31 ms·

Fuchsia Workstation

367 points by timsneath 5y ago

hulitu 5y ago
- saagarjha 5y ago
  > But it seems that I expect too much This is not a consumer product, so probably.
- moondev 5y ago
  All this info is available in the "getting started" section. For GPU support, get a NUC7 (Kaby Lake) or NUC8 (Coffee Lake), or a higher generation. Building the NUC target now as I have a supported model on hand. Excited to try this :)
cmdli 5y ago
Honestly, what are people's thoughts on automatic updates being built into the OS? They can be good for patching security vulnerabilities, but automatic updates are also incredibly unpopular (see Windows). I personally wouldn't want an OS that updates according to the developers wishes, with no control on my end. It reeks too much of corporate control, from simple things like changing UI or functionality to much bigger things like removing features because they are no longer in the interest of the company.
- manmal 5y ago
  Web apps update every time you open them, so it seems we won’t be able to escape this in the long run.
  - shpx 5y ago
    This and the fact that they (usually) install in under a second is the entire explanation for the success of the Web, in my opinion.
- vt240 5y ago
  Please. Help us small business. Extend cycles to have a better coverage of security issues, and less feature changes, in updates.
- a9h74j 5y ago
  I can imagine eventual (de-googled?) variants which will update only from a local server. In principle, at that local server level one might manually update repositories and control the version(s) presented to Fuchia clients.
- atty 5y ago
  I guess it depends on how it’s handled. If their success rate is as poor as windows updates then obviously I wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole for anything critical. But if the updates go as smoothly as iOS (or windows defender/macOS security) updates tend to, then I think the pros outweigh the cons for the majority of individuals for any devices that are regularly on the internet.
- nl 5y ago
  Windows updates are mostly unpopular because they have a tendency to happen when you are in the middle of something else which is incredibly annoying.
- bandamo 5y ago
  fuchsia has an interesstin new approach for the handling of updates (should be more stable). We will see how this plays out, when it is no longer a developer playground with nightly builds.
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  It looks like everything runs decoupled in user-space, even the filesystem, drivers and packages. Meaning that updates to the system happens per part and requires no re-boots when updating (not even file-system updates, according to docs). So the updates are independent, the packages have their own life-cycles and works independent of the underlying system. Having an auto-updating, fully sandboxed OS, without reboots, really doesn't sound that bad. Especially if it's only kernel, stability and security updates.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    Running in user space doesn't automatically decouple things; dbus is a user space process, but restarting it is traumatic because half the system uses it.
    - sph 5y ago
      That's because dbus hasn't been written with no-downtime restarts in mind, but it's not that challenging to implement, especially when client apps are interfacing through (UNIX) sockets. It's not dissimilar to writing zero-downtime web services.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
        Sure, but that's not a function of user/kernel space; Linux has live patching and dbus doesn't. It would be cool if fuchsia makes every OS component support non-disruptive updates, I'm just trying to point out that that doesn't automatically follow from running parts in user space.
        tmikaeld 5y ago
        Good point, updated my reply. While Google don't explicitly say that they want to support run-time updates of the kernel and OS; it's implied in their system architecture that such is the case.
        5y ago
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  > If interested, you can configure your Workstation to receive automatic updates. If it stays here, I'm 100% on board; I wouldn't even mind defaulting to on. Forced automatic updates (hi, Microsoft) are a terrible move. I would also say that separating bug/security fixes from features and breaking changes helps, if my OS vendor had a way to auto-patch only security issues, and could ensure zero breakage as a result - no new features, no changing UX, nothing but invisible security patches - I'd enable it in a heartbeat. And they won't, so I won't:)
  - khimaros 5y ago
    it sounds like you're looking for debian stable ;)
- deleted 5y ago
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- j-james 5y ago
  It makes sense if Fuchsia's main use cases are IoT devices, given how common public-facing vulnerable IoT devices made by defunct companies there are. It also makes sense if Fuchsia eventually replaces Linux as the Android kernel, given the historical short EoLs and lack of security updates (see: https://androidvulnerabilities.org https://androidvulnerabilities.org). For a development machine, I'd honestly... be pretty fine with it. That's similar to how Arch Linux operates (but change hourly to daily or weekly) and it causes very few problems. I think I've had maybe two or three big issues caused by updates in the past year, plus a couple application-specific issues (not kernel-level or os-level). With a more extensive regression testing team I can see Fuchsia following through with the promise of seamless updates. Windows updates also have possibly the worst reputation you can get (except, maybe, iOS update's reputation when Apple was slowing down older devices), so almost anything Google does will be better. Not needing to reboot (presumably, if they're checking every hour) after an update will also help.
- thereisnospork 5y ago
  I find them awful. Even ignoring the philosophical "it's my machine dammit, it'll update when I damn well want it to and not before" POV[0] it is a practical mess on[1] two fronts: 1. I use my windows machine for computation, ergo it needs to be running, and it costs me money and productivity when it is not. If it restarts to update, I lose hours at minimum of cpu-time and more until I notice and can get things restarted. 2. It makes what should be core user functionality useless. I would like to set up my desktop, with some programs open, a few spreadsheets mayhaps, browser to discord, reddit, HN, etc. Maybe a second desktop relegated to some other task. I can't do this, because windows will force a restart in the next 144 hours which will invariably fubar anything I've tried to set up. [0]To which I strongly adhere. [1]At least.
- viraptor 5y ago
  Windows updates are unpopular due to their implementation. Among other issues: they require a restart, they run complicated transactional flow rather than snapshots + patching the files, they kill the desktop state, they require extra processing on the next startup right as you want to actually do work, the whole delivery system is super complicated to suit enterprises, and yet it is still not able to handle user apps in the same flow. If they implemented a proper A/B booting with preserving the intent/state of open apps most people wouldn't even realise an update happened and wouldn't complain.
- agloeregrets 5y ago
  I would imagine any consumer product running it would work like ChromeOS with a second system library that gets updated in the background and then swapped in at boot. Windows update is hated for how bad the implementation is..but people also don't like having out of date software and features.
- Iolaum 5y ago
  The problem is that automatic updates are both feature updates and security updates. I doubt many people will have a problem with security updates that have no impact on the feature space. But feature updates tend to break UX flows and not many people are happy about that.Your comment about corporate control also applies to feature updates.
jhatemyjob 5y ago
Fuchsia, like Waymo, is never going to take off. It's been half a decade and they still haven't shipped.
- crazysim 5y ago
  They've shipped it on some Nest Hubs already. In fact, it's pretty nifty that their update system allows them to replace the OS completely from a Linux-based OS to A Fuchsia OS.
- robin_reala 5y ago
  Nest Hubs run Fuschia.
- tjoff 5y ago
  Hope you are right, but half a decade doesn't seem long for an OS?
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- rvz 5y ago
  > Fuchsia, like Waymo, is never going to take off It is already running on a Nest Hub today. So it is already shipped. Given that they have Chrome [0] already running on it, I think you know what Google will also be replacing. Fuchsia seems that it will go beyond running on Nest Hubs in the future. [0] https://9to5google.com/2022/03/04/full-google-chrome-browser-running-on-fuchsia/ https://9to5google.com/2022/03/04/full-google-chrome-browser...
