6 ms·

You’re basically describing Fuschia. I believe they have some of the main haiku kernel (probably a bad description) developers.

by drb91 8y ago

adamnemecek 8y ago
What language is the fuchsia api in?
- drb91 8y ago
  IIRC there are native rust bindings for syscalls. The syscalls themselves are implemented in C++. I have no idea about the user space, but my impression is that rust is a first level language for things like the ui. EDIT: it looks like they have interface generators for their APIs, which includes rust support as a first class citizen.
Apocryphon 8y ago
I've always wondered what BeOS would look like as a smartphone platform. Even from a UX standpoint, similar to the Windows 95 Mobile concept video.
- chipotle_coyote 8y ago
  It would have looked a lot like PalmOS 6, a/k/a PalmOS Cobalt. Palm bought Be's assets -- and many of their engineers -- when the company failed, and built their next generation PalmOS around it. For reasons as much due to internal politics as anything technical, though, they never shipped any Cobalt-based phones.
return_0e 8y ago
Well Zircon (Fuchsia's kernel) doesn't have any Rust code inside of it; it's C++. Parts of rust code used in Fuchsia can be found in the Garnet layer and it is just one of the languages that can interface with the OS via the FIDL (Fuchsia Interface Definition Language) [0][1]. An example of this is a tool written in Rust that communicates with parts of the bluetooth stack[2]. The network stack is also using it and is written in Go. [3] [0] https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/zircon/tree/master/system/host/fidl https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/zircon/tree/master/system/... [1] https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/zircon/blob/master/docs/fidl/index.md https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/zircon/blob/master/docs/fi... [2] https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/garnet/tree/master/bin/bluetooth https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/garnet/tree/master/bin/blu... [3] https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/garnet/tree/master/go/src/netstack https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/garnet/tree/master/go/src/...
captainmuon 8y ago
From the technical side, maybe. From the user side they could not be more different. BeOS was the ultimate power user OS. You had a lot of power, but also responsibility. It included many features like the novel filesystem that more pragmatic OSes didn't include. Fuchsia, as far as I can see, is the ultimate "modern" OS. While very safe, it will be very locked down, in the tradition of iOS, Android, Secure Boot, HTML5+js etc. but "done right". There will probably be a lot of things I won't be able to do with a Fuchsia phone.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  I'm very happy Fuchsia is open source, so forks & custom ROMs will still exist.
  - greenhouse_gas 8y ago
    Are you sure? While its open source, your phone won't be (since the OS is MIT licensed, your OEM won't have to give you anything). Can you build a custom ROM without kernel sources?
    - thelastidiot 8y ago
      I appreciate what you are saying. So many people assume that open source gives them the keys of the castle, while later they realize that a simple broadcom closed source driver puts the whole openess in the trash.
    - drb91 8y ago
      This doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the software, though. You can easily lock down linux for a given phone if that’s your goal (at face value anyway).
      - e12e 8y ago
        Well, this is the reason the gpl v3 came about - to ensure the four freedoms even when faced with "trusted computing".
tormeh 8y ago
How does Fuchsia compare to Redox? The PL nerd in me is thinking: "Written in C++. Lame." Of course, that attitude didn't work out very well for the iPod guy.
- drb91 8y ago
  They seem fundamentally different. Fuschia is realtime and, I think, engineered toward embedded and mobile at the moment. Redox is more about cleaning up unix (that’s my impression, anyway). If you squint, it’s like qnx vs linux/bsd, I guess.
  - vitno 8y ago
    Fuchsia is not realtime.
    - drb91 8y ago
      You’re right, I think I was conflating concepts here. My bad. I would edit if I could.
mtgx 8y ago
Does Fuchsia use Rust at all? Because if not, it should. It seems like a wasted opportunity not to preempt tens of thousands of future memory corruption bugs over the next few days for a brand new OS by not using Rust.

