5 ms·

Google is (not) bringing Fuchsia OS to Android devices

50 points by childintime 2y ago

pjmlp 2y ago
I guess by now, even its use on Google Nest Hub isn't even certain. I had high hopes for the project, but it looks like a keeping engineers busy kind of thing, a pure cost center, without any revenue to keep it going besides Google Nest Hub being shipped with it. It's a wonder how it wasn't axed already.
- fishtoucher 2y ago
  A new operating system done right gets engineers salivating and a lot of very senior staff have personal attachment to Fuchsia. Personally I think it's a lost cause; every few years they change direction in hopes of finding a concrete use case that doesn't displace some existing Google project. The Nest was Fuchsia's greatest achievement and even that was held together with strings and glue behind the scenes.
- LarsDu88 2y ago
  I believe Fuschia and usage of Dart for projects like Flutter grew out this back-and-forth legal rigamarole between Google and Oracle over Java. Plus, I believe at the time there was some core Chrome developers Google wanted to retain and keep busy with developing Flutter. These are all cool projects, and there are hardly any companies developing actual operating systems nowadays. It would be sad to see it go, but on the otherhand, I haven't seen folks outside of Google use this OS despite its strengths, and perhaps that's the real problem
  - nikitaga 2y ago
    > I believe Fuschia and usage of Dart for projects like Flutter grew out this back-and-forth legal rigamarole between Google and Oracle over Java. I'm guessing nowadays Kotlin plays this role? Its multi-platform nature means that the Android world can eventually be detached from the JVM backend, if I understand correctly.
    - cageface 2y ago
      In the mid to long term I think Kotlin and KMP are likely to be where Google puts its effort. Flutter is likely toast but it will be some time before KMP is polished enough to replace it.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - brabel 2y ago
        I've used Flutter and Kotlin MP. There's zero reason for me to believe Kotlin MP is superior, so why would it replace Flutter???
        KeplerBoy 2y ago
        Because of flutters lack of success and company politics.
        asyx 2y ago
        I mean Kotlin has actually been adopted outside of Android. Maybe it's my bubble but I've never come across an actual Dart / Flutter job.
        dzonga 2y ago
        for the simple reason that with dart / flutter you don't need a huge team. 1 - 2 people are enough. one codebase to cover web, android, iOS and desktop apps. and for that simple reason, flutter won't go away. no other UI development framework comes close to the productivity of flutter.
        cageface 2y ago
        I like Flutter a lot and I think right now it's much more capable and mature than KMP is. The problem is Google is in aggressive cost cutting mode and it's not clear how Flutter contributes to their bottom line in a meaningful way. It's not hard to make the business case that they should shift the considerable resources they now invest in Flutter to focus on Kotlin/Compose and let JetBrains do the heavy cross-platform lifting. I hope this doesn't happen but as long as Google is willing to cut engineering resources even while they're recording record profits it's hard to be confident.
  - kmeisthax 2y ago
    The thing Oracle was suing over is the thing you have to have in order to run any Java code at all. And most of Android's API surface is built in Java - including the APIs Oracle was suing over. Those can't be removed, and if you try, you're going to split the ecosystem ala Python 3.x. Android can't work without Java. This, BTW, is why the entire FOSS world was shitting itself over the Oracle lawsuit. If they were to win, it'd trigger a cascade of other companies claiming interface copyright over every competing OS and library that has a similar interface but is not entirely a compatible reimplementation[0]. The problem is that programmers thought interfaces weren't copyrightable and thus have been doing the whole "embrace and extend" dance for decades. Think less WINE and more GNU: something that's very explicitly Not UNIX, is sorta-kinda compatible enough with it, but also has a lot of its own weird extensions. That's what Oracle thought shouldn't be allowed. Fuschia replaces things lower level than the Java APIs - things Oracle doesn't own. That's the Linux kernel and a good chunk of Android userland[1]. If, say, SCO were to somehow come back from the dead with some new bullshit legal claim to the Linux kernel, then yeah, Fuschia could get Google out of that kind of a jam. But that isn't the case right now. [0] Existing Ninth Circuit[2] precedent regarding, of all things, PS1 emulation, precludes suing over compatible reimplementations of existing interfaces. The problem with Android was that it wasn't compatible; they'd taken some but not all of the Java APIs, which was against Sun policy. Sun didn't want partial implementations or extensions in the wild. In fact, Sun had already successfully sued and won against Microsoft for shipping MSJVM with COM bindings. [1] Which, funnily enough, contains no GNU code so you can't call it GNU/Android. [2] Yes, the lawsuit was in the Federal Circuit, not the Ninth Circuit.