  - smcl 5y ago
    > I think you know what Google will also be replacing. Are you talking about Chrome OS?
    - rvz 5y ago
      yes.
rvz 5y ago
If you have read beyond the title, I don't think this is what you think it is. (At least not yet anyway), since it is still not ready yet as a general purpose workstation. It's more like building it, rather than using it here.
- wmf 5y ago
  Just the intent to build it is newsworthy.
- nine_k 5y ago
  It's not viable as a workstation, but it's like an officially supported playground for enthusiasts. "Release early, release often".
deleted 5y ago
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cjbprime 5y ago
Are there screenshots or videos of Workstation?
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Came to comments for this. Screenshots or it didn't happen.
  - deleted 5y ago
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Osiris 5y ago
This is interesting. I wonder what goal they are aiming towards. There isn't much information about the capabilities of workstation. Is it a GUI OS? Can one run Flutter apps on it?
- owaislone 5y ago
  Yes it has GUI. Flutter is the main/official way to build apps on it. The OS shell is also written in Flutter if I remember correctly. So far, the OS has been seen on or confirmed to release in near future on one Google Home device. Technically though, it seems to be designed for all kind of consumer devices ranging from phones to desktops. IMO this is more or less an experiment which if successful, will end up merging/replacing Android and Chrome OS into a single OS. Android and Chrome runtimes can be ported to Fuschia and the underlying OS can be swapped on many devices. New devices can ship with Fuschia + an android compatibility layer. Developers would be able to ship native Fuschia or android apps. Would work on phones, IoT, Chromebooks and could be install-able on desktops. This is all just speculation though and a lot of things need to go right for this to happen but I'd imagine this would be the ideal/desired outcome for its creators.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    > ... Android and Chrome runtimes can be ported to Fuschia ... Android is already being ported to Fuchsia for quite some time now.
    - cryptos 5y ago
      I thought Google would no longer follow the idea to replace Android with Fuchsia. Do you have a source for this statement?
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        Yes, check the AOSP Gerrit commits related to Fuchsia, quite a few of them there. You can start with this one, https://android-review.googlesource.com/c/platform/manifest/+/847437 https://android-review.googlesource.com/c/platform/manifest/...
cletus 5y ago
I'm not sure people realize just how much money Google has thus far sunk into Fuchsia for (AFAICT) very little in return. It was in the billions... years ago. I don't know if this is still the case but the mission was absolutely to replace Android. Many at Google believe Android to be unsalvageable on two fronts: drivers and the general ecosystem. It has been pitched internally at various products and (AFAIK) only found traction thus far on Nest hubs. It was heavily pushed for Chromecast but I guess nothing came of that. I'm not an OS expert by any means but I am unconvinced about the viability of a microkernel architecture beyond theory. Security is an often-cited issue with context switching between user and kernel space.
- beagle3 5y ago
  QNX did it right. So far, it doesn’t seem like anyone else did.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    INTEGRITY OS, and several other RTOS in embedded space.
    - chrisjc 5y ago
      What does Tesla use? (searching the web doesn't seem to yield a consistent answer) Most of this thread has been focused on how Fuchsia will supplant Linux on Nest, Android and ChromeOS devices. However I immediately think about it will be used for Automobiles where RTOSes and prioritizing/scheduling operations deterministically is critical. I'm sure Fuchsia could be leveraged for autonomous robots too, but since they gave up Boston Dynamics, not so sure anymore. Perhaps they extracted what they needed from BD before selling them off. Again I wonder what OS Tesla uses for their robots, both Grohmann and Optimus. I have for many years thought that there was or so will be a battle in the RTOS space where Blackberry (QNX) would find themselves in a very similar situation they were in back when the iPhone and Android came onto the scene. (I know they were very different departments. Don't even know if they owned QNX at the time. Don't even know if you could consider them the same company anymore.) There is obviously a paradigm shift taking place in the automotive industry where the incumbent/ICE manufacturers have to make a choice of continuing down the path to oblivion or pivot to compete with the likes of Tesla, NIO, Polestar, etc... The RTOS will play an important part in the transition, and Google knows this. Google wants to be part of the stack and I believe they believe Fuchsia is the answer. Actually, I'd go so far as to say they want to own (or be the linchpin) the stack and again Fuchsia combined with Android Automobile (not Android Auto) is their attempt to move in while the incumbents are preoccupied with the other difficulties involved in this transition. If I was QNX/BB, I would be very concerned. Imagine the world of Automobiles resembling that of the Smartphone... You basically have two choices; Apple or a myriad of others all running their own flavor of Android... think Tesla or all the others running Android Automotive (Fuchsia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Automotive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Automotive
benjaminl 5y ago
Since the build page doesn’t provide much context, Fushsia has 3 different configurations bringup, core and workstation. The workstation configuration is described as: > workstation is a basis for a general purpose development environment, good for working on UI, media and many other high-level features. This is also the best environment for enthusiasts to play with and explore. From https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/build/fx#key-product-configurations https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/build/fx#key-pro...
eloisius 5y ago
Meta note about this site: if you disable web fonts it looks almost like Zalgo text. I wish people would stop using special fonts for icons. I disable downloadable fonts in Firefox* because the janky repaints and slower page loads aren't worth the pixel-perfect text, but unfortunately it breaks a lot of sites that misuse fonts for icons. *gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled
- deleted 5y ago
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kgraves 5y ago
People are saying Fuchsia is only usable on IoT devices, not much progress, etc. However, not many new operating systems have a Chrome browser [0] on them and Fuchsia has this, not many people realise how huge this is let alone on a new from the ground up OS. So I don't think Fuchsia will be going away, in fact I would say it is coming pretty fast. Whether you like it or not, this tells me that they are targeting the desktop, laptops and chromebooks next. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=Rg9YgWXLfEo https://youtube.com/watch?v=Rg9YgWXLfEo
- Grazester 5y ago
  It's being used in a consumer products (the Nest hub)
- loeg 5y ago
  In part this is because it's (very) hard to get the Chrome team to take a new OS port. Google's internal OS probably has some advantage here.
  - torginus 5y ago
    Isn't the point of Chrome's Ozone stuff to add a proper platform interface, so that making ports becomes straightforward?
- hajhatten 5y ago
  > However, not many new operating systems have a Chrome browser [0] on them and Fuchsia has this, not many people realise how huge this is let alone on a new from the ground up OS. Enlighten me, why does this matter?
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    It shows how mature Fuchsia is. Chrome is an enormous piece of software that requires a lot of things to run.
  - hortense 5y ago
    Modern browsers use an extremely wide range of system APIs: process/IPC/sandboxing, memory, networking/connectivity (e.g. bluetooth), filesystem, GPU, audio, windowing system, device IO (keyboards, webcam), and more I'm sure. I can't think of any other kind of software that come close. If you can run a modern browser it means that your OS is already quite mature.
KSPAtlas 5y ago
You basically need a compiler farm for fuchsia. I tried compiling it once and it took 3 hours, only to find out to need to recompile to add anything
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Have you tried compiling Linux before? Imagine trying to compile MacOS or Windows. I'd say 3 hours is pretty darn good.
  - bayindirh 5y ago
