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DahliaOS operating system, combining the best of GNU/Linux and Fuchsia OS
- rvz 6y ago> combining the best of GNU/Linux and Fuchsia OS Why does a new open source OS project have to always shoehorn the entire GNU/Linux ecosystem with X11/Wayland, GTK, DBus and GNOME onto a totally different system? The only positive takeaway from this is perhaps the learning experience in OS development. Other than that is there a point to this?
- pjmlp 6y agoFor the same reason UNIX actually won against much better OSes, copy paste of freely available source code, C is the JavaScript/PHP of systems programming languages and there were much better and secure platforms out there, including Multics. However the power of free beer....
- furjdjslskfnfjr 6y agoUnix only "won" in the sense that it's used. It doesn't mean that the situation has improved since the 80s... Y'all can stop boasting about a completely mediocre operating system with zero innovations for the last 30 years that functions about as well as what it was copying from the 80s. Y'all even failed to implement plan9's bind despite being an obvious improvement from what we have today. We're stuck with crappy, but stable, software that keeps you employed out of pure shittiness. Congratulations on sinking to the level of private enterprise.
- projektfu 6y agoThat, and the other OSes (Multics, VMS, VM/CMS) were considered competitive advantages and not really available for hacking on under the hood or porting to new architectures.
- nmcain 6y agoNot sure exactly what it has to do with gnome or dbus, the desktop is backed by X11 (Migration to Wayland is underway but it's a pain to work with), the Flutter embedder itself renders with GTK. The project was started as a Fuchsia fork, and we intend to continue working hard on getting that ready, but sadly a lack of access to compatible modern hardware forced our hand to temporarily switch over to Linux as the development platform, so our layers of project would not stagnate while we wait for more polishing on Google's end.
- chaosharmonic 6y agoFor one thing, Fuchsia itself has had support built in for running Linux as a guest OS since roughly two years ago. [0] For Dahlia specifically, it looks to ship a Linux kernel out of the box to extend its hardware compatibility. Relevant section below: > Our dual kernel approach allows users with new(er) hardware to take advantage of the Zircon Kernel, while maintaining support for older devices using the Linux Kernel. [0] https://9to5google.com/2018/06/15/fuchsia-friday-machina-brings-support-for-running-linux-on-top-of-fuchsia/ https://9to5google.com/2018/06/15/fuchsia-friday-machina-bri...
- zeusk 6y agoCall me a skeptic but the code isn't very confidence inspiring https://github.com/dahlia-os/system-recovery/commit/49336659151ddcf5113b649e5eda522f9ff1bd43 https://github.com/dahlia-os/system-recovery/commit/49336659...
- ampdepolymerase 6y agoForgetting to run the formatter before git committing is not that big of a deal.
- devxpy 6y agoThe promise of flutter is alive! https://web.dahliaos.io/#/ https://web.dahliaos.io/#/ This has the power to accelerate flutter desktop development in general. Really excited for both these projects.
- monkin 6y agoDesktop environment made in JS? Hell will freeze before I will use such crap with material feel on it. ;)
- gostsamo 6y agoI opened the link. The only thing spoken to my screen reader was "enable accessibility". I pressed the button (it didn't accept space bar, but only enter) and it just announced an empty page. I can't speak to the qualities of the os, but hopefully this won't be the entire a11y experience both on the website and on the os itself if both use flutter.
- ponderingfish 6y agoSorry I don't get the USP of this. Can someone explain what's the best of both worlds that is being offered here? Thanks!
- hardwaresofton 6y agoThe write-once-run-everywhere promise -- Flutter is really good at multi-platform support because it works at the pixel level. So in a browser/web context, all you need (roughly) is a canvas, and to compile the relevant Dart to JS and you're off to the races.
- hdsikeks 6y agoCan you give an example of a flutter app people use by choice outside of android? I think my google wifi app uses it and that's about it, and the google wifi app is not exactly the picture of quality software. The framework seems designed to hold the hand of android developers, not to provide a decent experience to the end user. I have no clue why people keep referencing it as some kind of working cross-platform solution when it clearly caters exclusively to android.
- nmcain 6y agoFlutter's team is making efforts to improve it on other platforms, iirc it powers Stadia, and the new Google iOT hardware like the Home Hub (or whever they are calling that now) and the new Google TV.
- nmcain 6y agoNot to mention some of the best touch gesture support on Linux I have seen so far, one of the benefits of it being a mobile platform ig
- happymellon 6y agoBut thats just Flutter, and it can already run on Linux. What is the benefit of Fuchia?
- furjdjslskfnfjr 6y ago"Best of gnu/Linux"—you must be referring to drivers.
- mhd 6y agoIt also seems to combine the worst of both platforms: Apps. Is there any OSDEV work that goes towards a more integrated, component-based architecture? As sad as it seems, Unix tools & pipes seems to be the most successful and enduring attempt in that direction. Systems doing that on a language basis seem mostly dead (Lisps, Smalltalks, Oberons), component architecture isn't doing much (OpenDoc as the prime example, CORBA/COM to a minor degree). I don't think we'll be breaking much new ground when it just comes down to more efficient runtimes, packaging and ways to launch the same old ultra-tightly focused applications.
