago
    It doesn't fix the underlying problem: kernel and drivers are still not updatable and will keep having security issues.
  - Someone1234 9y ago
    The two aren't mutually exclusive. Treble attempts to fix fragmentation by re-standardizing and more loosely coupling between the driver layer and system APIs. We won't know if this is a solution until later and this XKCD[0] kind of explains why. This is a real time OS from the ground up. Some have SPECULATED it might be run in a VM/container rather than directly on hardware, effectively further standardizing in a similar way to Treble but via a virtual machine's interface instead of a series of system APIs. That would allow Google to ship Fuchsia VM/container images that could run in every single handset no matter the hardware, and therefore every Android device could be updated directly by Google at the same time. Meaning Fuchsia may not replace Linux, it might run above Linux and therefore above Treble. That's why the two aren't mutually exclusive. PS - This is how Microsoft's XBox One platform is engineered currently. [0] https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
ricardobeat 9y ago
Elementary is the OS you're looking for: https://elementary.io 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-2017-wrap-up-3ab050256069 https://medium.com/elementaryos/appcenter-spotlight-2017-wra...
- exceptione 9y ago
  I don't get the hype for elementary. It looks like an other gtk-themed os. I swear by Manjaro kde now, it looks gorgeous out of the box.
- DiabloD3 9y ago
  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).
  - Asooka 9y ago
    > 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.
    - DiabloD3 9y ago
      That's all great and all, but why pick Gnome3 to rally behind? I literally know no one that can stand that desktop environment, and it has become part of this weird systemd/pulseaudio cult that is slowly destroying any chance of moving forward and producing a modern desktop environment for Linux that average people will accept, due to a constant (and ignorant) political war against pretty much anyone else that isn't part of that particular groupthink. The irony here, I think, is Pantheon actually completed this goal with a much smaller team, with no political bullshit, and is a clearly superior product. By virtue of this fact, and by your reasoning, Gnome3 has no reason to continue to exist at all and should end development if, truly, Linux is meant to have a One True Desktop Environment (tm).
Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
One feature that differentiates Linux from other systems is the sheer amount of choice that you get. For example, with Linux I can choose GNOME, KDE, a selection of other desktop environments, or I can choose a simple window manager like twm and sort of roll my own environment. Or maybe I could set my system up so that it runs without a window manager and just gives me a full-screen emacs environment. With Mac OS, for example, someone else made all of the choices and I have to live with them. What Google is doing will probably end up getting pretty close to your vision, but I suspect that the end result will be very similar to Android - a system that's technically Linux at its core, but where all of the choices have been made for you.
- mamon 9y ago
  This wide choice is actually putting Linux at disadvantage: instead of consolidating efforts to create one decent desktop environment we have half a dozen of half-assed ones. God, I've just recently have to downgrade to Gnome 3.24, because the latest 3.26 version kept crashing with the segfault error few times a day.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
    Do you not see the contradiction here? If there was only GNOME, then you'd be stuck with GNOME's failings (whether obvious bugs like segfaults, or more subjective failures like their attempts to kill tray icons). Choice and diversity are the strength of *nix.
    - Mister_Snuggles 9y ago
      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.
      - badsectoracula 9y ago
        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, but is anyone doing it?). At the same time you have people complaining about tearing and when they force composition everywhere to fix it, they do not mind (or sometimes, even notice) the lag. Similarly, i like how X allows composing applications and environments out of individual components (ironically this sort of application composition lends itself to the Unix idea of one app per role, but most modern toolkits ignore that feature so we ended up with almost nothing really supporting it unless you go raw Xlib or ancient toolkits like Xaw or Motif). Others see it as anathema and the root of all evil (ok, i cannot put some more concrete negatives for this as i cannot comprehend how someone would dislike it, yet i always end up arguing with people - especially GNOME/Gtk+ people /for some reason/ - over at Reddit about it :-P). There is no way to please everyone, so you have to allow for choices. Or deal with people constantly complaining about their lost choices, that works too i suppose :-P.
Q6T46nT668w6i3m 9y ago
Here’s a list of syscalls: https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/magenta/blob/master/docs/syscalls.md https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/magenta/blob/master/docs/s...
- jstarks 9y ago
  Interesting. More influence from Windows (NT) than I expected.
- swetland 9y ago
  That's a bit outdated (magenta was renamed zircon a while back and that mirror is overdue for deletion). Try: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/master/docs/syscalls.md https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/master/docs/syscal... https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/master/docs/concepts.md https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon/+/master/docs/concep...
blablabla123 9y ago
The Linux distributors might be able to solve this. Obviously there are tons of Window managers and a dozen of consistent, working Desktop Environments. Ubuntu already made clear that they are moving away from X and moreover that a better UX on the WM part will be a priority. I use Linux again since this year after working almost only on OS X for 5 years or so. It has been more setup work than I wished but I'm really satisfied now. OS X just lacks the transparency and customizability that Linux easily provides. Not sure how Fuchsia will evolve. There are more Operating Systems than Window Managers. But only 2 Operating Systems with good driver support. Their names are Linux and Windows - OS X runs only on a handful of configurations. Android's Hardware support is a mess. Either they will support running Linux or Android drivers, or otherwise their system will be just useful for Marketing demos. > something like a native Electron minus the memory and CPU overhead I guess this is exactly what Chrome OS does. Or just use Firefox/Chrome on Linux. At least Firefox still has a working Marketplace...
- tw04 9y ago
  >Either they will support running Linux or Android drivers, or otherwise their system will be just useful for Marketing demos. Are you just saying that, or do you actually believe it? You think all of the phone vendors that write custom closed source drivers for Android will abandon Android if the core is no longer Linux? Seriously? And what, move to tizen? Windows phone? Be reasonable... Google can and will move to a different core, and all of their partners will move with them.