    It was taking three hours in 1998. Not anymore. 10 years ago, you would be able to compile your whole BSD kernel and userland (plus KDE) in a week or so, while just checking occasionally whether it's completed or not. This was on a dual core, off the shelf desktop computer.
    - hnlmorg 5y ago
      The GP was talking about whole OS, not just the kernel (just as this Fuchsia workstation is too). A week also seems pretty long for BSD. I'm sure I spun up FreeBSD with Gnome 2 in ~24hours once (it was definitely less than a week because I had a weekend to prepare it for a house party). Though admittedly I didn't compile base. But this was a machine from around 2005 sort of era, maybe even earlier.
      - bayindirh 5y ago
        I'm not a BSD person. A colleague did it back in the day. This is why I also noted "done leisurely, and without any effort to do it as fast as it's possible", since he said it he compiled it that way, without rush.
  - zaarn 5y ago
    Linux does not take 3 hours even on spinning rust. I'd say one hour at worst. On my computer with the compile happening on an NVMe, it takes about 15 minutes.
fartcannon 5y ago
I'd really rather use something that respects my privacy.
pabs3 5y ago
How much hardware support is there in the public Fuchsia source and how much of it is going to be proprietary?
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  I bet that most of drivers will be proprietary. It seems the main motivation for Fuchsia: to allow windows-like model for drivers with stable driver API, because Linux-like model does not work well for hardware manufacturers.
  - silon42 5y ago
    Time to buy a PinePhone then.
- jillesvangurp 5y ago
  I think the key thing to watch is what they will replace Qualcomm's firmware with; if at all. Apple made a move a few years ago to reduce their dependence on Qualcomm. From what I've heard, Apple is rolling out their internal replacement for their 5G modem from year or so. Basically Android is OSS linux with a lot of proprietary drivers that are not under the control of Google. And a lot of those are provided by Qualcomm. What they provide is effectively an OS inside an OS. Linux is a somewhat hostile environment for proprietary drivers and it necessitates some technical steps to insulate against the 'viral' nature of the GPL. Google likes their dependency on Qualcomm just about as much as Apple does. It would not surprise me if they eventually move to their own in house 5G stack and I bet that would be a proprietary fuchsia exclusive. Proprietary ensures you get your software from Google (or Qualcomm). And making it exclusive to Fuchsia ensures they have full control over the combined package. Chinese manufacturers are also insulating against being dependent on Qualcomm. E.g. Huawei has their own 5G modem and is of course also in the base station market.
  - ho_schi 5y ago
    Anroid could be barely named Linux. More appopriate Google/Android or Google/Linux - in relationship to GNU/Linux. Google seems to do everything to push out GNU and the GPL. Especially the compatibility layer "PlayServices". Aside from userland the closed-source modules in the kernel are a plague. I prefer a strong BSD and Linux community over everything just controlled by a single company. Therefore: We shall be worried. My feeling and past experience tells me "Don't use it. Don't support it. Or we will suffer."
nomercy400 5y ago
Anybody know what the license of the source code of Fuchsia is? I could not easily find it on the website.
- Tepix 5y ago
  It's a mix of MIT, BSD and Apache
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  Does it matter? Google can close source an internal pre-release fork and then make a final set of modifications that will sufficiently deviate it for production releases. Isn't the entire business reason behind Fuchsia that Android is a bit "too open source" and they want more control? They are probably going to get some free bugfixes from "enthusiasts" and then close source a sufficient amount of it for "security reasons". Or whatever serves their "not evil" purposes. But at least SOME of the code is in the open.
  - refulgentis 5y ago
  - PoignardAzur 5y ago
    > Does it matter? I mean... yeah, it does? There's good reason to be suspicious in general, but if any time they do something non-evil the immediate reaction is "okay but this is probably actually evil in some convoluted way", then that suspicion becomes paranoia. Even if they put out closed-source modules like they do with Chrome, having an open-source microkernel with a focus on sandboxing and security, with the resources of a major corporation behind it, is incredibly beneficial for the ecosystem.
sequence7 5y ago
Is anyone providing unofficial builds of Fuchsia? I can see from the article the requirement is to build it yourself but I'm lazy/time poor and I'd really like to try runnning Fuchsia in an emulator.
kwijibob 5y ago
Would there be a growing job market for people who master the Fuschia ecosystem now? Or is it basically just for Google employees working on Google devices?
- mhoad 5y ago
  I think the idea of a proper production grade Fuschia workstation that you could use as a daily driver is still a few years away realistically. However, I think when that happens a lot of interesting opportunities will I inevitably open up because it provides what I think is an extremely compelling story for a lot of people you might not initially anticipate. For example, from a security and just general maintainability point of view I would expect it to become the new obvious choice inside of organisations for those who aren’t still tied to Windows specific desktop applications.
sidcool 5y ago
Google has been investing in Fuschia for years now. What's their end goal with it?
- danuker 5y ago
  My shot in the dark: embrace, extend, and extinguish Linux.
  - ahalam 5y ago
    Google has a reputation of extinguishing its own projects. So who knows how long their fascination w/ Fuchsia will last.
    - sobkas 5y ago
      Allure of flushing down the toilet GPL software from their stack is just too high for them, to just walk away from it.
    - cryptos 5y ago
      At least it wouldn't hurt to always have some flowers around for the next Google project entering the Google Graveyard ;-) (I don't expect that Fuchsia would end there any time soon.)
  - WithinReason 5y ago
    I thought Fuschia wasn't Linux
    - danuker 5y ago
      It's not, but it can run Linux binaries. https://www.osnews.com/story/133013/fuchsia-gets-support-for-running-unmodified-linux-programs/ https://www.osnews.com/story/133013/fuchsia-gets-support-for...
    - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      In theory if Fuschia fulfills it's purpose, google could have Android sit on top of Fuschia as opposed to a Linux Kernel. This would give them far more control over the direction of the OS, far more control over millions of users, and allow far less tinkering by android users.
childintime 5y ago
To get on top of your fear of the new (and other insecurities), this is the video to watch: https://youtu.be/gIT1ISCioDY https://youtu.be/gIT1ISCioDY. No need for the habitual google defamation exercise here.
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rob74 5y ago
Some stats about the various ways of writing the project name (taken from these comments): Fuchsia: 39 Fuschia: 19 Fushia: 1 Fuchia: 1 Other: ? ...so we can conclude that the UX of this codename is terrible. Maybe they should change it to something more easy to remember, e.g. Fuxia (Fucksya would probably also be easier to remember, but could be deemed too obscene)?
- catchclose8919 5y ago
  ...I honestly propose a new "F*ks Yeah!" spelling for this project just to mindfuck with future programmer archaeologists
- detritus 5y ago
  The more popular it becomes, the more people will learn to correctly spell fooshia.
- orthoxerox 5y ago
  Fewsha?
- inops 5y ago
  Naming it "Fucksya" wouldn't be the best advertisement either
  - xattt 5y ago
    They’re being fearless about vendor lock-in!
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
  In italian the color name is fuxia
  - say-what-now 5y ago
    The color's name is Fucsia, in Italian. Fuxia does not exist https://linguaegrammatica.com/fucsia-o-fuxia-come-scrivere https://linguaegrammatica.com/fucsia-o-fuxia-come-scrivere
est31 5y ago
Fuchsia is the most serious OS that has significant components written in Rust at this moment, so this is pretty neat!
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  Depends on how you define "serious"; for desktop-ish, sure, but for embedded, for example, the Hubris OS we've written at Oxide is a key component of the entire company's product. There's a lot more diversity in the embedded space in general.
  - est31 5y ago
