21 ms·

Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

294 points by panic 5y ago

piokoch 5y ago
10 years ago I would be really excited, as I could expect some groundbreaking tech like search engine or revolutionary approach to something, like Gmail (no ads sent to users, great UI, hige disk space). Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web... Maybe I am wrong, I hope I am wrong.
- kervantas 5y ago
  I too have become more cynical in the recent years...
- _Microft 5y ago
  You might want to add: [I wonder] when it will be discontinued with just a one month's notice and will turn my device into a brick.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    This is the bigger risk. I don't see Fuchsia as a walled garden OS as it's pretty well designed to avoid that. Userspace everything with a microkernel makes for a nice small security footprint for IoT devices that can be perpetually updated. The issue is how long google keeps up "perpetual".
- IntelMiner 5y ago
  To add to the pot of cynics I wonder how much of it is driven to supplant Linux's "viral" GPL-ness
  - getcrunk 5y ago
    Right on the money! Interesting/scary times ahead. But maybe there will be unexpected gifts in the form of open source dev around zircon
  - bayindirh 5y ago
    Built on GPL, but not encumbered by it! It's free to take whatever direction it wants! Join the independent* revolution! /s This PSA is proudly brought you by Google's Bureau of Prop... ehrm Truth. *: independence neither implies nor contains freedom.
    - josefx 5y ago
      Or: "Join the independent" is a slogan of the open handset alliance, users are required to install Google Play and related services on all applicable devices.
  - zibzab 5y ago
    Google open source engagement was already "throw over the wall" style before this. I assume things will only get worse now.
    - kerneis 5y ago
      Fuchsia, like Chrome, has been open-source for years, and all commits and reviews as well as the bug tracker are public. It is a very different model from how Android releases work. (Disclaimer: I work on Fuchsia at Google.)
      - tmccrary55 5y ago
        Good thing trusty google never changes direction or policies and that fuschia is copyleft, so it can never be closed in the future.
      - kemonocode 5y ago
        The fact it's more permissive with its license already does not bode well. Just like with Chrome, there could be a myriad of forks that can be closed source themselves and so without easy means to peek inside what they're really doing, and although many distributors did the bare minimum with Android due to its Linux kernel's license, there was something.
- SiVal 5y ago
  Yes, now when Google's social enforcement algorithms label you an impediment, they can not only delete your YouTube video business and cut you off from your email, calendar, and Google Docs, they'll be able to turn the heat off in your house. The march of progress.
  - protomyth 5y ago
    Five years ago, I would have thought you were trolling, but now you are right. With this scorched earth mentality exercised by the big companies, this is a very real possibility. What scared me quite a bit was Apple blocking all services when an Apple Card wasn't paid. That leads me to believe that Google could via an algorithm's decision disable a Nest thermostat during winter. I don't see IoT as anything but a risk.
    - ihsw 5y ago
      Google would have the power to enact their racial equity agenda and turn down the heat in white households during winter. Just a few degrees because they "should feel uncomfortable" while black and brown bodies are suffering.
    - CharlesW 5y ago
      > What scared me quite a bit was Apple blocking all services when an Apple Card wasn't paid. I'm not trying to sway your opinion of Apple, but you should know that Mr. Curtis's Apple ID problem was discovered to be unrelated. Apple doen't disable Apple ID services because of missed Apple Card payments. https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/03/apple-card-apple-id-unrelated/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/03/apple-card-apple-id-unrelated...
      - zodiakzz 5y ago
        ??? Your linked article says the situation is even worse. Not just Apple Card, you can have Apple services disabled if you owe money to any part of their ecosystem.
    - arthur_sav 5y ago
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I think you are wrong that Gmail was revolutionary. It was a good service, but nothing special in my opinion. But yes, the license would allow Google to close the system down whenever they want. Still curious to know how Fuchsia would be a better choice for a system. Nest seems to be powered by Fuchsia...
  - Tomte 5y ago
    A gigabyte mailbox space was revolutionary when many competitors only gave 20 megabytes for free (and you could pay and upgrade to 150 megabytes or so). That was an example where a simple change in a number turned into a qualitatively different service.
    - blackoil 5y ago
      IIRC Hotmail was only 2MB at the time of announcement.
  - rerx 5y ago
    The storage, the spam filtering, the interface were massive improvements over the status quo of the day.
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    Its so weird how fast history is forgotten. Gmail was a galactic leap forward in terms of mail clients. At school there was a grey market to sell gmail invites at 20 dollars per
    - rootsudo 5y ago
      It really is. Things get comfortable and people assume that's always how it was. Like cell phones. Wow, over a decade of them and if you had one 15 years ago you were considered a early adapter, and 20 years ago you were way ahead the curve. If you had one in the 90's, wow. Still, mobile computer in your pocket, wow.
      - 5y ago
- rvz 5y ago
  > Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web... Since Chrome came along, the 'Web' became less free from the start and the moment Google forked WebKit (called Blink) to use it in their own browser, it has turned the web more into a walled garden each time apps use specific Chrome features and it is getting worse. Even in that early decade, we knew about how Google and others were tracking us since the PRISM program leaks. Later DRM was added with reasons and votes unknown, devs have to keep telling users to switch from any other browser to Chrome to use their apps and now this forked engine is in tons of Electron apps with Microsoft jumping in and using it in their Edge browser. The time to complain was 10 years ago and now it is almost too late. Now Google is doing it again with Fuchsia which will eventually replace ChromeOS and Android. Fuchsia is highly dependent on Flutter and those apps will run on Fuchsia devices on day 1. There is an extremely low chance of that being abandoned so I'm afraid it will continue.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    If it wasn't for Safari, the Web would be a synomim for ChromeOS outside Chromebooks. Firefox is getting irrelevant and the latest news show their focus isn't surely in turning the tide, UI revamp, really?
  - vinkelhake 5y ago
    There's so much here that I don't really know where to start. Maybe some history could be useful? When Chrome came along, the dominant browser was Internet Explorer 7. It had been out for two years when Chrome 1.0 was released. Before IE7, the world ran IE6 for five years. Web development was largely stagnant. That was the world that Chrome came into. Before DRM support was added to browsers, you needed to install plugins to watch protected content. Despite what detractors might think, the content producers were never going to go YOLO and release their content without any protection. There are a lot of us that are happy that we can watch Netflix, Prime or whatever in our browsers. That a ton of desktop apps use Electron is an indictment of the state of native toolkit. Saying that Fuchsia is highly dependent on Flutter is like saying Linux is highly dependent on GTK. With that said, maybe your crystal ball on the future of Fuchsia isn't so clear.