    - LarsDu88 2y ago
      Basically Google has the resources to write their own OS and their own alternative to Java, so they did so as an escape hatch. And Fuschia+Dart+Flutter runs perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with them. Should Google keep pouring money into them? YES. Absolutely yes. But do they need 500+ people on each project? Probably not. Remember Google has on the order of 100,000 software engineers.
ggm 2y ago
I find that writing which speaks of Google as a single "it" misses the mark. I say this because the Googlers who write here show many disparate views and pressures to deliverable. Sure, we think "there is one vision" but I suspect, there will be people inside the tent who still think this is a good idea, or a variation of it, and so (not) is mostly conjectural, because nobody who CAN say with authority what is or is not being done, is going to want to commit until they understand how it affects their KPIs. Considering why Google acquired Android in the first place, Some of this is a bit bizarre. You would think by now, there was a roadmap which made sense across the generations. We're at Android 15. Thats an awful lot of time in that model of the world and Fuschia is on what release trajectory?
- onion2k 2y ago
  I find that writing which speaks of Google as a single "it" misses the mark. I say this because the Googlers who write here show many disparate views and pressures to deliverable. That doesn't matter if you're talking about a boolean outcome or the actions of the company as a whole. There could be 50%+1 person on one side of the internal debate and 50%-1 person on the other, and everyone outside of the company would still say "Google" to refer to the collective outcomes and actions of everyone there. The subtleties of what happens behind closed doors doesn't matter. Individually Googlers are a disparate bunch. Collectively, they are "Google".
  - Sakos 2y ago
    This is the case for every company, not just Google. I've been the one internally trying to stop us from making a bad decision which ended up being made anyway. I can't distance myself from that. For everybody outside, there's only the company. My dissent as an individual doesn't exist out there.
  - asplake 2y ago
    Right. And Google isn't a democracy either (nor should it be). The numbers on the winning side might be small. But as you say, “it” is what it does.
  - lucianbr 2y ago
maxglute 2y ago
>It’s not clear why What Google revenue streams would full Fushsia cannabilize? Lack of USB->HDMI also bummer on pixel devices. I could probably convince a lot of people to migrate to chrome/fuschia/google OS if all it took was slapping their old phone to a usb hub. Well I could a few years ago, google kill services / lack of direction have put me off recommending any service by them. Still, seems like Google has a pathway to get into the Apple hardware game but simply chooses not to.
- microtonal 2y ago
  Lack of USB->HDMI also bummer on pixel devices. Google Pixel 8 supports DP-Alt, including USB-C to HDMI adapters: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2865484?hl=en https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2865484?hl=en
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    > Select the Mirror display dialog that appears on your phone. So you're still completely screwed if your screen breaks. My pixel 4a screen broke and I found there was absolutely no way at all to access files on it. There are a ton of workarounds that work on some phones (e.g. on Samsung phones you can just connect them to a screen & mouse/keyboard) but nothing works for a Pixel 4: * Asking Google Assistant to cast your screen to a Chromecast brings up a confirmation dialog you can't use (keyboard doesn't work; mouse is too tricky without being able to see anything - I did try and fail to do it blind.) * TalkBack doesn't work * Can't access the files over USB because it doesn't default to file access mode. * Can't even unlock it with a keyboard because I used pattern lock and that doesn't support keyboard input (didn't make this mistake on my new phone). * There's no longer an option to connect it to a new phone via USB and transfer all your data. Does nobody drop their phone in Google?