    TIL about Hubris, very cool! One could probably also mention the bunch of hypervisors, as they run on the bare metal as well, and maybe Tock, and I'm probably unaware of a bunch. Rust is definitely a hot language when it comes to OS development, which is really great. I've cloned hybris [0], it seems to have 48k lines of Rust source code. Maybe there are other components that I'm missing. Fuchsia [1] on the other hand had 2.1 million lines of Rust in Dec 2020 [2], and according to tokei has 3.3 million as of now (8b51db9e2b809, March 28 2022), more than it has C++ (2.2 million) and C (366k) combined. For comparison, a full check out of the rust-lang/rust repo with all the submodules which contains rustc as well as tools like cargo, rustfmt or clippy, and their test suites, contains 2.1 million lines. But yeah you can come up with several definitions of "serious". Is an OS that an entire company bases its revenues on more serious than a research project that some call as a way to maintain senior developer retention, but may one day replace components of one of the most deployed end user operating systems in the world? [0]: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/hubris https://github.com/oxidecomputer/hubris [1]: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/ https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/ [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/k9djda/expanding_fuchsias_open_source_model/gf559oz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/k9djda/expanding_fuch...
    - surajrmal 5y ago
      Keep in mind that fuchsia vendors third party libraries, so a decent chunk of that code is third party libraries. That doesn't undermine what you've said, but I wanted to just highlight that not all 3M+ lines of code were written for fuchsia.
FpUser 5y ago
I have my hands full already. Not sure why would I want to play with unfinished product and use yet another proprietary language for the sake of Google getting more and more into my life. I think I'll pass
naoqj 5y ago
- esteth 5y ago
  I'm not sure what you're trying to say? Who are "these people"? The people who write Fuchsia's documentation? And they can't stop what? Adding DEI messages to the header of their website?
  - noisem4ker 5y ago
    >Who are "these people"? Various Google people. See also the Go doc pages in the recent past. >And they can't stop what? Displaying intrusive ideological messaging on technical websites, where it does not belong.
    - fao_ 5y ago
      > intrusive ideological messaging Would "Martin Luther King Day" also be intrusive ideological messaging? What about "Christopher Columbus Day"? I'm interested on where the line is here for you.
amenghra 5y ago
In case you need some context on this project, from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system) Fuchsia is an open-source capability-based operating system developed by Google. In contrast to prior Google-developed operating systems such as Chrome OS and Android, which are based on the Linux kernel, Fuchsia is based on a new kernel named Zircon. It first became known to the public when the project appeared on a self-hosted git repository in August 2016 without any official announcement. After years of development, Fuchsia was officially released to the public on the first-generation Google Nest Hub, replacing its original Cast OS.
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p_l 5y ago
Anyone noticed how the GN tool used to build Fuchsia looks like someone really wanted to use Bazel but for whatever reason they had to use Ninja?
- lima 5y ago
  Historical reasons - when Chromium was first open sourced, they really wanted to use Blaze, but that wasn't open sourced yet, so they built gn. Bazel (an open source subset of Blaze) wasn't a thing until much later. Fuchsia is really close to the Chromium team and inherited gn and most of the supporting repo management and build tooling. gn is less strict than Blaze and Google probably doesn't want to maintain both Bazel and gn forever, so it stands to reason that gn will eventually be replaced with Bazel. That will be a really large effort so it's probably not happening anytime soon and will take a while. Android, which uses yet another home grown Blaze-alike build tool - Soong - is already in the process of migrating to Bazel. Moving from Soong to Bazel is probably much easier than going from Ninja/Make to Soong due to how conceptually similar those are.
  - surajrmal 5y ago
    Beyond that, it was also easier to conceive of a path towards self hosting with GN since it's written in c++. Neither java nor python can run natively on Fuchsia even today. That said Fuchsia's build system has a fair bit of python scripts anyways these days.
  - humanrebar 5y ago
    How do the build requirements for bazel and fuschia compare? Last I checked, bazel required python and a JVM and that seems like a lot for bootstrapping an OS.
    - lima 5y ago
      Bazel's single-binary distribution brings its own JVM, it has less dependencies than gn. Most people use Bazelisk: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazelisk https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazelisk
m6w6 5y ago
Since nobody asked yet; Why explicitly Intel NUC instead of general x64? I can only guess that it's because of HW drivers?
- tyingq 5y ago
  They also support an ARM dev board, the Khadas VIM3: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/hardware/khadas-vim3 https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/hardware/khadas-... , though with the "core" setup and not "workstation".
- xmodem 5y ago
  Yes - drivers, and the NUC is a consistent target that's readily available almost anywhere in the world.
- surajrmal 5y ago
  Fuchsia will run on a surprisingly large number of x64 machines but because it's not tested on a wide array of hardware, it's hard to recommend you try it outside of the narrower set of hardware where it is tested.
dekhn 5y ago
the shell is limited and the environment can't really host a full dev stack. I continue to fail to see the point of this project that eats other projects.
krausejj 5y ago
It's a shame fuchsia is so hard to spell. 25% of the references to "fuchsia" so far in this thread spell it incorrectly.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  It helps to know that it was named for Leonhart Fuchs. Just remember it is Fuchs-ia.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    "Google fucks-ya"? has a nice ring to it.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      more like "fewkssia"
miiiiiike 5y ago
Having used several Google OSS projects I would NEVER consider using an OS from Google. The documentation structure is often atrocious, the are always dozens of recognized but unresolved bugs, those bugs often remain for years, the documentation often is not updated to reflect the state of open bugs so code samples and tutorials are often broken, the bugs are resolved slowly, non-Google pull requests are often left to die on the vine[0], no road maps, the Google employees use an internal build system and the external packages are often broken, and these three words: "Not. A. Priority." If your bug is not an internal Google priority you are basically out of luck. Hope you like maintaining your own patches, for years. I'm not saying that OSS projects from other large projects don't have similar problems, I'm saying that every Google project I've depended on has had all of these problems. The idea of my OS being run like this? Absurd. This just is a guess, but, I'd wager that most Google OSS developers just wanted a fancy corporate job and got stuck interfacing with the public on an OSS project. I don't think that most of them aspired to be OSS developers and it shouldn't be a requirement. [0]: Just today a two year old bug that I've been watching was closed by merging a pull request that was first opened in early-2020, closed as stale in mid-2021, and re-submitted/merged this week.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  > The idea of my OS being run like this? Absurd. Isn't Android run like this? Is the community participation in Fuchsia different from that of Android i.e. Build inside Google and publish the code to AOSP? Regardless of how 'open-source' android is, I'm grateful for its 'openness'. Cannot imagine mobile compute held solely by walled-gardens and carriers. Anyways Brian Swetland is the person to thank for those who appreciate the openness of android[1]. > “Peter mentioned something about exclusivity for our first device, which Brian overheard. By the time we got back to our hotel room, Swetland had threatened to resign because ‘I didn’t join Android to become another Danger.’ I was concerned because Brian was so critical to our success, but when I saw him the next day everything was fine.” > He was strongly in favor of Android’s vision for an open and independent platform. He threatened to resign several times during his time on the Android team over decisions that would have resulted in a closed platform. [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/08/excerpt-the-history-of-android-as-written-by-a-longtime-android-developer/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/08/excer...