You’re basically describing Fuschia. I believe they have some of the main haiku kernel (probably a bad description) developers.

by drb91 8y ago

You’re basically describing Fuschia. I believe they have some of the main haiku kernel (probably a bad description) developers.

adamnemecek 8y ago

What language is the fuchsia api in?

drb91 8y ago
IIRC there are native rust bindings for syscalls. The syscalls themselves are implemented in C++. I have no idea about the user space, but my impression is that rust is a first level language for things like the ui. EDIT: it looks like they have interface generators for their APIs, which includes rust support as a first class citizen.

Apocryphon 8y ago

I've always wondered what BeOS would look like as a smartphone platform. Even from a UX standpoint, similar to the Windows 95 Mobile concept video.

chipotle_coyote 8y ago
It would have looked a lot like PalmOS 6, a/k/a PalmOS Cobalt. Palm bought Be's assets -- and many of their engineers -- when the company failed, and built their next generation PalmOS around it. For reasons as much due to internal politics as anything technical, though, they never shipped any Cobalt-based phones.

return_0e 8y ago

Well Zircon (Fuchsia's kernel) doesn't have any Rust code inside of it; it's C++. Parts of rust code used in Fuchsia can be found in the Garnet layer and it is just one of the languages that can interface with the OS via the FIDL (Fuchsia Interface Definition Language) [0][1]. An example of this is a tool written in Rust that communicates with parts of the bluetooth stack[2]. The network stack is also using it and is written in Go. [3] [0] https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/zircon/tree/master/system/host/fidl https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/zircon/tree/master/system/... [1] https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/zircon/blob/master/docs/fidl/index.md https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/zircon/blob/master/docs/fi... [2] https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/garnet/tree/master/bin/bluetooth https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/garnet/tree/master/bin/blu... [3] https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/garnet/tree/master/go/src/netstack https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/garnet/tree/master/go/src/...

captainmuon 8y ago

From the technical side, maybe. From the user side they could not be more different. BeOS was the ultimate power user OS. You had a lot of power, but also responsibility. It included many features like the novel filesystem that more pragmatic OSes didn't include. Fuchsia, as far as I can see, is the ultimate "modern" OS. While very safe, it will be very locked down, in the tradition of iOS, Android, Secure Boot, HTML5+js etc. but "done right". There will probably be a lot of things I won't be able to do with a Fuchsia phone.

solarkraft 8y ago
I'm very happy Fuchsia is open source, so forks & custom ROMs will still exist.
- greenhouse_gas 8y ago
  Are you sure? While its open source, your phone won't be (since the OS is MIT licensed, your OEM won't have to give you anything). Can you build a custom ROM without kernel sources?
  - thelastidiot 8y ago
    I appreciate what you are saying. So many people assume that open source gives them the keys of the castle, while later they realize that a simple broadcom closed source driver puts the whole openess in the trash.
  - drb91 8y ago
    This doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the software, though. You can easily lock down linux for a given phone if that’s your goal (at face value anyway).
    - e12e 8y ago
      Well, this is the reason the gpl v3 came about - to ensure the four freedoms even when faced with "trusted computing".

tormeh 8y ago

How does Fuchsia compare to Redox? The PL nerd in me is thinking: "Written in C++. Lame." Of course, that attitude didn't work out very well for the iPod guy.

drb91 8y ago
They seem fundamentally different. Fuschia is realtime and, I think, engineered toward embedded and mobile at the moment. Redox is more about cleaning up unix (that’s my impression, anyway). If you squint, it’s like qnx vs linux/bsd, I guess.
- vitno 8y ago
  Fuchsia is not realtime.
  - drb91 8y ago
    You’re right, I think I was conflating concepts here. My bad. I would edit if I could.

mtgx 8y ago

Does Fuchsia use Rust at all? Because if not, it should. It seems like a wasted opportunity not to preempt tens of thousands of future memory corruption bugs over the next few days for a brand new OS by not using Rust.