- pjmlp 6y agoComponent architecture is everywhere on the desktops, just not on those using UNIX text terminals. COM has been the underlying driving technology of Windows since Vista, where the Windows team took the Longhorn .NET ideas and redid them with COM, since then we got COM improved as WinRT/UWP. Which despite the common mix with the store (blame marketing teams), is what to this day most Windows 10 APIs make use of, and now even React Native for Windows is built on top of. On Apple side, we have XPC being increasingly used, while Android uses a mix Binder and Activities, also the same IPC mechanism powering Treble based drivers. XFCE, GNOME and KDE make heavy use of DBUS. Then I laugh of joy with hype around gRPC, as everyone is just rediscovering CORBA. Lisps, Smalltalks, Oberons ideas can be replicated on top of those component stacks, which is what Powershell actually does to certain extent on Windows. The tools are there, learn to use them Luke.
- hans_castorp 6y agoHow can they release it under the Apache license (which I applaud) if they use the Linux kernel which is GPL- I always thought those two licenses are incompatible (because of the restrictiveness of the GPL)
- nmcain 6y agoThe builds are not neccessarily licensed, Fuchsia is Apache, and our source is Apache, I'm not quite sure legally about the final product of it. The underlying Linux system is licensed under various licenses, which are provided with the system. We release the GPL bits under the GPL, and the Apache bits under Apache 2.0, in addition to the other third party components which have miscellaneous licenses.
- chrisdinn 6y agoFuchsia is 3-clause BSD, not Apache, though Google does use Apache generally. https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/master/LICENSE https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/master...
- olliej 6y agoWhat is it taking from fuchsia? The core benefits of fuchsia are the kernel architecture and the security model it allows. If you're using linux for the kernel you have inherently done away with the primary advantage of fuchsia. I looked briefly at the homepage but the actual architecture was not obvious even though their webpage was "pretty". Can someone explain what it is they've done in a nice easy TLDR form?
- nmcain 6y agoWith those benefits, there are also some major caveats that temporarily put a wrench in development. Fuchsia demands a system with a Kaby Lake CPU or newer, which were fairly hard to come by. Thanks to recent innovations in Fuchsia's emulator, it is easier to work on the UI and lower layers of the system, but it is still much easier to develop on and distribute Linux images for the time being.
- afrojack123 6y agoConsumerOS should be more appropriate for app-based OS.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rcdwealth 6y agoNice flashy website. Should I just trust and install new OS on my computer? How I know it is safe?
- nmcain 6y agoYou can't install it, and this early on you shouldnt. My word alone probably does not carry much weight, but it is relatively safe, likely safer for usage than most current distributions where the only form of security is an up to date kernel. We opted to use a sort of stateful/stateless security model, where the system is stateless and varified on boot, and user files are stored inside an encrypted partition with relatively strict permissions for now.
- sylvain_kerkour 6y agoHi, even if it's very early, congrats for starting such an ambitious project! Instead of aiming the moon today, I may suggest to focus on only one thing and do it very well now. My suggestion is to target mobile / desktop (convergent) linux. The story today is not good, and you seems to have achieved some interesting things with your UI shell that may take years to achieve with the usual linux technologies: Gnome or KDE. You may even be able to quickly make a business by selling pre-flashed linux devices like raspberry pis, pinephones, pinebooks... with your beautiful and easy to use UI.
- legulere 6y agoSo is it a Linux Kernel running or a fuchsia Kernel running or something else?
- hundchenkatze 6y agoBoth / something else? "dahliaOS provides a fast and stable experience on nearly every computer, from a 2004 desktop tower to the latest generation of mobile notebooks. Our dual kernel approach allows users with new(er) hardware to take advantage of the Zircon Kernel, while maintaining support for older devices using the Linux Kernel." https://dahliaos.io/#features https://dahliaos.io/#features
- StreamBright 6y agoI would love to see some Fuchsia + Firecracker project, where the host os is Fuchsia and you can run Linux as Firecracker "VM"s.
- jfdi 6y agoWant to start one?
- swiley 6y agoI'm not convinced google learned anything with android WRT pushing GPU vendors to release driver source. Fuschia looks like it will only be a repeat of these problems.
- IshKebab 6y agoI think they have learned the lesson that GPU venders will never release their source code. Fuchsia seems to be designed precisely to accomodate that fact - drivers are well isolated and speak to the kernel through a well defined (and hopefully stable!) interface (I think this is FIDL). But I don't see how that is relevant here because this thing is based on Linux and X11.
- Wezl 6y agoMaybe link to the website (https://dahliaos.io/ https://dahliaos.io/)?
- WhyNotHugo 6y agohttps://web.dahliaos.io/ https://web.dahliaos.io/ just renders a grey screen for me. Anyone else?
- nmcain 6y agoShould be fixed now, we had a little hiccup with the the translation system that caused it to crash on launch.
- skyde 6y agoI am super interested. Can someone tell me if I use this with the Fuchsia kernel will it be able to run most Linux, command line tool? Is the compatibility just broken because it’s not running a standard X (server/Wayland) or is it deeper ?
- nmcain 6y agoIt uses virtualization to run most/all Linux tools, I'm not quite sure if the functionality is bridged between the UI in Fuchsia yet, but the end product will likely end up looking something look Crostini on Chrome OS.