367 points by timsneath 5y ago

saagarjha 5y ago
> But it seems that I expect too much This is not a consumer product, so probably.
moondev 5y ago
All this info is available in the "getting started" section. For GPU support, get a NUC7 (Kaby Lake) or NUC8 (Coffee Lake), or a higher generation. Building the NUC target now as I have a supported model on hand. Excited to try this :)

Honestly, what are people's thoughts on automatic updates being built into the OS? They can be good for patching security vulnerabilities, but automatic updates are also incredibly unpopular (see Windows). I personally wouldn't want an OS that updates according to the developers wishes, with no control on my end. It reeks too much of corporate control, from simple things like changing UI or functionality to much bigger things like removing features because they are no longer in the interest of the company.

manmal 5y ago
Web apps update every time you open them, so it seems we won’t be able to escape this in the long run.
- shpx 5y ago
  This and the fact that they (usually) install in under a second is the entire explanation for the success of the Web, in my opinion.
vt240 5y ago
Please. Help us small business. Extend cycles to have a better coverage of security issues, and less feature changes, in updates.
a9h74j 5y ago
I can imagine eventual (de-googled?) variants which will update only from a local server. In principle, at that local server level one might manually update repositories and control the version(s) presented to Fuchia clients.
atty 5y ago
I guess it depends on how it’s handled. If their success rate is as poor as windows updates then obviously I wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole for anything critical. But if the updates go as smoothly as iOS (or windows defender/macOS security) updates tend to, then I think the pros outweigh the cons for the majority of individuals for any devices that are regularly on the internet.
nl 5y ago
Windows updates are mostly unpopular because they have a tendency to happen when you are in the middle of something else which is incredibly annoying.
bandamo 5y ago
fuchsia has an interesstin new approach for the handling of updates (should be more stable). We will see how this plays out, when it is no longer a developer playground with nightly builds.
tmikaeld 5y ago
It looks like everything runs decoupled in user-space, even the filesystem, drivers and packages. Meaning that updates to the system happens per part and requires no re-boots when updating (not even file-system updates, according to docs). So the updates are independent, the packages have their own life-cycles and works independent of the underlying system. Having an auto-updating, fully sandboxed OS, without reboots, really doesn't sound that bad. Especially if it's only kernel, stability and security updates.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Running in user space doesn't automatically decouple things; dbus is a user space process, but restarting it is traumatic because half the system uses it.
  - sph 5y ago
    That's because dbus hasn't been written with no-downtime restarts in mind, but it's not that challenging to implement, especially when client apps are interfacing through (UNIX) sockets. It's not dissimilar to writing zero-downtime web services.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      Sure, but that's not a function of user/kernel space; Linux has live patching and dbus doesn't. It would be cool if fuchsia makes every OS component support non-disruptive updates, I'm just trying to point out that that doesn't automatically follow from running parts in user space.
      - tmikaeld 5y ago
        Good point, updated my reply. While Google don't explicitly say that they want to support run-time updates of the kernel and OS; it's implied in their system architecture that such is the case.
        5y ago
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> If interested, you can configure your Workstation to receive automatic updates. If it stays here, I'm 100% on board; I wouldn't even mind defaulting to on. Forced automatic updates (hi, Microsoft) are a terrible move. I would also say that separating bug/security fixes from features and breaking changes helps, if my OS vendor had a way to auto-patch only security issues, and could ensure zero breakage as a result - no new features, no changing UX, nothing but invisible security patches - I'd enable it in a heartbeat. And they won't, so I won't:)
- khimaros 5y ago
  it sounds like you're looking for debian stable ;)
deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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j-james 5y ago
It makes sense if Fuchsia's main use cases are IoT devices, given how common public-facing vulnerable IoT devices made by defunct companies there are. It also makes sense if Fuchsia eventually replaces Linux as the Android kernel, given the historical short EoLs and lack of security updates (see: https://androidvulnerabilities.org https://androidvulnerabilities.org). For a development machine, I'd honestly... be pretty fine with it. That's similar to how Arch Linux operates (but change hourly to daily or weekly) and it causes very few problems. I think I've had maybe two or three big issues caused by updates in the past year, plus a couple application-specific issues (not kernel-level or os-level). With a more extensive regression testing team I can see Fuchsia following through with the promise of seamless updates. Windows updates also have possibly the worst reputation you can get (except, maybe, iOS update's reputation when Apple was slowing down older devices), so almost anything Google does will be better. Not needing to reboot (presumably, if they're checking every hour) after an update will also help.
thereisnospork 5y ago
I find them awful. Even ignoring the philosophical "it's my machine dammit, it'll update when I damn well want it to and not before" POV[0] it is a practical mess on[1] two fronts: 1. I use my windows machine for computation, ergo it needs to be running, and it costs me money and productivity when it is not. If it restarts to update, I lose hours at minimum of cpu-time and more until I notice and can get things restarted. 2. It makes what should be core user functionality useless. I would like to set up my desktop, with some programs open, a few spreadsheets mayhaps, browser to discord, reddit, HN, etc. Maybe a second desktop relegated to some other task. I can't do this, because windows will force a restart in the next 144 hours which will invariably fubar anything I've tried to set up. [0]To which I strongly adhere. [1]At least.
viraptor 5y ago
Windows updates are unpopular due to their implementation. Among other issues: they require a restart, they run complicated transactional flow rather than snapshots + patching the files, they kill the desktop state, they require extra processing on the next startup right as you want to actually do work, the whole delivery system is super complicated to suit enterprises, and yet it is still not able to handle user apps in the same flow. If they implemented a proper A/B booting with preserving the intent/state of open apps most people wouldn't even realise an update happened and wouldn't complain.
agloeregrets 5y ago
I would imagine any consumer product running it would work like ChromeOS with a second system library that gets updated in the background and then swapped in at boot. Windows update is hated for how bad the implementation is..but people also don't like having out of date software and features.
Iolaum 5y ago
The problem is that automatic updates are both feature updates and security updates. I doubt many people will have a problem with security updates that have no impact on the feature space. But feature updates tend to break UX flows and not many people are happy about that.Your comment about corporate control also applies to feature updates.

jhatemyjob 5y ago

Fuchsia, like Waymo, is never going to take off. It's been half a decade and they still haven't shipped.

crazysim 5y ago
They've shipped it on some Nest Hubs already. In fact, it's pretty nifty that their update system allows them to replace the OS completely from a Linux-based OS to A Fuchsia OS.
robin_reala 5y ago
Nest Hubs run Fuschia.
tjoff 5y ago
Hope you are right, but half a decade doesn't seem long for an OS?
- deleted 5y ago
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rvz 5y ago
> Fuchsia, like Waymo, is never going to take off It is already running on a Nest Hub today. So it is already shipped. Given that they have Chrome [0] already running on it, I think you know what Google will also be replacing. Fuchsia seems that it will go beyond running on Nest Hubs in the future. [0] https://9to5google.com/2022/03/04/full-google-chrome-browser-running-on-fuchsia/ https://9to5google.com/2022/03/04/full-google-chrome-browser...
- smcl 5y ago
  > I think you know what Google will also be replacing. Are you talking about Chrome OS?
  - rvz 5y ago
    yes.