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  With how Google is acting, I am fairly certain that I well never willingly buy a device that runs Fuchsia. I will have to find a better alternative device/OS or keep my current Android phone going forever. There is however a huge issue of being locked-in to only officially-sanctioned OS versions, and I fully expect Google to try and completely replace everything that is still open in Android with proprietary replacements, making the Fuchsia-based phone OS the only accepted version. As an example of the lock-in, the primary mobile payments app where I live has the following list of requirements/restrictions: - Android or iOS only (there is no PWA or other web-based version) - Minimum version is currently Android 6.0 or iOS 11 - Device must not be jailbroken or rooted - Device must not run a non-official ROM, such as LineageOS The use of this app is pervasive in society here, if you buy/sell anything second-hand, people will expect you to use it and will be surprised, annoyed, and/or suspicious if you prefer to use cash instead. And this is by far not the only app with these restrictions. Banking apps, streaming services, there are a large number of apps with these restrictions, all under the guise of security concerns. Thankfully most of them have web-based versions or alternatives, but it can present enough of a hurdle that even tech-savvy people either will not or cannot use anything but a recent Android or iOS device. Almost as bad are websites that would work perfectly well in a mobile browser, but practice "soft" lock-in by condescendingly pointing you towards the official Play Store/App Store if you try to load the site in a mobile browser. Facebook Messenger is a huge and obvious offender here, there is nothing about instant messaging that wouldn't work perfectly well in a browser, after all the desktop version at messenger.com works just fine.
- dkersten 5y ago
  Don’t worry, they’ll abandon it in a year or two because not enough people use it.
  - toyg 5y ago
    Nah, it's an hardware-related project, so it will get entrenched even if it's fundamentally different from other hardware-related Google projects. Eventually you'll be able to buy Google devices that run Android, Google devices that run ChromeOS, and Google devices that run Fuchsia. It will be confusing, but that's fine, because it will all work great as long as you stick to Google's cloud-based services, which is what really matters. Directly or indirectly, OS fragmentation actually helps Google's business model.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Brillo => Android Things => dead after three years.
    - dkersten 5y ago
      Plenty of Google hardware stuff didn't make it, at least, Glass and more recently, Stadia.
- hewrin10 5y ago
  I'm wondering when it will be cancelled or replaced with something else
- DebtDeflation 5y ago
  I'm so done with this smart home stuff. "Alexa, turn on Living Room." "I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding now." I mean, yeah, I can toggle the light switch to get it to turn on, but then it gets screwed up and I need to go into the app to reset it when the internet comes back on. I don't even want to think about a smart thermostat. My dumb thermostat from 10 years ago let's me set timers which is all I really need.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    You don’t want a remote-controlled smart (actually: dumb) home. You want a fully local solution, then you can add remote, internet-dependent functionality like alexa to it. That way your primary mode of control will always work.
    - luma 5y ago
      Agreed. I'll add to that a healthy application of the Principle of Least Astonishment. If you have a light, there should be an obvious light switch nearby that turns the light on and off, and does so even if your home automation system is offline for whatever reason. "Smart" devices should, wherever possible, function as dumb devices if for whatever reason they can't be smart. There are a whole lot of devices that simply become bricks.
      - mikepurvis 5y ago
        "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience."
        wlesieutre 5y ago
        I know it’s a joke but if the failure mode is “brakes don’t work” on an escalator full of people, it is much worse than stairs
        5y ago
- mszcz 5y ago
  Seconded. However, you forgot to worry about the inevitable shutdown just when you would start to enjoy or rely on it.
- ziml77 5y ago
  It sucks. They tried to pull me into the walled garden by ending Works With Nest and I still hate that I had to change to a different solution. The Nest thermostats are great, but having to go through the internet for any automation sucks.
- grawprog 5y ago
  >Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web... There's no need to wonder. Fuchsia's been designed to do all those things and more. https://beebom.com/what-fuchsia-os/ https://beebom.com/what-fuchsia-os/ Starting with a modular design that caters to device manufacturers that allows them to provide only part of the operating system. The days of devices with full os's are coming to an end. Cloud based constant device syncing between all devices >Dependency on Web Apps Google and device manufacturers will have full control over the microkernel and bootloader Honestly, I'm not excited at all. I've been dreading fuchsia since it was first announced. Everything about the os is designed around google having complete control over the os itself and everything on your device.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    Yep. I would guess the main driver for Fuchsia is that being a microkernel, drivers can be userspace things. So less work for Google to manage phone vendors. And the Fuchsia version of "AOSP" is easier to keep their secret sauce out of since there's no Linux GPL wrangling.
- arthur_sav 5y ago
  Moreover, they can arbitrarily ban you from their walled gardens and you're more or less screwed. When their control your email (GMail), business infrastructure (Google Business Apps / Servers etc.), Google Play (matters if you're a developer)... basically your entire digital existence. I really hope we add more regulations to protect people online. While it's not clear for everyone, your digital existence is an essential part of being part of the society.
- Black101 5y ago
  > Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web... I've been worried about it since they announced it which feels like it was 10 years ago.
rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
What's the community-driven alternative?
- Google234 5y ago
  There is no other micro kernel OS being developed with similar effort.
  - zibzab 5y ago
    https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/blog/the-power-of-zephyr-rtos/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/blog/the-power-of-zephyr-...
  - gpderetta 5y ago
    GNU Hurd will be released any time now!
    - 3v1n0 5y ago
      /s?
      - gpderetta 5y ago
        Nooo, completely serious! /s
  - loudmax 5y ago
    There is seL4: https://sel4.systems/ https://sel4.systems/ The resources going into seL4 appear to be nowhere near "similar effort" to what Google is putting into Fuchsia, but it is a legitimate alternative.
    - sanxiyn 5y ago
      Sadly CSIRO axed entire seL4 team, "to focus on AI".
wikibob 5y ago
A big success for Rust in the wild
- Google234 5y ago
  I’m 99% sure it’s mostly C and C++
  - abarth 5y ago
    Fuchsia has a lot of Rust code. (Disclosure: I write Rust code for Fuchsia on a daily basis.)
    - abarth 5y ago
      CLOC says about ~1 MLOC of Rust and ~1.1 MLOC of C++ in https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/src/ https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/s...
      - TchoBeer 5y ago
        I'd still call this a success for rust in the wild, if a huge entrenched company like Google would include it so much for a big OS play, even if it shares that room with more established languages.
  - raggi 5y ago
    There are many ways to cut metrics, but here's some line counts: C 365017 C Header 894250 CMake 396 C++ 2025857 C++ Header 10691 Rust 3124869
  - scoutt 5y ago
    Being these two the most important functions [1], [2]. The rest is merely overhead :) [1] https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/zircon/kernel/arch/arm64/thread.cc#115 https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/z... [2] https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/zircon/kernel/arch/arm64/asm.S#45 https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/z...
getcrunk 5y ago
This is exciting to see (in a neutral way, I'm not rooting for it) because I wonder how large fuchsia will grow and if it will contend with Linux. Why wouldn't Google want to push containers running it's brand spanking new os without 30+ years of cruft on gcp. And if it has performance/security why wouldn't developers start moving over.
- klodolph 5y ago
  It's aimed at the opposite end from GCP, aimed at things like phones, tablets, and laptops.
  - raggi 5y ago
    fwiw, I got us booting on GCE years ago, and the scripts may still work. https://cs.opensource.google/fuchsia/fuchsia/+/main:scripts/gce/ https://cs.opensource.google/fuchsia/fuchsia/+/main:scripts/...
    - znpy 5y ago
      "permission denied"
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - raggi 5y ago
        https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/main/scripts/gce https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/main/scripts/gce may work better. I will ask around if there's something up with some ACLs in code search, it seems to work for me on personal machines and incognito.
- rusk 5y ago
  > without 30+ years of cruft AKA learned experience
  - 5y ago
SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