  - bitmapbrother 9y ago
    Not only will their partners move with them, but they'll probably offer any assistance to accelerate the process. Android OEM's and Linux have a complicated relationship.
  - blablabla123 9y ago
    Ok yeah maybe I don't believe it. But then we have to throw away all other (incl older/non-Google partner) hardware to use this system. Could work, but not sure if the user really benefits of that in terms of freedom or garbage.
aphextron 9y ago
>The solution I want is a Linux OS, a WM with a good, cohesive, long term vision, and an easy way to build apps within at vision — something like a native Electron minus the memory and CPU overhead. I believe Google could do this. This is literally MacOS/Cocoa/AppKit minus Linux plus BSD
- lobster_johnson 9y ago
  Or GNUStep, if it had ever taken off. API-compatible with lots of Cocoa code. Unfortunately, it's not a complete reimplementation, and nobody uses it.
- jkmcf 9y ago
  More or less. Not sure about appkit, but the Apple dictatorial control bothers me. E.g., Apple apps on iOS have tight integration unavailable to other apps, and they don’t improve their apps for power users or broader use cases. Also, the first thing I do on non-GNU/Linux systems is install GNU tools :)
  - aphextron 9y ago
    >More or less. Not sure about appkit, but the Apple dictatorial control bothers me. E.g., Apple apps on iOS have tight integration unavailable to other apps, and they don’t improve their apps for power users or broader use cases. This is what drove me away from the whole ecosystem, iOS included. The fact that all of their APIs are closed source headers only is a complete nightmare. I'd rather spend my time working with open Web standards than digging through some arcane Apple manual page.
grahamburger 9y ago
Isn't that basically Android?
stewbrew 9y ago
Things are changing. Gnome shell with Wayland is quite ok from a user perspective. It took me a while but I personally learned to like the bunch of gnome apps.
criddell 9y ago
> Aside from control, what does this provide over Linux? More software (eventually) for end users? And maybe since it's a RTOS, perhaps this is also to be used by Waymo?
kardianos 9y ago
I Disagree. I run Linux desktop on all my computers. I think you don't understand how much Google works to have security from design. Windows, Linux, OS X can all be fine "traditional" desktop systems (though the lack of a unified vision on Linux hurts it incredibly). I see Fuchsia as a desktop system that (a) has a native, fundamental concept of graphical desktop and (b) has deep sandboxing on a level similar to Chrome, but for the entire OS, meaning -> it could become an all purpose platform for thick client applications that isn't reliant or the web and still unable to be exploited. I suspect they are not satisfied with any of their desktop options. I doubt this has anything to do with Android or Chrome OS within the next 10 years. They just want a desktop that sucks less and they can guarantee follows their own security practices (not FIPS, but process isolation and capability injection).
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  I completely agree with this. Google wants a desktop class OS that they have complete control over and the ability to implement whatever features they want without any friction or compromises. I also think they also want an OS that has great interoperability with Android so that they can do a lot of the things Apple is doing with iOS and Mac OS. The RTOS capability is another benefit as it'll allow Fuchsia to be used in areas where Android may not well be suited such as the OS for self driving cars.
dmitriid 9y ago
> I believe Google could do this. I keep seeing people day this, and yet: Is there any evidence at all that Google can pull off designing something like this?
- kyrra 9y ago
  If it's worth anything, they do have some people on board that have done OS dev before [0]. Swetland had commented in this thread and other Fuchsia discussions on HN. [0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/15/googles_new_os_could_replace_android/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/15/googles_new_os_coul...
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  I'd be more interested in why you think Google can't. They have some of the best OS developers working on it in addition to a small army of developers working on it day and night.
  - dmitriid 9y ago
    1. Google's only consumer OS is Android. Even after literally years of development it's still riddled with inconsistencies (visual and behaviour), performance issues, security issues etc. 2. It took them literally years to arrive at Material UI design, which is a vast sprawling document which is often internally inconsistent, and even Google can't adhere to it a lot of the time. 3. Their best customer-facing products have traditionally been third-party acquisitions (such as Docs). They have a very inconsistent approach to UI/UX across all of their products. (I had more, but it's hard to concentrate on the first of January :) ) They can still pull it off, but it's definitely not a given.
    - bitmapbrother 9y ago
      >Google's only consumer OS is Android And why exactly is ChromeOS not a consumer OS? >Even after literally years of development it's still riddled with inconsistencies (visual and behaviour), performance issues, security issues etc. You make it sound as if inconsistencies, performance and security issues are isolated to Android. Which is ridiculous considering the plethora of inconsistencies, performance issues and security exploits on other platforms. As for security issues, no Pixel has ever been hacked at a PwnToOwn event while iOS devices consistently are. >It took them literally years to arrive at Material UI design, which is a vast sprawling document which is often internally inconsistent, and even Google can't adhere to it a lot of the time. Have you looked at iOS recently? Apple doesn't even follow their own guidelines nor do the vast majority of the special snowflakes on the App store. And I won't even go into the disaster that is Metro/Modern or whatever they're calling it now on the Windows platform. >Their best customer-facing products have traditionally been third-party acquisitions (such as Docs). They have a very inconsistent approach to UI/UX across all of their products. Mac OS was a third party acquisition and iOS was created from that so you could make the argument that even iOS is the result of a third party acquisition. The fact is these products would never be as successful as they are today without the resources and money its taken to get them to this point. >They can still pull it off, but it's definitely not a given. It's not really a question of if they can pull it off, but rather when they'll pull it off. If nothing else Fuchsia will be the new OS used by Google internally replacing their current customized Linux distribution. And if that's the extent of Fuchsia's use then it'll still be considered a win, but that's not where it's going to end in my opinion. I see Fuchsia surpassing Linux in desktop OS market share rather quickly and eventually challenging Mac OS in the long term.