rvz 5y ago

If you have read beyond the title, I don't think this is what you think it is. (At least not yet anyway), since it is still not ready yet as a general purpose workstation. It's more like building it, rather than using it here.

wmf 5y ago
Just the intent to build it is newsworthy.
nine_k 5y ago
It's not viable as a workstation, but it's like an officially supported playground for enthusiasts. "Release early, release often".

deleted 5y ago

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cjbprime 5y ago

Are there screenshots or videos of Workstation?

encryptluks2 5y ago
Came to comments for this. Screenshots or it didn't happen.
- deleted 5y ago
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Osiris 5y ago

This is interesting. I wonder what goal they are aiming towards. There isn't much information about the capabilities of workstation. Is it a GUI OS? Can one run Flutter apps on it?

owaislone 5y ago
Yes it has GUI. Flutter is the main/official way to build apps on it. The OS shell is also written in Flutter if I remember correctly. So far, the OS has been seen on or confirmed to release in near future on one Google Home device. Technically though, it seems to be designed for all kind of consumer devices ranging from phones to desktops. IMO this is more or less an experiment which if successful, will end up merging/replacing Android and Chrome OS into a single OS. Android and Chrome runtimes can be ported to Fuschia and the underlying OS can be swapped on many devices. New devices can ship with Fuschia + an android compatibility layer. Developers would be able to ship native Fuschia or android apps. Would work on phones, IoT, Chromebooks and could be install-able on desktops. This is all just speculation though and a lot of things need to go right for this to happen but I'd imagine this would be the ideal/desired outcome for its creators.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  > ... Android and Chrome runtimes can be ported to Fuschia ... Android is already being ported to Fuchsia for quite some time now.
  - cryptos 5y ago
    I thought Google would no longer follow the idea to replace Android with Fuchsia. Do you have a source for this statement?
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Yes, check the AOSP Gerrit commits related to Fuchsia, quite a few of them there. You can start with this one, https://android-review.googlesource.com/c/platform/manifest/+/847437 https://android-review.googlesource.com/c/platform/manifest/...

cletus 5y ago

I'm not sure people realize just how much money Google has thus far sunk into Fuchsia for (AFAICT) very little in return. It was in the billions... years ago. I don't know if this is still the case but the mission was absolutely to replace Android. Many at Google believe Android to be unsalvageable on two fronts: drivers and the general ecosystem. It has been pitched internally at various products and (AFAIK) only found traction thus far on Nest hubs. It was heavily pushed for Chromecast but I guess nothing came of that. I'm not an OS expert by any means but I am unconvinced about the viability of a microkernel architecture beyond theory. Security is an often-cited issue with context switching between user and kernel space.

beagle3 5y ago
QNX did it right. So far, it doesn’t seem like anyone else did.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  INTEGRITY OS, and several other RTOS in embedded space.
  - chrisjc 5y ago
    What does Tesla use? (searching the web doesn't seem to yield a consistent answer) Most of this thread has been focused on how Fuchsia will supplant Linux on Nest, Android and ChromeOS devices. However I immediately think about it will be used for Automobiles where RTOSes and prioritizing/scheduling operations deterministically is critical. I'm sure Fuchsia could be leveraged for autonomous robots too, but since they gave up Boston Dynamics, not so sure anymore. Perhaps they extracted what they needed from BD before selling them off. Again I wonder what OS Tesla uses for their robots, both Grohmann and Optimus. I have for many years thought that there was or so will be a battle in the RTOS space where Blackberry (QNX) would find themselves in a very similar situation they were in back when the iPhone and Android came onto the scene. (I know they were very different departments. Don't even know if they owned QNX at the time. Don't even know if you could consider them the same company anymore.) There is obviously a paradigm shift taking place in the automotive industry where the incumbent/ICE manufacturers have to make a choice of continuing down the path to oblivion or pivot to compete with the likes of Tesla, NIO, Polestar, etc... The RTOS will play an important part in the transition, and Google knows this. Google wants to be part of the stack and I believe they believe Fuchsia is the answer. Actually, I'd go so far as to say they want to own (or be the linchpin) the stack and again Fuchsia combined with Android Automobile (not Android Auto) is their attempt to move in while the incumbents are preoccupied with the other difficulties involved in this transition. If I was QNX/BB, I would be very concerned. Imagine the world of Automobiles resembling that of the Smartphone... You basically have two choices; Apple or a myriad of others all running their own flavor of Android... think Tesla or all the others running Android Automotive (Fuchsia). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Automotive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Automotive

benjaminl 5y ago

Since the build page doesn’t provide much context, Fushsia has 3 different configurations bringup, core and workstation. The workstation configuration is described as: > workstation is a basis for a general purpose development environment, good for working on UI, media and many other high-level features. This is also the best environment for enthusiasts to play with and explore. From https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/build/fx#key-product-configurations https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/build/fx#key-pro...

eloisius 5y ago

Meta note about this site: if you disable web fonts it looks almost like Zalgo text. I wish people would stop using special fonts for icons. I disable downloadable fonts in Firefox* because the janky repaints and slower page loads aren't worth the pixel-perfect text, but unfortunately it breaks a lot of sites that misuse fonts for icons. *gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled

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kgraves 5y ago

People are saying Fuchsia is only usable on IoT devices, not much progress, etc. However, not many new operating systems have a Chrome browser [0] on them and Fuchsia has this, not many people realise how huge this is let alone on a new from the ground up OS. So I don't think Fuchsia will be going away, in fact I would say it is coming pretty fast. Whether you like it or not, this tells me that they are targeting the desktop, laptops and chromebooks next. [0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=Rg9YgWXLfEo https://youtube.com/watch?v=Rg9YgWXLfEo

Grazester 5y ago
It's being used in a consumer products (the Nest hub)
loeg 5y ago
In part this is because it's (very) hard to get the Chrome team to take a new OS port. Google's internal OS probably has some advantage here.
- torginus 5y ago
  Isn't the point of Chrome's Ozone stuff to add a proper platform interface, so that making ports becomes straightforward?
hajhatten 5y ago
> However, not many new operating systems have a Chrome browser [0] on them and Fuchsia has this, not many people realise how huge this is let alone on a new from the ground up OS. Enlighten me, why does this matter?
- IshKebab 5y ago
  It shows how mature Fuchsia is. Chrome is an enormous piece of software that requires a lot of things to run.
- hortense 5y ago
  Modern browsers use an extremely wide range of system APIs: process/IPC/sandboxing, memory, networking/connectivity (e.g. bluetooth), filesystem, GPU, audio, windowing system, device IO (keyboards, webcam), and more I'm sure. I can't think of any other kind of software that come close. If you can run a modern browser it means that your OS is already quite mature.