Hmm, looks like Fuchsia still uses Dart/Flutter for the front end. My experiences have been positive (although I’m sure someone will be happy to explain how my opinion of Flutter is wrong) so I’m glad to see it.
- klodolph 5y ago
  Dart / Flutter is nice, the problems with it back in the day were mostly just the fact that it was (previously) competing with JavaScript on the front-end.
- thecupisblue 5y ago
  I'll gladly come in with the other end of the argument :) Dart? A half-baked language with quite a lot of unexpected gotchas that can cause you to lose days trying to find why something isn't working (only to notice a lib author forgot to add a return for one branch of the code, or the code works differently depending on what runtime it's on). The Flutter ecosystem is constantly breaking, the plugin system was broken for at least a year and "in migration" where most of the stuff you do is either "broken for future" or "is going to be broken in future". Dependencies are in a circular hell where updating one thing might make you update the whole project, but then your project might not be compatible with the current Flutter version so you'll have to nuke your directories and call 'flutter create' again in the project so it recreates stuff with the new templates. Also don't get me started on issues. Had a crash span for over 6+ months on all devices with low-budget Adreno GPU-s, most of the issues were "closed automatically" because of inactivity or because they declared it does not follow the template google requires for the issue, altho there is dozens of them reported, they held a hotfix for months on end in a branch with other changes because it was " a lot of work" to merge it downstream. Had a talk with the Flutter team about reconnecting to isolates on one conf, one dev's answer was "oh yea that's problematic, maybe just the best is for the user to restart the app". It's classic Google behaviour wrapped in a "new cool thing" package. Flutter is a great thing if you wanna build a cheap app fast and never worry with maintaining it ever again. If you're going for something long-term, avoid it like plague.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
mbStavola 5y ago
Around December or January I tried to get Fuchsia going in QEMU to play around a bit and maybe contribute back some code, but nothing quite worked as I expected. Based on this experience I had figured they were still years off from shipping but I'm pleasantly surprised to see that I was (obviously) wrong. Congrats to the team and looking forward to seeing it work as intended!
- abdulla 5y ago
  If you're willing to give it another go, you should try it in FEMU (our fork of QEMU): https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/get-started/set_up_femu https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/get-started/set_up_femu
  - greatgib 5y ago
    Something should be particularly wrong with the project if you have to use your own fork of qemu...
    - luch 5y ago
      It's actually pretty standard to fork QEMU when you want to emulate a custom kernel/board. QEMU is a good common emulation platform, but in no way it can emulate correctly every quirks of a custom pci or even PIC device expected by the system.
      - greatgib 5y ago
        I'm not expert in QEMU, but to my understanding, it would make sense to fork QEMU to support a new hardware/board/platform, but not so much to support a new "software"/"firmware" on top of an already existing and used board platform.
  - throwaway59229 5y ago
    Why did Google choose to fork QEMU? I had a brief look at the setup information and there’s nothing that makes it clear why there’s yet another piece of highly Google-specific (though presumably open source) software that people would need to learn to use while they learn about Fuschia.
vbsteven 5y ago
What is interesting about Fuchsia is how Google first created Flutter and made it popular for Android/iOS and to a lesser extent the web. And now they start releasing Fuchsia OS/devices and developing apps/software for it will immediately feel familiar to many mobile developers. This could help adoption instead of yet another GUI framework to learn from scratch.
- dragonelite 5y ago
  Huawei is doing the same kind of approach, make android apps compatible with their Harmony system. I think everybody has learned from Microsoft and Samsung's experience trying to launch a new ecosystem without support for current application android ecosystems.
  - SSLy 5y ago
    FWIW Harmony OS is just an AOSP skin.
- hollerith 5y ago
  Similarly, free software running on proprietary Unix OSes became (during the years 1983 through 1991) very popular before any free Unix kernel started getting traction.
Grazester 5y ago
I came here for a technical discussion about Fuchsia and it's microkernel approach instead this is mostly fill with complains about Google as a company. Is there a social justice forum I can visit where I may be able to have a technical discussion about Fuchsia?
- kerneis 5y ago
  For what it's worth, a few Google engineers are hanging around so if you have any specific technical question I think we'd be glad to answer it :-)
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Could you say something, how the kernel is different from linux for example? Why would I want to choose Fuchsia for a smartphone, for example. Where is the advantage?
    - kerneis 5y ago
      The key concepts are documented here: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts Some things that Fuchsia was able to do thanks to starting from scratch: - The system is based on capabilities, a security model which is based on explicit tracking of permissions. It wouldn't be possible to change Linux to be capability-based because the ambiant-authority model has been used pervasively since it was conceived 30 years ago. - Fuchsia provides a stable binary interface (like Windows, but unlike Linux). This lets you update your system while keeping some components unchanged, eg. binary drivers from a hardware manufacturer that wouldn't provide updates for them anymore. I think Linux could technically change this, but they have historically been unwilling to, and it is unlikely to change in the future.
      - the8472 5y ago
        > Fuchsia provides a stable binary interface (like Windows, but unlike Linux). Linux does provide a stable binary interface, to userspace. > eg. binary drivers from a hardware manufacturer that wouldn't provide updates for them anymore That can be seen as much as a downside as an upside, because it makes life a lot easier for hardware manufacturers to ship more binary blobs
RavlaAlvar 5y ago
Would this solve the extreme UI lag and make google hub finally useable?
- jasonvorhe 5y ago
  It really depends on the polish of Fuchsia for Nest Hubs. Getting a few more FPS out of the 1st gen hardware is something I'm actually hoping for because it's gotten really slow and I rarily touch the screen anymore because of the lag.
  - mholm 5y ago
    Seriously, this device is only a few years old and it runs like a 2013 windows netbook. Apps crash all the time, bluetooth glitches, unresponsive UI, etc.
bhaavan 5y ago
So is this Zircon kernel based? Or just fancy name for linux?
- sanxiyn 5y ago
  It is using Zircon kernel.
axegon_ 5y ago
I've only recently started fiddling with Fuchsia and I'd be interested to see it running on a device and see how truly usable it could be in the real world. It seems the community is pretty active online which is a good thing: I raised a concern about building Fuchsia on non-Debian based distros and potential solutions(one of which I tested and workes) and I had 4 or 5 replies in a couple of hours. And while the thread has turned into yet another "bash Google" thread, I'd like to thank the engineers for their work and hoping to see more in the future. As I said I haven't tested it on an actual device but if it is as lightweight and versatile as advertised, it has the potential to become incredibly big and valuable. I guess only time will tell.
mwcampbell 5y ago
Does anyone know if Fuchsia, or any higher-level environment built on top of it like this new software for the Nest Hub, includes a screen reader for blind users? This will be necessary before Fuchsia can be considered a full replacement for Android, Chromium OS, etc.
- bionade24 5y ago
  Having a smart speaker with a display doesn't make sense for a bling person imao.
  - mwcampbell 5y ago
    It might make sense for a blind person with sighted family and friends.
    - bondolo 5y ago
      Given that this describes my family and we have a first gen Nest Hub I expect to be able to soon report whether Fushcia is as accessible as the prior Linux stack.
      - mwcampbell 5y ago
        Thanks. If you find that there's a regression in accessibility with this update, I'd appreciate it if you would email me (my email address is in my HN profile), to make sure I get the message even if I forget to check this thread, so I can help sound the alarm.
- kerneis 5y ago
