3 ms·

IMHO Fuchsia will be a massive (real world) improvement over Linux in security. Also, 5 or 7 years from now, on which OS will Chrome or Chromium run better? Fu

IMHO Fuchsia will be a massive (real world) improvement over Linux in security. Also, 5 or 7 years from now, on which OS will Chrome or Chromium run better? Fuchsia or Linux? For the past 12 months, I've been running Chrome "on Wayland" (without XWayland in between) and although it is definitely usable, there are many small bugs some of which has existed the entire 12 months. (And will Firefox even be maintained 5 to 7 years from now?)

kllrnohj 5y ago
> IMHO Fuchsia will be a massive (real world) improvement over Linux in security. Exploits in the Linux kernel are very few & far between. How would Fuchsia represent a massive (real world) improvement in Linux over something that basically doesn't happen? By contrast for the Windows 9x -> NT kernel transition, the 9x kernel (in Windows ME at the time) had rampant worm issues and was notoriously unstable in very significant & practical ways, like plugging in USB devices would trigger BSODs with some regularity. These days the majority of kernels (Windows, Mac, and Linux) have vanishingly few exploits and are for the most part extremely stable. There's not much to improve on at this level. > For the past 12 months, I've been running Chrome "on Wayland" (without XWayland in between) and although it is definitely usable, there are many small bugs some of which has existed the entire 12 months. Note that neither ChromeOS nor Android use Wayland or X11. That compositor fight that desktop Linux can't move on from isn't something that plagues anybody else, so there's nothing for Fuchsia to "fix" there.
- cogman10 5y ago
  AFAIK, exploits for linux don't typically happen in core linux code, but rather in the drivers. That's what fuchsia bullet proofs. Drivers are isolated from the kernel such that an exploitable driver doesn't also give the exploit root access.
  - kllrnohj 5y ago
    Sure but even still exploits in kernel modules are also extremely rare. The vast majority of exploits are in getting userspace to do something it has permission to do but in a way that it didn't want to do it. Sandboxing & permission systems help here tremendously, which Android already has a pretty robust & extensive system (not just the normal app permissions, but also a massive set of selinux policies controlling what a given system service can do). Desktop Linux is pretty far behind the curve at this point, but Android/iOS aren't (and increasingly MacOS/Windows are fixing things up) Fuchsia seems like it'd be an incremental improvement here at best, and "real world" improvements even less clear than that.
- wahern 5y ago
  > Exploits in the Linux kernel are very few & far between. That's an interesting take on multiple code execution bugs per year. And not via drivers, but userland-exploitable code in general subsystems. Unless you're referring to remote code execution, which in the era of ubiquitous web applications (often running involuntarily through advertisements, etc) seems like a distinction without a difference.
  - kllrnohj 5y ago
    > And not via drivers, but userland-exploitable code in general subsystems. We're exclusively talking about the kernel+drivers here. User land exploits are irrelevant (and obviously not something fuchsia will be immune to). > Unless you're referring to remote code execution I'm referring to exploits that actually are found in the wild to have caused damage that a change in kernels would have done something to prevent.
    - wahern 5y ago
      Drivers are the commercial case for Fuschia. But in general, microkernels make it much easier to 1) implement privilege isolation for subsystems and 2) implement subsystems in a more secure manner, both of which absolutely improve security posture. A subsystem is just another type of driver. Though, it depends on how well Zircon makes use of this--i.e. avoids implementing all the most critical subsystems in the same process, or otherwise abuses too much unprotected memory sharing among them.
      - kllrnohj 5y ago
        > 1) implement privilege isolation for subsystems and 2) implement subsystems in a more secure manner, both of which absolutely improve security posture. Sure, but Android already has that via a user per application for app sandboxing & a very extensive selinux policy set[1]. Which makes the real-world benefit of that seemingly very negligible. There's a huge gap between desktop Linux & Fuschia/Zircon here, but there doesn't seem to be a particularly big gap between Fuschia/Zircon & Android Linux. 1: See all the .te files in the public & prive dirs of https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/+/master:system/sepolicy/ https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/+/maste...
michaelmrose 5y ago
Firefox stems from mozilla back in 1998 only 5 years after Mosiac and 3 years after the original IE. It seems exceptionally likely that Firefox will continue in some form for the foreseeable future.
bee_rider 5y ago
> And will Firefox even be maintained 5 to 7 years from now? Hopefully! It would be a bummer to have to switch to some hipster browser like Suckless Surf (assuming browsers made by advertising companies are not candidates for obvious reasons).
brimble 5y ago
> Also, 5 or 7 years from now, on which OS will Chrome or Chromium run better? Fuchsia or Linux? Linux's GUI layer is such a huge weak spot, and it doesn't look like Wayland's gonna fix that (it seems like it's not even set up to address the most serious problems, really). If they put Fuschia on Android devices & Chromebooks, that'll be about the end of the story for consumer-facing Linux. Then if they can make it work well as a container-hosting server OS and decide to push it for that purpose... well, the year of the Linux anything might be behind us, then.
- surajrmal 5y ago
  Neither ChromeOS nor Android use any desktop Linux software such as X, Wayland, Gnome, KDE, or otherwise. As far as I know Chrome still runs fine on Desktop Linux despite this.