KSPAtlas 5y ago

You basically need a compiler farm for fuchsia. I tried compiling it once and it took 3 hours, only to find out to need to recompile to add anything

encryptluks2 5y ago
Have you tried compiling Linux before? Imagine trying to compile MacOS or Windows. I'd say 3 hours is pretty darn good.
- bayindirh 5y ago
  It was taking three hours in 1998. Not anymore. 10 years ago, you would be able to compile your whole BSD kernel and userland (plus KDE) in a week or so, while just checking occasionally whether it's completed or not. This was on a dual core, off the shelf desktop computer.
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    The GP was talking about whole OS, not just the kernel (just as this Fuchsia workstation is too). A week also seems pretty long for BSD. I'm sure I spun up FreeBSD with Gnome 2 in ~24hours once (it was definitely less than a week because I had a weekend to prepare it for a house party). Though admittedly I didn't compile base. But this was a machine from around 2005 sort of era, maybe even earlier.
    - bayindirh 5y ago
      I'm not a BSD person. A colleague did it back in the day. This is why I also noted "done leisurely, and without any effort to do it as fast as it's possible", since he said it he compiled it that way, without rush.
- zaarn 5y ago
  Linux does not take 3 hours even on spinning rust. I'd say one hour at worst. On my computer with the compile happening on an NVMe, it takes about 15 minutes.

fartcannon 5y ago

I'd really rather use something that respects my privacy.

pabs3 5y ago

How much hardware support is there in the public Fuchsia source and how much of it is going to be proprietary?

vbezhenar 5y ago
I bet that most of drivers will be proprietary. It seems the main motivation for Fuchsia: to allow windows-like model for drivers with stable driver API, because Linux-like model does not work well for hardware manufacturers.
- silon42 5y ago
  Time to buy a PinePhone then.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
I think the key thing to watch is what they will replace Qualcomm's firmware with; if at all. Apple made a move a few years ago to reduce their dependence on Qualcomm. From what I've heard, Apple is rolling out their internal replacement for their 5G modem from year or so. Basically Android is OSS linux with a lot of proprietary drivers that are not under the control of Google. And a lot of those are provided by Qualcomm. What they provide is effectively an OS inside an OS. Linux is a somewhat hostile environment for proprietary drivers and it necessitates some technical steps to insulate against the 'viral' nature of the GPL. Google likes their dependency on Qualcomm just about as much as Apple does. It would not surprise me if they eventually move to their own in house 5G stack and I bet that would be a proprietary fuchsia exclusive. Proprietary ensures you get your software from Google (or Qualcomm). And making it exclusive to Fuchsia ensures they have full control over the combined package. Chinese manufacturers are also insulating against being dependent on Qualcomm. E.g. Huawei has their own 5G modem and is of course also in the base station market.
- ho_schi 5y ago
  Anroid could be barely named Linux. More appopriate Google/Android or Google/Linux - in relationship to GNU/Linux. Google seems to do everything to push out GNU and the GPL. Especially the compatibility layer "PlayServices". Aside from userland the closed-source modules in the kernel are a plague. I prefer a strong BSD and Linux community over everything just controlled by a single company. Therefore: We shall be worried. My feeling and past experience tells me "Don't use it. Don't support it. Or we will suffer."

nomercy400 5y ago

Anybody know what the license of the source code of Fuchsia is? I could not easily find it on the website.

Tepix 5y ago
It's a mix of MIT, BSD and Apache
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
Does it matter? Google can close source an internal pre-release fork and then make a final set of modifications that will sufficiently deviate it for production releases. Isn't the entire business reason behind Fuchsia that Android is a bit "too open source" and they want more control? They are probably going to get some free bugfixes from "enthusiasts" and then close source a sufficient amount of it for "security reasons". Or whatever serves their "not evil" purposes. But at least SOME of the code is in the open.
- refulgentis 5y ago
- PoignardAzur 5y ago
  > Does it matter? I mean... yeah, it does? There's good reason to be suspicious in general, but if any time they do something non-evil the immediate reaction is "okay but this is probably actually evil in some convoluted way", then that suspicion becomes paranoia. Even if they put out closed-source modules like they do with Chrome, having an open-source microkernel with a focus on sandboxing and security, with the resources of a major corporation behind it, is incredibly beneficial for the ecosystem.

sequence7 5y ago

Is anyone providing unofficial builds of Fuchsia? I can see from the article the requirement is to build it yourself but I'm lazy/time poor and I'd really like to try runnning Fuchsia in an emulator.

kwijibob 5y ago

Would there be a growing job market for people who master the Fuschia ecosystem now? Or is it basically just for Google employees working on Google devices?

mhoad 5y ago
I think the idea of a proper production grade Fuschia workstation that you could use as a daily driver is still a few years away realistically. However, I think when that happens a lot of interesting opportunities will I inevitably open up because it provides what I think is an extremely compelling story for a lot of people you might not initially anticipate. For example, from a security and just general maintainability point of view I would expect it to become the new obvious choice inside of organisations for those who aren’t still tied to Windows specific desktop applications.

sidcool 5y ago

Google has been investing in Fuschia for years now. What's their end goal with it?

danuker 5y ago
My shot in the dark: embrace, extend, and extinguish Linux.
- ahalam 5y ago
  Google has a reputation of extinguishing its own projects. So who knows how long their fascination w/ Fuchsia will last.
  - sobkas 5y ago
    Allure of flushing down the toilet GPL software from their stack is just too high for them, to just walk away from it.
  - cryptos 5y ago
    At least it wouldn't hurt to always have some flowers around for the next Google project entering the Google Graveyard ;-) (I don't expect that Fuchsia would end there any time soon.)
- WithinReason 5y ago
  I thought Fuschia wasn't Linux
  - danuker 5y ago
    It's not, but it can run Linux binaries. https://www.osnews.com/story/133013/fuchsia-gets-support-for-running-unmodified-linux-programs/ https://www.osnews.com/story/133013/fuchsia-gets-support-for...
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    In theory if Fuschia fulfills it's purpose, google could have Android sit on top of Fuschia as opposed to a Linux Kernel. This would give them far more control over the direction of the OS, far more control over millions of users, and allow far less tinkering by android users.

childintime 5y ago

To get on top of your fear of the new (and other insecurities), this is the video to watch: https://youtu.be/gIT1ISCioDY https://youtu.be/gIT1ISCioDY. No need for the habitual google defamation exercise here.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

rob74 5y ago

Some stats about the various ways of writing the project name (taken from these comments): Fuchsia: 39 Fuschia: 19 Fushia: 1 Fuchia: 1 Other: ? ...so we can conclude that the UX of this codename is terrible. Maybe they should change it to something more easy to remember, e.g. Fuxia (Fucksya would probably also be easier to remember, but could be deemed too obscene)?

catchclose8919 5y ago
...I honestly propose a new "F*ks Yeah!" spelling for this project just to mindfuck with future programmer archaeologists
detritus 5y ago
The more popular it becomes, the more people will learn to correctly spell fooshia.
orthoxerox 5y ago
Fewsha?
inops 5y ago
Naming it "Fucksya" wouldn't be the best advertisement either
- xattt 5y ago
  They’re being fearless about vendor lock-in!
lnxg33k1 5y ago
In italian the color name is fuxia
- say-what-now 5y ago
  The color's name is Fucsia, in Italian. Fuxia does not exist https://linguaegrammatica.com/fucsia-o-fuxia-come-scrivere https://linguaegrammatica.com/fucsia-o-fuxia-come-scrivere

est31 5y ago

Fuchsia is the most serious OS that has significant components written in Rust at this moment, so this is pretty neat!