  Yes, Nest displays have a screen reader feature: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9167457 https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9167457 As explained in the article, the release of Fuchsia should not change any supported feature (please report a bug via the "send feedback" option if you notice otherwise!).
wyldfire 5y ago
Congratulations to the team, this is a big milestone. I worry that this will permit Google to disengage from the linux community, but I'm optimistic that it will result in improved device security.
criddell 5y ago
What problem does Fuchsia solve? Google already has at least three other operating systems to use. On the other hand, Google has never seemed particularly shy about starting something new rather than work on something old. I'm thinking of their messaging systems that they start every couple of years. Also, the branding isn't great. The top image in the linked story immediately makes me think this has something to do with T-Mobile.
- bionade24 5y ago
  They haven't worked on the base stuff of Android and ChromeOS. Both use Linux software abandoned by upstream, e.g. ChromeOS uses upstart and have their patched non-mainline kernels. This requires lots of extra work, then even doubled since they have 2 platforms. Wanting to have one mature platform for both makes sense to me.
- tapoxi 5y ago
  It's capability based, so instead of this weird hodgepodge we have in the Linux world that resulted in Docker containers it's natively a part of the OS design. Also its not GPL, so we will see actual binary drivers instead of GPL <> proprietary shims in Linux that need to be recompiled on kernel upgrade. So it solves a lot of problems for Google and can replace Android/Chrome OS/Cast OS.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    > Also its not GPL, so we will see actual binary drivers instead of GPL <> proprietary shims in Linux that need to be recompiled on kernel upgrade. That could be prevented by hardware manufacturers manning up and releasing their source code in full. If the community cared about that hardware, it'd eventually get upstreamed into the kernel, or at least actively maintained as a patchset.
- pradn 5y ago
  I also believe there's significant chunks, like the network stack, written in memory-safe languages like Rust. An improvement over C.
- 5y ago
rosetremiere 5y ago
I recall reading that Huawei's microkernel was actually more interesting/better than fuchsia, on a technical sense (don't know the metric). Anyone has a (founded) opinion on the subject?
m3kw9 5y ago
The average person uses android OS.
roland35 5y ago
I am planning on not purchasing any new google smart home hardware. I am annoyed that my nest thermostat no longer has a way to interface with their API. I purchased it right before the Google acquisition and I would have gone with an Ecobee if I knew the Nest would be inaccessible to a regular user. I believe having an open API is an important part of smart home hardware, even if most users don't use it.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  This doesn't have anything to do with Fuchsia though.
peanut_worm 5y ago
I am not sure I trust Google with an operating system anymore
ptomato 5y ago
imagine releasing a new OS in 2021 written largely in a non-memory-safe language.
- Google234 5y ago
  Modern C++ is memory safe. More so than (unsafe) rust. Also, this OS was not started in 2021..
usbfingers 5y ago
I'm almost more excited because of the proxy network affect this will have on microkernel popularization and alternatives like Dahlia OS (https://dahliaos.io/ https://dahliaos.io/) that are looking to be independent distros of Fuchsia. I understand peoples concern about a walled garden situation here, but I'd argue to only become worried if Fuchsia suddenly stopped being committed to openly and someone needed to maintain a fork. The working code for both the microkernel and the OS is all open source.
paulus_magnus2 5y ago
Why would anyone want to into this? From industry perspective it baffles me how Google divided an conquered not one but multiple platforms: (Android, Google TV, Google Auto). From the user perspective I don't need another toy OS. I was able to develop Linux Kernel modules on my 486dx with 8MB of RAM. I was able to use excel, word on it. Right now I have a mobile phone with better hardware than my work PC from only few years back (8GB RAM, 512GB UFS storage powerful multicore CPU). Still Android only allows me to click colourful buttons and simple apps, it has not progressed at all in the last decade. Samsungs of the world, please come together, build a non-profit consortium and develop an open platform with real OS with full capabilities.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nicaragua 5y ago
I wonder if it will last longer than Stadia did.
cute_boi 5y ago
Its just a attack on linux. Just like what they did to firefox. Made a superior browser and make it opensource and gain monopoly. Now they have control over os. They can do anything.
- SquareWheel 5y ago
  Wake me up when they do that "anything". In the mean time they've created useful and successful open-source products which anyone can benefit from.
  - zentiggr 5y ago
    And yanked them out from underneath the adopters whenever it wasn't fun anymore. I don't trust in anything Google anymore except that internal politics and profit motive will override anything beneficial eventually. Look at Chrome if you're not sure what I mean.
  - cute_boi 5y ago
    Yea I can see that with chrome. They created useful in that time that any opensource benefit others. After that they started writing their own spec for chrome, made youtube slow on firefox using shadow dom api etc. These I think google is more evil that microsoft. But many people enjoy free service thats why they are not complaining.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    You must have not noticed that Chrome is the new IE, or that they recently revoked API keys that open source Chromium forks (including ones that just disable certain features, so they are 99% the same as official Chrome) have been using for years to allow them to sync bookmarks and the like.
    - SquareWheel 5y ago
      > "Chrome is the new IE" Safari is the new IE. It's stagnated in the same way IE did, which has slowed the progression of web standards. How long did it take to get input type="date"? Apple's attack on PWAs also shows they wish to neuter the web to encourage use of their app store (where they take a 30% cut) instead. > "or that they recently revoked API keys..." The code is open-source, but they aren't obligated to grant access to their services.
phendrenad2 5y ago
Congrats to the Fuschia/Zircon team! It's very exciting to see a freshly-architected OS appear on the scene, with a non-copyleft license, a big company behind it (so hardware vendors will actually write drivers for it), and direction set by one company (instead of 10+ as is the case with Linux/Android). Can't wait to play around with it :-)
josefresco 5y ago
I can't say I've ever thought about the OS on my Nest Hub. It's a digital picture frame, and it plays YouTubeTV/Music while I'm in the kitchen. It occasionally answers a question - what will this new OS change?
- fctorial 5y ago
  > What will this new OS change? Nothing, this release is a field test.
wyldfire 5y ago
Which architectures have fuchsia ports? And what cpu feature/device support is needed to port fuchsia?
- Jyaif 5y ago
  x64 and arm64 https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/architecture/architecture_support https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/architecture/archit...
andrekandre 5y ago
according to ars technica [1] they removed the ui layer from the repo... is that accurate and does that mean we are in for a macos type situation where the real treasure (the ui bits) are locked away? [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/google-launches-its-third-major-operating-system-fuchsia/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/google-launches-its-...
nicaragua 5y ago
Never trust a company without a customer service department.
- nicaragua 5y ago
  Love how the insecure people downvote such a fact.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
Google has officially outdid itself in under-marketing a major platform. A brand new OS, and... barely anything even on hacker news. No barrage of media leading up to the annoucement. Is this basically a boondoggle being relegated to IoT?
perl4ever 5y ago
What I really wanted to know: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-the-colors-fuschia-and-magenta https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-the-col... (not much)
bradgranath 5y ago
The badbadbad part is that this won't be open, and it'll force adoption of restricted hardware that will no longer be usable by the AOSP. Prolly 5 years out, but still; pour one out for unlocked Android-compatible hardware at any price. Gonna hafta go full tinfoil hat and get a PinePhone.