    - KeplerBoy 2y ago
      > Does nobody drop their phone in Google? They obviously want to sell you on google drive/google one as your backup.
choppaface 2y ago
Android is going to eat Chrome, so would not be surprised to see Fuschia team layoffs as well as Chrome OS team layoffs in the next few months. Hard to say but from a revenue perspective the non-Android teams look as redundant as much of Motorola. https://blog.chromium.org/2024/06/building-faster-smarter-chromebook.html https://blog.chromium.org/2024/06/building-faster-smarter-ch...
silisili 2y ago
This project has been a complete cluster f since the beginning. I was excited when it was announced, though it seemed to get more and more relegated to nothingness since. Now it's going to run in a VM in an already 'slow' os? For what possible reason?
- saghm 2y ago
  I feel pretty much the same, and I suspect it's not an uncommon take. When it initially became known publicly, it seemed like they might be looking to try to make a legitimate competitor to Linux in the long term, but (and potentially be the first OS to make a compelling case for both desktop and mobile, which I still feel like we haven't seen anyone do yet), but at this point, it seems like they really don't have any concrete plans for it. In hindsight, Fuschia is a pretty good representation of my opinion of Google as a whole since it first became public in 2016; eight years ago it was a lot easier to believe that they had some sort of big-picture idea of what they wanted to do, but nowadays it feels a lot more like their major products are basically just coasting on inertia, and nothing new they try to do has any sort of coherent long-term plan.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  Android is not a "slow" OS. At least not at the kernel/virtualization level.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Not even at userspace level, people keep forgetting since Android 5 most code has been AOT compiled, and additionally with PGO information, alongside a generational moving GC.
- wiseowise 2y ago
  What makes Android ‘slow’ OS?
  - xethos 2y ago
    Unironically, Google Play Services This isn't my simply having a go at Google, either. Google's assumption is that everyone is on a device released in the last 4 years - it's hard to argue with, and must be all but impossible internally, because the XDA Forums-adjacent geeks that root and ROM, re-flash and ditch GApps are a minority. The actually crazy ones that say "Google Play Services aren't worth it" are a minority of a minority, and by definition wouldn't show up in Google's stats of active devices; without Google Play Services, they aren't going to show up at the mothership. So all the data they have indicates that people don't use slower, older, devices. So Google Play Services is allowed to be heavier, because packing more and more in is both more useful to Google (more data means better traffic predictions, better ad tracking, etc.), and likely easier (I do not need to tell HN that un-optimized software is generally easier and faster to write, and typically preferred by the upper echeleons of management). All this with, as far as Google is concerned, no downside! It chugs on a 6 year old phone, but people don't use those. But even without rooting my previous phones, uninstalling everything Google via ADB gave them new life. The BlackBerry KeyOne, possibly my favourite Android ever, was binned for being slow on release. Dropping Play Services let me use it till I switched to a Linux-first device last year. It's not Android - it's Google's add-ins.
gobins 2y ago
When Fuchsia first came out, I was interested to go deep dive into it and be an early adopter/contributor. Good that I did not put in my time investment. There is always a risk with new projects but with Google there seems to be a longer wait and watch phase before you really double down on the project.
BoredPositron 2y ago
I really believe we are not able to ship big new software projects anymore. If there isn't a pile of garbage to build up on...it's going to be vaporware. What a shame I was really excited about fuchsia in the beginning.
- tjpnz 2y ago
  Big software projects still get shipped. You're just less likely to hear about them unless they're developed at FAANG.
- n3storm 2y ago
  Are even more one-and-only-corporation-controlled-software did not excited me at all. Heterogeneous components software may be suboptimal, well it is, but at least is not ramsonware technology.
spankalee 2y ago
If you want to be able to run Fuchsia and Fuchsia apps on devices without having to first install a complete new OS - which might require root - this seems like a great advancement. For me, if there's a Fuchsia app on the Play Store, or one I can easily sideload, I'll definitely try it out.
wiseowise 2y ago
Oh no, who could’ve thought that Google won’t replace most popular OS in the world with experimental thing that has nothing behind it but tech journalist hype?
- karlgkk 2y ago
  > nothing behind it but tech journalist hype It's been shipped to millions of devices, quietly.
  - dmitrygr 2y ago
    > It's been shipped to millions of devices, quietly. yeah...to wide unhappiness and many demands for refunds... https://www.google.com/search?q=fuchsia+update+nest+broken+site%3Agooglenestcommunity.com https://www.google.com/search?q=fuchsia+update+nest+broken+s...