kyrra 9y ago

The actual commit includes some details on disk paver. https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/docs/commit/520ed01fd6f2585bd75607e3671604b5de7998fa https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/docs/commit/520ed01fd6f258...

krylon 9y ago

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

Shoothe 9y ago
I think they don't know themselves what will become of it. It's more a research project similarly to Midori.
- blablabla123 9y ago
  Yes, and there are tons of research OSs. Most of them suffer from a lack of Hardware support. I'd be ready to switch to OpenBSD/Solaris/QNX/other fancy OS tomorrow if all my HW components were supported. I doubt anything non-Linux based is ever becoming popular within the next 100 years. ;)
  - e1ven 9y ago
    If you're manufacturing the hardware as well as the software , this is less of an issue. Getting a new OS to run on a new cellphone, or laptop is a surmountable task.
  - Shoothe 9y ago
    They don't need to replace Linux in one big event. They'll probably test and safely move some working ideas to their production OSes (similarly as Span was introduced in .NET from Midori). There is also some effort in abstracting device drivers in Android (Project Treble) but how it could be used in Magenta is not clear. Personally I'd be really interested in seeing this OS deployed in production. I like Linux but it's XXI century, we should be slowly adopting basic security principles in our OSes (capabilities, microkernels). But I fear that Magenta will look similar to Android, while it is open source Google will internally use a customized version that the customers will not be able to compile themselves.
    - blablabla123 9y ago

cmurf 9y ago

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.

on_and_off 9y ago
Not an expert on ChromeOS but it has more than simply Chrome right now, for example it can run Android apps. It is although true that Google could replace the low layers of Chrome OS as long as it replicates most of the user facing features. If Google intends to make Fuchsia some kind of Android successor (we have no way to know if that's the plan though), this feature is utterly needed anyway : an Android VM for 'legacy' apps and Flutter for the future.
sebe 9y ago
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.
- fabrice_d 9y ago
  There is actually a fuchsia port in the upstream chromium tree.
sseth 9y ago
I have been following Chrome development, and one of the things being done there is "servicification" of the blink engine - i.e. breaking it up into services accessed using Mojo. Fuchsia is also built with Mojo as the IPC mechanism. So reading the tea leaves, it seems to me that a "servicified" Chrome will be fully integrated into Fuchsia. Besides this of course, Fuchsia shared many other components with chrome (the use of Skia for example). If we look at the direction for Flutter, Fuchsia and Chrome, it is clear that this is not some casual side-show but a very well thought out strategy.

nickthemagicman 9y ago

I would love this so much. A Linux OS with the support of a major company and decent UI/UX? Yes please.

hobo_mark 9y ago
Except it's not Linux?

jancsika 9y ago

Under this OS, who decides what capabilities an app has?

sitkack 9y ago

Linux is the last Unix and that is ok. Unix is a philosophy, not an implementation. Linux mocked Mach, but was usurped by the hypervisor, violently corralling Linux in a microkernel environment anyway. Lots of things are in the kernel that don't need to be, making them non-updatable, as someone else controls the keys. That past, present and future is awesome. But lets build from the past and build the future. Not saying Fuschia is it, but as Unikernels and Exokernels have shown us, Linux itself is just an app in the stack. Unix is a framework for running processes. Your domain problems are the real problems, the OS is an implementation detail.