294 points by panic 5y ago

10 years ago I would be really excited, as I could expect some groundbreaking tech like search engine or revolutionary approach to something, like Gmail (no ads sent to users, great UI, hige disk space). Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web... Maybe I am wrong, I hope I am wrong.

kervantas 5y ago
I too have become more cynical in the recent years...
_Microft 5y ago
You might want to add: [I wonder] when it will be discontinued with just a one month's notice and will turn my device into a brick.
- cogman10 5y ago
  This is the bigger risk. I don't see Fuchsia as a walled garden OS as it's pretty well designed to avoid that. Userspace everything with a microkernel makes for a nice small security footprint for IoT devices that can be perpetually updated. The issue is how long google keeps up "perpetual".
IntelMiner 5y ago
To add to the pot of cynics I wonder how much of it is driven to supplant Linux's "viral" GPL-ness
- getcrunk 5y ago
  Right on the money! Interesting/scary times ahead. But maybe there will be unexpected gifts in the form of open source dev around zircon
- bayindirh 5y ago
  Built on GPL, but not encumbered by it! It's free to take whatever direction it wants! Join the independent* revolution! /s This PSA is proudly brought you by Google's Bureau of Prop... ehrm Truth. *: independence neither implies nor contains freedom.
  - josefx 5y ago
    Or: "Join the independent" is a slogan of the open handset alliance, users are required to install Google Play and related services on all applicable devices.
- zibzab 5y ago
  Google open source engagement was already "throw over the wall" style before this. I assume things will only get worse now.
  - kerneis 5y ago
    Fuchsia, like Chrome, has been open-source for years, and all commits and reviews as well as the bug tracker are public. It is a very different model from how Android releases work. (Disclaimer: I work on Fuchsia at Google.)
    - tmccrary55 5y ago
      Good thing trusty google never changes direction or policies and that fuschia is copyleft, so it can never be closed in the future.
    - kemonocode 5y ago
      The fact it's more permissive with its license already does not bode well. Just like with Chrome, there could be a myriad of forks that can be closed source themselves and so without easy means to peek inside what they're really doing, and although many distributors did the bare minimum with Android due to its Linux kernel's license, there was something.
SiVal 5y ago
Yes, now when Google's social enforcement algorithms label you an impediment, they can not only delete your YouTube video business and cut you off from your email, calendar, and Google Docs, they'll be able to turn the heat off in your house. The march of progress.
- protomyth 5y ago
  Five years ago, I would have thought you were trolling, but now you are right. With this scorched earth mentality exercised by the big companies, this is a very real possibility. What scared me quite a bit was Apple blocking all services when an Apple Card wasn't paid. That leads me to believe that Google could via an algorithm's decision disable a Nest thermostat during winter. I don't see IoT as anything but a risk.
  - ihsw 5y ago
    Google would have the power to enact their racial equity agenda and turn down the heat in white households during winter. Just a few degrees because they "should feel uncomfortable" while black and brown bodies are suffering.
  - CharlesW 5y ago
    > What scared me quite a bit was Apple blocking all services when an Apple Card wasn't paid. I'm not trying to sway your opinion of Apple, but you should know that Mr. Curtis's Apple ID problem was discovered to be unrelated. Apple doen't disable Apple ID services because of missed Apple Card payments. https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/03/apple-card-apple-id-unrelated/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/03/apple-card-apple-id-unrelated...
    - zodiakzz 5y ago
      ??? Your linked article says the situation is even worse. Not just Apple Card, you can have Apple services disabled if you owe money to any part of their ecosystem.
  - arthur_sav 5y ago
raxxorrax 5y ago
I think you are wrong that Gmail was revolutionary. It was a good service, but nothing special in my opinion. But yes, the license would allow Google to close the system down whenever they want. Still curious to know how Fuchsia would be a better choice for a system. Nest seems to be powered by Fuchsia...
- Tomte 5y ago
  A gigabyte mailbox space was revolutionary when many competitors only gave 20 megabytes for free (and you could pay and upgrade to 150 megabytes or so). That was an example where a simple change in a number turned into a qualitatively different service.
  - blackoil 5y ago
    IIRC Hotmail was only 2MB at the time of announcement.
- rerx 5y ago
  The storage, the spam filtering, the interface were massive improvements over the status quo of the day.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  Its so weird how fast history is forgotten. Gmail was a galactic leap forward in terms of mail clients. At school there was a grey market to sell gmail invites at 20 dollars per
  - rootsudo 5y ago
    It really is. Things get comfortable and people assume that's always how it was. Like cell phones. Wow, over a decade of them and if you had one 15 years ago you were considered a early adapter, and 20 years ago you were way ahead the curve. If you had one in the 90's, wow. Still, mobile computer in your pocket, wow.
    - 5y ago
rvz 5y ago
> Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web... Since Chrome came along, the 'Web' became less free from the start and the moment Google forked WebKit (called Blink) to use it in their own browser, it has turned the web more into a walled garden each time apps use specific Chrome features and it is getting worse. Even in that early decade, we knew about how Google and others were tracking us since the PRISM program leaks. Later DRM was added with reasons and votes unknown, devs have to keep telling users to switch from any other browser to Chrome to use their apps and now this forked engine is in tons of Electron apps with Microsoft jumping in and using it in their Edge browser. The time to complain was 10 years ago and now it is almost too late. Now Google is doing it again with Fuchsia which will eventually replace ChromeOS and Android. Fuchsia is highly dependent on Flutter and those apps will run on Fuchsia devices on day 1. There is an extremely low chance of that being abandoned so I'm afraid it will continue.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  If it wasn't for Safari, the Web would be a synomim for ChromeOS outside Chromebooks. Firefox is getting irrelevant and the latest news show their focus isn't surely in turning the tide, UI revamp, really?
- vinkelhake 5y ago
  There's so much here that I don't really know where to start. Maybe some history could be useful? When Chrome came along, the dominant browser was Internet Explorer 7. It had been out for two years when Chrome 1.0 was released. Before IE7, the world ran IE6 for five years. Web development was largely stagnant. That was the world that Chrome came into. Before DRM support was added to browsers, you needed to install plugins to watch protected content. Despite what detractors might think, the content producers were never going to go YOLO and release their content without any protection. There are a lot of us that are happy that we can watch Netflix, Prime or whatever in our browsers. That a ton of desktop apps use Electron is an indictment of the state of native toolkit. Saying that Fuchsia is highly dependent on Flutter is like saying Linux is highly dependent on GTK. With that said, maybe your crystal ball on the future of Fuchsia isn't so clear.
KozmoNau7 5y ago
With how Google is acting, I am fairly certain that I well never willingly buy a device that runs Fuchsia. I will have to find a better alternative device/OS or keep my current Android phone going forever. There is however a huge issue of being locked-in to only officially-sanctioned OS versions, and I fully expect Google to try and completely replace everything that is still open in Android with proprietary replacements, making the Fuchsia-based phone OS the only accepted version. As an example of the lock-in, the primary mobile payments app where I live has the following list of requirements/restrictions: - Android or iOS only (there is no PWA or other web-based version) - Minimum version is currently Android 6.0 or iOS 11 - Device must not be jailbroken or rooted - Device must not run a non-official ROM, such as LineageOS The use of this app is pervasive in society here, if you buy/sell anything second-hand, people will expect you to use it and will be surprised, annoyed, and/or suspicious if you prefer to use cash instead. And this is by far not the only app with these restrictions. Banking apps, streaming services, there are a large number of apps with these restrictions, all under the guise of security concerns. Thankfully most of them have web-based versions or alternatives, but it can present enough of a hurdle that even tech-savvy people either will not or cannot use anything but a recent Android or iOS device. Almost as bad are websites that would work perfectly well in a mobile browser, but practice "soft" lock-in by condescendingly pointing you towards the official Play Store/App Store if you try to load the site in a mobile browser. Facebook Messenger is a huge and obvious offender here, there is nothing about instant messaging that wouldn't work perfectly well in a browser, after all the desktop version at messenger.com works just fine.
dkersten 5y ago
Don’t worry, they’ll abandon it in a year or two because not enough people use it.
- toyg 5y ago
  Nah, it's an hardware-related project, so it will get entrenched even if it's fundamentally different from other hardware-related Google projects. Eventually you'll be able to buy Google devices that run Android, Google devices that run ChromeOS, and Google devices that run Fuchsia. It will be confusing, but that's fine, because it will all work great as long as you stick to Google's cloud-based services, which is what really matters. Directly or indirectly, OS fragmentation actually helps Google's business model.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Brillo => Android Things => dead after three years.
  - dkersten 5y ago
    Plenty of Google hardware stuff didn't make it, at least, Glass and more recently, Stadia.
hewrin10 5y ago
I'm wondering when it will be cancelled or replaced with something else
DebtDeflation 5y ago
I'm so done with this smart home stuff. "Alexa, turn on Living Room." "I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding now." I mean, yeah, I can toggle the light switch to get it to turn on, but then it gets screwed up and I need to go into the app to reset it when the internet comes back on. I don't even want to think about a smart thermostat. My dumb thermostat from 10 years ago let's me set timers which is all I really need.
- Semaphor 5y ago
  You don’t want a remote-controlled smart (actually: dumb) home. You want a fully local solution, then you can add remote, internet-dependent functionality like alexa to it. That way your primary mode of control will always work.
  - luma 5y ago
    Agreed. I'll add to that a healthy application of the Principle of Least Astonishment. If you have a light, there should be an obvious light switch nearby that turns the light on and off, and does so even if your home automation system is offline for whatever reason. "Smart" devices should, wherever possible, function as dumb devices if for whatever reason they can't be smart. There are a whole lot of devices that simply become bricks.
    - mikepurvis 5y ago
      "An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience."
      - wlesieutre 5y ago
        I know it’s a joke but if the failure mode is “brakes don’t work” on an escalator full of people, it is much worse than stairs
        5y ago
mszcz 5y ago
Seconded. However, you forgot to worry about the inevitable shutdown just when you would start to enjoy or rely on it.
ziml77 5y ago
It sucks. They tried to pull me into the walled garden by ending Works With Nest and I still hate that I had to change to a different solution. The Nest thermostats are great, but having to go through the internet for any automation sucks.
grawprog 5y ago
>Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web... There's no need to wonder. Fuchsia's been designed to do all those things and more. https://beebom.com/what-fuchsia-os/ https://beebom.com/what-fuchsia-os/ Starting with a modular design that caters to device manufacturers that allows them to provide only part of the operating system. The days of devices with full os's are coming to an end. Cloud based constant device syncing between all devices >Dependency on Web Apps Google and device manufacturers will have full control over the microkernel and bootloader Honestly, I'm not excited at all. I've been dreading fuchsia since it was first announced. Everything about the os is designed around google having complete control over the os itself and everything on your device.
- tyingq 5y ago
  Yep. I would guess the main driver for Fuchsia is that being a microkernel, drivers can be userspace things. So less work for Google to manage phone vendors. And the Fuchsia version of "AOSP" is easier to keep their secret sauce out of since there's no Linux GPL wrangling.
arthur_sav 5y ago
Moreover, they can arbitrarily ban you from their walled gardens and you're more or less screwed. When their control your email (GMail), business infrastructure (Google Business Apps / Servers etc.), Google Play (matters if you're a developer)... basically your entire digital existence. I really hope we add more regulations to protect people online. While it's not clear for everyone, your digital existence is an essential part of being part of the society.
Black101 5y ago
> Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web... I've been worried about it since they announced it which feels like it was 10 years ago.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago

What's the community-driven alternative?

Google234 5y ago
There is no other micro kernel OS being developed with similar effort.
- zibzab 5y ago
  https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/blog/the-power-of-zephyr-rtos/ https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/blog/the-power-of-zephyr-...
- gpderetta 5y ago
  GNU Hurd will be released any time now!
  - 3v1n0 5y ago
    /s?
    - gpderetta 5y ago
      Nooo, completely serious! /s
- loudmax 5y ago
  There is seL4: https://sel4.systems/ https://sel4.systems/ The resources going into seL4 appear to be nowhere near "similar effort" to what Google is putting into Fuchsia, but it is a legitimate alternative.
  - sanxiyn 5y ago
    Sadly CSIRO axed entire seL4 team, "to focus on AI".

wikibob 5y ago

A big success for Rust in the wild

Google234 5y ago
I’m 99% sure it’s mostly C and C++
- abarth 5y ago
  Fuchsia has a lot of Rust code. (Disclosure: I write Rust code for Fuchsia on a daily basis.)
  - abarth 5y ago
    CLOC says about ~1 MLOC of Rust and ~1.1 MLOC of C++ in https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/src/ https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/s...
    - TchoBeer 5y ago
      I'd still call this a success for rust in the wild, if a huge entrenched company like Google would include it so much for a big OS play, even if it shares that room with more established languages.
- raggi 5y ago
  There are many ways to cut metrics, but here's some line counts: C 365017 C Header 894250 CMake 396 C++ 2025857 C++ Header 10691 Rust 3124869
- scoutt 5y ago
  Being these two the most important functions [1], [2]. The rest is merely overhead :) [1] https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/zircon/kernel/arch/arm64/thread.cc#115 https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/z... [2] https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/zircon/kernel/arch/arm64/asm.S#45 https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/main/z...

getcrunk 5y ago

This is exciting to see (in a neutral way, I'm not rooting for it) because I wonder how large fuchsia will grow and if it will contend with Linux. Why wouldn't Google want to push containers running it's brand spanking new os without 30+ years of cruft on gcp. And if it has performance/security why wouldn't developers start moving over.

klodolph 5y ago
It's aimed at the opposite end from GCP, aimed at things like phones, tablets, and laptops.
- raggi 5y ago
  fwiw, I got us booting on GCE years ago, and the scripts may still work. https://cs.opensource.google/fuchsia/fuchsia/+/main:scripts/gce/ https://cs.opensource.google/fuchsia/fuchsia/+/main:scripts/...
  - znpy 5y ago
    "permission denied"
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - raggi 5y ago
      https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/main/scripts/gce https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/main/scripts/gce may work better. I will ask around if there's something up with some ACLs in code search, it seems to work for me on personal machines and incognito.
rusk 5y ago
> without 30+ years of cruft AKA learned experience
- 5y ago