steveklabnik 5y ago
Depends on how you define "serious"; for desktop-ish, sure, but for embedded, for example, the Hubris OS we've written at Oxide is a key component of the entire company's product. There's a lot more diversity in the embedded space in general.
- est31 5y ago
  TIL about Hubris, very cool! One could probably also mention the bunch of hypervisors, as they run on the bare metal as well, and maybe Tock, and I'm probably unaware of a bunch. Rust is definitely a hot language when it comes to OS development, which is really great. I've cloned hybris [0], it seems to have 48k lines of Rust source code. Maybe there are other components that I'm missing. Fuchsia [1] on the other hand had 2.1 million lines of Rust in Dec 2020 [2], and according to tokei has 3.3 million as of now (8b51db9e2b809, March 28 2022), more than it has C++ (2.2 million) and C (366k) combined. For comparison, a full check out of the rust-lang/rust repo with all the submodules which contains rustc as well as tools like cargo, rustfmt or clippy, and their test suites, contains 2.1 million lines. But yeah you can come up with several definitions of "serious". Is an OS that an entire company bases its revenues on more serious than a research project that some call as a way to maintain senior developer retention, but may one day replace components of one of the most deployed end user operating systems in the world? [0]: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/hubris https://github.com/oxidecomputer/hubris [1]: https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/ https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/ [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/k9djda/expanding_fuchsias_open_source_model/gf559oz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/k9djda/expanding_fuch...
  - surajrmal 5y ago
    Keep in mind that fuchsia vendors third party libraries, so a decent chunk of that code is third party libraries. That doesn't undermine what you've said, but I wanted to just highlight that not all 3M+ lines of code were written for fuchsia.

FpUser 5y ago

I have my hands full already. Not sure why would I want to play with unfinished product and use yet another proprietary language for the sake of Google getting more and more into my life. I think I'll pass

naoqj 5y ago

esteth 5y ago
I'm not sure what you're trying to say? Who are "these people"? The people who write Fuchsia's documentation? And they can't stop what? Adding DEI messages to the header of their website?
- noisem4ker 5y ago
  >Who are "these people"? Various Google people. See also the Go doc pages in the recent past. >And they can't stop what? Displaying intrusive ideological messaging on technical websites, where it does not belong.
  - fao_ 5y ago
    > intrusive ideological messaging Would "Martin Luther King Day" also be intrusive ideological messaging? What about "Christopher Columbus Day"? I'm interested on where the line is here for you.

amenghra 5y ago

In case you need some context on this project, from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system) Fuchsia is an open-source capability-based operating system developed by Google. In contrast to prior Google-developed operating systems such as Chrome OS and Android, which are based on the Linux kernel, Fuchsia is based on a new kernel named Zircon. It first became known to the public when the project appeared on a self-hosted git repository in August 2016 without any official announcement. After years of development, Fuchsia was officially released to the public on the first-generation Google Nest Hub, replacing its original Cast OS.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

p_l 5y ago

Anyone noticed how the GN tool used to build Fuchsia looks like someone really wanted to use Bazel but for whatever reason they had to use Ninja?

lima 5y ago
Historical reasons - when Chromium was first open sourced, they really wanted to use Blaze, but that wasn't open sourced yet, so they built gn. Bazel (an open source subset of Blaze) wasn't a thing until much later. Fuchsia is really close to the Chromium team and inherited gn and most of the supporting repo management and build tooling. gn is less strict than Blaze and Google probably doesn't want to maintain both Bazel and gn forever, so it stands to reason that gn will eventually be replaced with Bazel. That will be a really large effort so it's probably not happening anytime soon and will take a while. Android, which uses yet another home grown Blaze-alike build tool - Soong - is already in the process of migrating to Bazel. Moving from Soong to Bazel is probably much easier than going from Ninja/Make to Soong due to how conceptually similar those are.
- surajrmal 5y ago
  Beyond that, it was also easier to conceive of a path towards self hosting with GN since it's written in c++. Neither java nor python can run natively on Fuchsia even today. That said Fuchsia's build system has a fair bit of python scripts anyways these days.
- humanrebar 5y ago
  How do the build requirements for bazel and fuschia compare? Last I checked, bazel required python and a JVM and that seems like a lot for bootstrapping an OS.
  - lima 5y ago
    Bazel's single-binary distribution brings its own JVM, it has less dependencies than gn. Most people use Bazelisk: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazelisk https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazelisk

m6w6 5y ago

Since nobody asked yet; Why explicitly Intel NUC instead of general x64? I can only guess that it's because of HW drivers?

tyingq 5y ago
They also support an ARM dev board, the Khadas VIM3: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/hardware/khadas-vim3 https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/development/hardware/khadas-... , though with the "core" setup and not "workstation".
xmodem 5y ago
Yes - drivers, and the NUC is a consistent target that's readily available almost anywhere in the world.
surajrmal 5y ago
Fuchsia will run on a surprisingly large number of x64 machines but because it's not tested on a wide array of hardware, it's hard to recommend you try it outside of the narrower set of hardware where it is tested.

dekhn 5y ago

the shell is limited and the environment can't really host a full dev stack. I continue to fail to see the point of this project that eats other projects.

krausejj 5y ago

It's a shame fuchsia is so hard to spell. 25% of the references to "fuchsia" so far in this thread spell it incorrectly.

jeffbee 5y ago
It helps to know that it was named for Leonhart Fuchs. Just remember it is Fuchs-ia.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  "Google fucks-ya"? has a nice ring to it.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    more like "fewkssia"

miiiiiike 5y ago

Having used several Google OSS projects I would NEVER consider using an OS from Google. The documentation structure is often atrocious, the are always dozens of recognized but unresolved bugs, those bugs often remain for years, the documentation often is not updated to reflect the state of open bugs so code samples and tutorials are often broken, the bugs are resolved slowly, non-Google pull requests are often left to die on the vine[0], no road maps, the Google employees use an internal build system and the external packages are often broken, and these three words: "Not. A. Priority." If your bug is not an internal Google priority you are basically out of luck. Hope you like maintaining your own patches, for years. I'm not saying that OSS projects from other large projects don't have similar problems, I'm saying that every Google project I've depended on has had all of these problems. The idea of my OS being run like this? Absurd. This just is a guess, but, I'd wager that most Google OSS developers just wanted a fancy corporate job and got stuck interfacing with the public on an OSS project. I don't think that most of them aspired to be OSS developers and it shouldn't be a requirement. [0]: Just today a two year old bug that I've been watching was closed by merging a pull request that was first opened in early-2020, closed as stale in mid-2021, and re-submitted/merged this week.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
> The idea of my OS being run like this? Absurd. Isn't Android run like this? Is the community participation in Fuchsia different from that of Android i.e. Build inside Google and publish the code to AOSP? Regardless of how 'open-source' android is, I'm grateful for its 'openness'. Cannot imagine mobile compute held solely by walled-gardens and carriers. Anyways Brian Swetland is the person to thank for those who appreciate the openness of android[1]. > “Peter mentioned something about exclusivity for our first device, which Brian overheard. By the time we got back to our hotel room, Swetland had threatened to resign because ‘I didn’t join Android to become another Danger.’ I was concerned because Brian was so critical to our success, but when I saw him the next day everything was fine.” > He was strongly in favor of Android’s vision for an open and independent platform. He threatened to resign several times during his time on the Android team over decisions that would have resulted in a closed platform. [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/08/excerpt-the-history-of-android-as-written-by-a-longtime-android-developer/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/08/excer...