kllrnohj 5y ago

> IMHO Fuchsia will be a massive (real world) improvement over Linux in security. Exploits in the Linux kernel are very few & far between. How would Fuchsia represent a massive (real world) improvement in Linux over something that basically doesn't happen? By contrast for the Windows 9x -> NT kernel transition, the 9x kernel (in Windows ME at the time) had rampant worm issues and was notoriously unstable in very significant & practical ways, like plugging in USB devices would trigger BSODs with some regularity. These days the majority of kernels (Windows, Mac, and Linux) have vanishingly few exploits and are for the most part extremely stable. There's not much to improve on at this level. > For the past 12 months, I've been running Chrome "on Wayland" (without XWayland in between) and although it is definitely usable, there are many small bugs some of which has existed the entire 12 months. Note that neither ChromeOS nor Android use Wayland or X11. That compositor fight that desktop Linux can't move on from isn't something that plagues anybody else, so there's nothing for Fuchsia to "fix" there.

cogman10 5y ago
AFAIK, exploits for linux don't typically happen in core linux code, but rather in the drivers. That's what fuchsia bullet proofs. Drivers are isolated from the kernel such that an exploitable driver doesn't also give the exploit root access.
- kllrnohj 5y ago
  Sure but even still exploits in kernel modules are also extremely rare. The vast majority of exploits are in getting userspace to do something it has permission to do but in a way that it didn't want to do it. Sandboxing & permission systems help here tremendously, which Android already has a pretty robust & extensive system (not just the normal app permissions, but also a massive set of selinux policies controlling what a given system service can do). Desktop Linux is pretty far behind the curve at this point, but Android/iOS aren't (and increasingly MacOS/Windows are fixing things up) Fuchsia seems like it'd be an incremental improvement here at best, and "real world" improvements even less clear than that.
wahern 5y ago
> Exploits in the Linux kernel are very few & far between. That's an interesting take on multiple code execution bugs per year. And not via drivers, but userland-exploitable code in general subsystems. Unless you're referring to remote code execution, which in the era of ubiquitous web applications (often running involuntarily through advertisements, etc) seems like a distinction without a difference.
- kllrnohj 5y ago
  > And not via drivers, but userland-exploitable code in general subsystems. We're exclusively talking about the kernel+drivers here. User land exploits are irrelevant (and obviously not something fuchsia will be immune to). > Unless you're referring to remote code execution I'm referring to exploits that actually are found in the wild to have caused damage that a change in kernels would have done something to prevent.
  - wahern 5y ago
    Drivers are the commercial case for Fuschia. But in general, microkernels make it much easier to 1) implement privilege isolation for subsystems and 2) implement subsystems in a more secure manner, both of which absolutely improve security posture. A subsystem is just another type of driver. Though, it depends on how well Zircon makes use of this--i.e. avoids implementing all the most critical subsystems in the same process, or otherwise abuses too much unprotected memory sharing among them.
    - kllrnohj 5y ago
      > 1) implement privilege isolation for subsystems and 2) implement subsystems in a more secure manner, both of which absolutely improve security posture. Sure, but Android already has that via a user per application for app sandboxing & a very extensive selinux policy set[1]. Which makes the real-world benefit of that seemingly very negligible. There's a huge gap between desktop Linux & Fuschia/Zircon here, but there doesn't seem to be a particularly big gap between Fuschia/Zircon & Android Linux. 1: See all the .te files in the public & prive dirs of https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/+/master:system/sepolicy/ https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/+/maste...

michaelmrose 5y ago

Firefox stems from mozilla back in 1998 only 5 years after Mosiac and 3 years after the original IE. It seems exceptionally likely that Firefox will continue in some form for the foreseeable future.

bee_rider 5y ago

> And will Firefox even be maintained 5 to 7 years from now? Hopefully! It would be a bummer to have to switch to some hipster browser like Suckless Surf (assuming browsers made by advertising companies are not candidates for obvious reasons).

brimble 5y ago

> Also, 5 or 7 years from now, on which OS will Chrome or Chromium run better? Fuchsia or Linux? Linux's GUI layer is such a huge weak spot, and it doesn't look like Wayland's gonna fix that (it seems like it's not even set up to address the most serious problems, really). If they put Fuschia on Android devices & Chromebooks, that'll be about the end of the story for consumer-facing Linux. Then if they can make it work well as a container-hosting server OS and decide to push it for that purpose... well, the year of the Linux anything might be behind us, then.

surajrmal 5y ago
Neither ChromeOS nor Android use any desktop Linux software such as X, Wayland, Gnome, KDE, or otherwise. As far as I know Chrome still runs fine on Desktop Linux despite this.