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

Hmm, looks like Fuchsia still uses Dart/Flutter for the front end. My experiences have been positive (although I’m sure someone will be happy to explain how my opinion of Flutter is wrong) so I’m glad to see it.

klodolph 5y ago
Dart / Flutter is nice, the problems with it back in the day were mostly just the fact that it was (previously) competing with JavaScript on the front-end.
thecupisblue 5y ago
I'll gladly come in with the other end of the argument :) Dart? A half-baked language with quite a lot of unexpected gotchas that can cause you to lose days trying to find why something isn't working (only to notice a lib author forgot to add a return for one branch of the code, or the code works differently depending on what runtime it's on). The Flutter ecosystem is constantly breaking, the plugin system was broken for at least a year and "in migration" where most of the stuff you do is either "broken for future" or "is going to be broken in future". Dependencies are in a circular hell where updating one thing might make you update the whole project, but then your project might not be compatible with the current Flutter version so you'll have to nuke your directories and call 'flutter create' again in the project so it recreates stuff with the new templates. Also don't get me started on issues. Had a crash span for over 6+ months on all devices with low-budget Adreno GPU-s, most of the issues were "closed automatically" because of inactivity or because they declared it does not follow the template google requires for the issue, altho there is dozens of them reported, they held a hotfix for months on end in a branch with other changes because it was " a lot of work" to merge it downstream. Had a talk with the Flutter team about reconnecting to isolates on one conf, one dev's answer was "oh yea that's problematic, maybe just the best is for the user to restart the app". It's classic Google behaviour wrapped in a "new cool thing" package. Flutter is a great thing if you wanna build a cheap app fast and never worry with maintaining it ever again. If you're going for something long-term, avoid it like plague.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

mbStavola 5y ago

Around December or January I tried to get Fuchsia going in QEMU to play around a bit and maybe contribute back some code, but nothing quite worked as I expected. Based on this experience I had figured they were still years off from shipping but I'm pleasantly surprised to see that I was (obviously) wrong. Congrats to the team and looking forward to seeing it work as intended!

abdulla 5y ago
If you're willing to give it another go, you should try it in FEMU (our fork of QEMU): https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/get-started/set_up_femu https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/get-started/set_up_femu
- greatgib 5y ago
  Something should be particularly wrong with the project if you have to use your own fork of qemu...
  - luch 5y ago
    It's actually pretty standard to fork QEMU when you want to emulate a custom kernel/board. QEMU is a good common emulation platform, but in no way it can emulate correctly every quirks of a custom pci or even PIC device expected by the system.
    - greatgib 5y ago
      I'm not expert in QEMU, but to my understanding, it would make sense to fork QEMU to support a new hardware/board/platform, but not so much to support a new "software"/"firmware" on top of an already existing and used board platform.
- throwaway59229 5y ago
  Why did Google choose to fork QEMU? I had a brief look at the setup information and there’s nothing that makes it clear why there’s yet another piece of highly Google-specific (though presumably open source) software that people would need to learn to use while they learn about Fuschia.

vbsteven 5y ago

What is interesting about Fuchsia is how Google first created Flutter and made it popular for Android/iOS and to a lesser extent the web. And now they start releasing Fuchsia OS/devices and developing apps/software for it will immediately feel familiar to many mobile developers. This could help adoption instead of yet another GUI framework to learn from scratch.

dragonelite 5y ago
Huawei is doing the same kind of approach, make android apps compatible with their Harmony system. I think everybody has learned from Microsoft and Samsung's experience trying to launch a new ecosystem without support for current application android ecosystems.
- SSLy 5y ago
  FWIW Harmony OS is just an AOSP skin.
hollerith 5y ago
Similarly, free software running on proprietary Unix OSes became (during the years 1983 through 1991) very popular before any free Unix kernel started getting traction.

Grazester 5y ago

I came here for a technical discussion about Fuchsia and it's microkernel approach instead this is mostly fill with complains about Google as a company. Is there a social justice forum I can visit where I may be able to have a technical discussion about Fuchsia?

kerneis 5y ago
For what it's worth, a few Google engineers are hanging around so if you have any specific technical question I think we'd be glad to answer it :-)
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  Could you say something, how the kernel is different from linux for example? Why would I want to choose Fuchsia for a smartphone, for example. Where is the advantage?
  - kerneis 5y ago
    The key concepts are documented here: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts Some things that Fuchsia was able to do thanks to starting from scratch: - The system is based on capabilities, a security model which is based on explicit tracking of permissions. It wouldn't be possible to change Linux to be capability-based because the ambiant-authority model has been used pervasively since it was conceived 30 years ago. - Fuchsia provides a stable binary interface (like Windows, but unlike Linux). This lets you update your system while keeping some components unchanged, eg. binary drivers from a hardware manufacturer that wouldn't provide updates for them anymore. I think Linux could technically change this, but they have historically been unwilling to, and it is unlikely to change in the future.
    - the8472 5y ago
      > Fuchsia provides a stable binary interface (like Windows, but unlike Linux). Linux does provide a stable binary interface, to userspace. > eg. binary drivers from a hardware manufacturer that wouldn't provide updates for them anymore That can be seen as much as a downside as an upside, because it makes life a lot easier for hardware manufacturers to ship more binary blobs

RavlaAlvar 5y ago

Would this solve the extreme UI lag and make google hub finally useable?

jasonvorhe 5y ago
It really depends on the polish of Fuchsia for Nest Hubs. Getting a few more FPS out of the 1st gen hardware is something I'm actually hoping for because it's gotten really slow and I rarily touch the screen anymore because of the lag.
- mholm 5y ago
  Seriously, this device is only a few years old and it runs like a 2013 windows netbook. Apps crash all the time, bluetooth glitches, unresponsive UI, etc.

bhaavan 5y ago

So is this Zircon kernel based? Or just fancy name for linux?

sanxiyn 5y ago
It is using Zircon kernel.

axegon_ 5y ago

I've only recently started fiddling with Fuchsia and I'd be interested to see it running on a device and see how truly usable it could be in the real world. It seems the community is pretty active online which is a good thing: I raised a concern about building Fuchsia on non-Debian based distros and potential solutions(one of which I tested and workes) and I had 4 or 5 replies in a couple of hours. And while the thread has turned into yet another "bash Google" thread, I'd like to thank the engineers for their work and hoping to see more in the future. As I said I haven't tested it on an actual device but if it is as lightweight and versatile as advertised, it has the potential to become incredibly big and valuable. I guess only time will tell.

mwcampbell 5y ago

Does anyone know if Fuchsia, or any higher-level environment built on top of it like this new software for the Nest Hub, includes a screen reader for blind users? This will be necessary before Fuchsia can be considered a full replacement for Android, Chromium OS, etc.

bionade24 5y ago
Having a smart speaker with a display doesn't make sense for a bling person imao.
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  It might make sense for a blind person with sighted family and friends.
  - bondolo 5y ago
    Given that this describes my family and we have a first gen Nest Hub I expect to be able to soon report whether Fushcia is as accessible as the prior Linux stack.
    - mwcampbell 5y ago
      Thanks. If you find that there's a regression in accessibility with this update, I'd appreciate it if you would email me (my email address is in my HN profile), to make sure I get the message even if I forget to check this thread, so I can help sound the alarm.
kerneis 5y ago
Yes, Nest displays have a screen reader feature: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9167457 https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9167457 As explained in the article, the release of Fuchsia should not change any supported feature (please report a bug via the "send feedback" option if you notice otherwise!).

