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Would Google even care about EEEing Linux? I might be naive here but I think they have technical reasons to switch to Fuchsia which is an RTOS... Android phone

Would Google even care about EEEing Linux? I might be naive here but I think they have technical reasons to switch to Fuchsia which is an RTOS... Android phones don't have any semblance of FOSS/Linux/DIY sprint in them anyway...

phh 5y ago
> I might be naive here but I think they have technical reasons to switch to Fuchsia which is an RTOS... Nowadays, Linux's realtime is pretty good. Steven Rostedt has extensive documentations on how to "debug" realtime on Linux. You know what's the number one source of non-realtime-ness in Linux? It's parts of hardware that Linux simply can't control. He found that on many PCs, the BIOS triggers SMI (to refresh the RAM IIRC), and said SMI blocks the CPU. In case you're thinking "Surely this is an x86-only mess", well, sorry, but that's wrong. It's even worse for embedded systems with shared memory bus, where modem has higher priority over the bus, and can decides to stall any memory access made by the CPU. Switching to Fuchsia won't change much wrt real-time. (Possibly with Fuchsia, it is harder for OEMs to footgun their drivers, which would still be an improvement) I think the reason Android would switch to Fuchsia is simply that Google is too big to rely on the community, and most engineers there don't have an opensource mind, so overall it makes it more convenient for Google to get rid of 3rd parties. Yes, it is a technical reason. I agree that extinguishing is not Google's goal (which is why I didn't add embrace/extend). It is just a side-effect.
- xorcist 5y ago
  > it is harder for OEMs to footgun their drivers, Too little imagination applied here. They will find a way. They always do.
zeusk 5y ago
Fuchsia is definitely not an RTOS, it's an embedded system of sort. I had some experience with little kernel which served the basis for zircon, so I followed the project for a bit - they have no real time guarantees from what I could tell.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  Little Kernel? I mean yes, that was designed for embedded, but Google has rewritten a lot of it. What makes you think that it can’t be used for other things now?
  - pankajdoharey 5y ago
    You gotta have RT Scheduler to begin with in order to call it RT.
    - goodthenandnow 5y ago
      They have a deadline profile available for threads, and plans to implement an actual deadline scheduler. So, this is confusing.

phh 5y ago

> I might be naive here but I think they have technical reasons to switch to Fuchsia which is an RTOS... Nowadays, Linux's realtime is pretty good. Steven Rostedt has extensive documentations on how to "debug" realtime on Linux. You know what's the number one source of non-realtime-ness in Linux? It's parts of hardware that Linux simply can't control. He found that on many PCs, the BIOS triggers SMI (to refresh the RAM IIRC), and said SMI blocks the CPU. In case you're thinking "Surely this is an x86-only mess", well, sorry, but that's wrong. It's even worse for embedded systems with shared memory bus, where modem has higher priority over the bus, and can decides to stall any memory access made by the CPU. Switching to Fuchsia won't change much wrt real-time. (Possibly with Fuchsia, it is harder for OEMs to footgun their drivers, which would still be an improvement) I think the reason Android would switch to Fuchsia is simply that Google is too big to rely on the community, and most engineers there don't have an opensource mind, so overall it makes it more convenient for Google to get rid of 3rd parties. Yes, it is a technical reason. I agree that extinguishing is not Google's goal (which is why I didn't add embrace/extend). It is just a side-effect.

xorcist 5y ago
> it is harder for OEMs to footgun their drivers, Too little imagination applied here. They will find a way. They always do.

zeusk 5y ago

Fuchsia is definitely not an RTOS, it's an embedded system of sort. I had some experience with little kernel which served the basis for zircon, so I followed the project for a bit - they have no real time guarantees from what I could tell.

saagarjha 5y ago
Little Kernel? I mean yes, that was designed for embedded, but Google has rewritten a lot of it. What makes you think that it can’t be used for other things now?
- pankajdoharey 5y ago
  You gotta have RT Scheduler to begin with in order to call it RT.
  - goodthenandnow 5y ago
    They have a deadline profile available for threads, and plans to implement an actual deadline scheduler. So, this is confusing.