wyldfire 5y ago

Congratulations to the team, this is a big milestone. I worry that this will permit Google to disengage from the linux community, but I'm optimistic that it will result in improved device security.

criddell 5y ago

What problem does Fuchsia solve? Google already has at least three other operating systems to use. On the other hand, Google has never seemed particularly shy about starting something new rather than work on something old. I'm thinking of their messaging systems that they start every couple of years. Also, the branding isn't great. The top image in the linked story immediately makes me think this has something to do with T-Mobile.

bionade24 5y ago
They haven't worked on the base stuff of Android and ChromeOS. Both use Linux software abandoned by upstream, e.g. ChromeOS uses upstart and have their patched non-mainline kernels. This requires lots of extra work, then even doubled since they have 2 platforms. Wanting to have one mature platform for both makes sense to me.
tapoxi 5y ago
It's capability based, so instead of this weird hodgepodge we have in the Linux world that resulted in Docker containers it's natively a part of the OS design. Also its not GPL, so we will see actual binary drivers instead of GPL <> proprietary shims in Linux that need to be recompiled on kernel upgrade. So it solves a lot of problems for Google and can replace Android/Chrome OS/Cast OS.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  > Also its not GPL, so we will see actual binary drivers instead of GPL <> proprietary shims in Linux that need to be recompiled on kernel upgrade. That could be prevented by hardware manufacturers manning up and releasing their source code in full. If the community cared about that hardware, it'd eventually get upstreamed into the kernel, or at least actively maintained as a patchset.
pradn 5y ago
I also believe there's significant chunks, like the network stack, written in memory-safe languages like Rust. An improvement over C.
5y ago

rosetremiere 5y ago

I recall reading that Huawei's microkernel was actually more interesting/better than fuchsia, on a technical sense (don't know the metric). Anyone has a (founded) opinion on the subject?

m3kw9 5y ago

The average person uses android OS.

roland35 5y ago

I am planning on not purchasing any new google smart home hardware. I am annoyed that my nest thermostat no longer has a way to interface with their API. I purchased it right before the Google acquisition and I would have gone with an Ecobee if I knew the Nest would be inaccessible to a regular user. I believe having an open API is an important part of smart home hardware, even if most users don't use it.

selfhoster11 5y ago
This doesn't have anything to do with Fuchsia though.

peanut_worm 5y ago

I am not sure I trust Google with an operating system anymore

ptomato 5y ago

imagine releasing a new OS in 2021 written largely in a non-memory-safe language.

Google234 5y ago
Modern C++ is memory safe. More so than (unsafe) rust. Also, this OS was not started in 2021..

usbfingers 5y ago

I'm almost more excited because of the proxy network affect this will have on microkernel popularization and alternatives like Dahlia OS (https://dahliaos.io/ https://dahliaos.io/) that are looking to be independent distros of Fuchsia. I understand peoples concern about a walled garden situation here, but I'd argue to only become worried if Fuchsia suddenly stopped being committed to openly and someone needed to maintain a fork. The working code for both the microkernel and the OS is all open source.

paulus_magnus2 5y ago

Why would anyone want to into this? From industry perspective it baffles me how Google divided an conquered not one but multiple platforms: (Android, Google TV, Google Auto). From the user perspective I don't need another toy OS. I was able to develop Linux Kernel modules on my 486dx with 8MB of RAM. I was able to use excel, word on it. Right now I have a mobile phone with better hardware than my work PC from only few years back (8GB RAM, 512GB UFS storage powerful multicore CPU). Still Android only allows me to click colourful buttons and simple apps, it has not progressed at all in the last decade. Samsungs of the world, please come together, build a non-profit consortium and develop an open platform with real OS with full capabilities.

deleted 5y ago

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nicaragua 5y ago

I wonder if it will last longer than Stadia did.

cute_boi 5y ago

Its just a attack on linux. Just like what they did to firefox. Made a superior browser and make it opensource and gain monopoly. Now they have control over os. They can do anything.

SquareWheel 5y ago
Wake me up when they do that "anything". In the mean time they've created useful and successful open-source products which anyone can benefit from.
- zentiggr 5y ago
  And yanked them out from underneath the adopters whenever it wasn't fun anymore. I don't trust in anything Google anymore except that internal politics and profit motive will override anything beneficial eventually. Look at Chrome if you're not sure what I mean.
- cute_boi 5y ago
  Yea I can see that with chrome. They created useful in that time that any opensource benefit others. After that they started writing their own spec for chrome, made youtube slow on firefox using shadow dom api etc. These I think google is more evil that microsoft. But many people enjoy free service thats why they are not complaining.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  You must have not noticed that Chrome is the new IE, or that they recently revoked API keys that open source Chromium forks (including ones that just disable certain features, so they are 99% the same as official Chrome) have been using for years to allow them to sync bookmarks and the like.
  - SquareWheel 5y ago
    > "Chrome is the new IE" Safari is the new IE. It's stagnated in the same way IE did, which has slowed the progression of web standards. How long did it take to get input type="date"? Apple's attack on PWAs also shows they wish to neuter the web to encourage use of their app store (where they take a 30% cut) instead. > "or that they recently revoked API keys..." The code is open-source, but they aren't obligated to grant access to their services.

phendrenad2 5y ago

Congrats to the Fuschia/Zircon team! It's very exciting to see a freshly-architected OS appear on the scene, with a non-copyleft license, a big company behind it (so hardware vendors will actually write drivers for it), and direction set by one company (instead of 10+ as is the case with Linux/Android). Can't wait to play around with it :-)

josefresco 5y ago

I can't say I've ever thought about the OS on my Nest Hub. It's a digital picture frame, and it plays YouTubeTV/Music while I'm in the kitchen. It occasionally answers a question - what will this new OS change?

fctorial 5y ago
> What will this new OS change? Nothing, this release is a field test.

wyldfire 5y ago

Which architectures have fuchsia ports? And what cpu feature/device support is needed to port fuchsia?

Jyaif 5y ago
x64 and arm64 https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/architecture/architecture_support https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/architecture/archit...

andrekandre 5y ago

according to ars technica [1] they removed the ui layer from the repo... is that accurate and does that mean we are in for a macos type situation where the real treasure (the ui bits) are locked away? [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/google-launches-its-third-major-operating-system-fuchsia/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/google-launches-its-...

nicaragua 5y ago

Never trust a company without a customer service department.

nicaragua 5y ago
Love how the insecure people downvote such a fact.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

Google has officially outdid itself in under-marketing a major platform. A brand new OS, and... barely anything even on hacker news. No barrage of media leading up to the annoucement. Is this basically a boondoggle being relegated to IoT?

perl4ever 5y ago

What I really wanted to know: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-the-colors-fuschia-and-magenta https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-the-col... (not much)

bradgranath 5y ago

The badbadbad part is that this won't be open, and it'll force adoption of restricted hardware that will no longer be usable by the AOSP. Prolly 5 years out, but still; pour one out for unlocked Android-compatible hardware at any price. Gonna hafta go full tinfoil hat and get a PinePhone.