    - karlgkk 2y ago
      The minority of those issues are for the fuchsia update, despite your lame attempts at searching. The simple fact is that they pulled it off, and many millions more are shipping with it without a problem.
  - wiseowise 2y ago
    So what? Millions of crap has been shipped. This is pale compared to original of “here’s a killer of Android”. And here we are, where Android is consuming Chrome OS and will be dominant platform for foreseeable future.
    - karlgkk 2y ago
      I didn't say it was an Android killer. I just said that it wasn't vaporware hype - since it's shipped and lots of people have been using it. You made the rest of that up in your own head and then got mad about it.
      - 2y ago
MaximilianEmel 2y ago
It could just be a stop-gap, or a low-risk test. They haven't said that it won't properly come to Android devices - if anything, this shows that there is interest for it.
prmoustache 2y ago
I translate this to: even google doesn't have enough leverage to force chips vendors to write drivers for fushia when linux is so ubiquitous.
cubefox 2y ago
Replacing an already very successful OS with a rewritten one, including a completely new kernel -- that would fundamentally break backward compatibility. And therefore it simply doesn't happen. Only Apple could perhaps pull that off by forcing it on everyone by way of controlling the hardware base. Google and Microsoft don't have that amount of control.
- Daub 2y ago
  Agreed. RIP Blackberry and also Palm, who tried and failed to introduce new OSs.
- Raqbit 2y ago
  The Fuchsia team is working on a Linux compatibility-layer, named Starnix[1], which is much like WINE on Linux. This would allow Linux applications to run on Fuchsia as-if they were running on a Linux kernel. A massive amount of work, but less work than adapting every single existing application to run on Fuchsia. Back in 2022, there were signs[2] that Google was working on testing the Android Runtime (ART) on top of Starnix, by trying to get the clock app running on top of it. Most of this work has been done in private though, the tracking-issues mentioned in the article were quickly set to private after they were found. [1]: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/starnix https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/starnix [2]: https://9to5google.com/2022/07/15/android-removes-fuchsia-code-starnix/ https://9to5google.com/2022/07/15/android-removes-fuchsia-co...
  - cubefox 2y ago
    Interesting. I guess this isn't so impossible then. Still, it seems they would need a very strong will in the company, up to Sundar Pichai, to really commit to switch over Android to Fuchsia. Which likely requires a large and years-long developer effort until the switch can be made in a reasonably seamless manner. But the management will likely ask whether the advantages (better security?) are worth such an investment.
  - bodqhrohro 2y ago
    > testing the Android Runtime (ART) on top of Starnix It reminds me how early Wayland compositors barely could ran on bare hardware and worked as X11 clients for testing purposes, hehe (many, like Weston or Cage, still can).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
edderly 2y ago
Wouldn't it be a problem for Nest devices running on Fuchsia OS to get the hardware support they need? Most companies building consumer electronics products rely on hardware vendors to provide working kernels, drivers, etc. Speculatively, if you were able to leverage Android/Linux hardware support without the overhead of the rest of the Android OS, that would free up Nest from having to handle that problem.

50 points by childintime 2y ago

I guess by now, even its use on Google Nest Hub isn't even certain. I had high hopes for the project, but it looks like a keeping engineers busy kind of thing, a pure cost center, without any revenue to keep it going besides Google Nest Hub being shipped with it. It's a wonder how it wasn't axed already.

fishtoucher 2y ago
A new operating system done right gets engineers salivating and a lot of very senior staff have personal attachment to Fuchsia. Personally I think it's a lost cause; every few years they change direction in hopes of finding a concrete use case that doesn't displace some existing Google project. The Nest was Fuchsia's greatest achievement and even that was held together with strings and glue behind the scenes.
LarsDu88 2y ago
I believe Fuschia and usage of Dart for projects like Flutter grew out this back-and-forth legal rigamarole between Google and Oracle over Java. Plus, I believe at the time there was some core Chrome developers Google wanted to retain and keep busy with developing Flutter. These are all cool projects, and there are hardly any companies developing actual operating systems nowadays. It would be sad to see it go, but on the otherhand, I haven't seen folks outside of Google use this OS despite its strengths, and perhaps that's the real problem
- nikitaga 2y ago
  > I believe Fuschia and usage of Dart for projects like Flutter grew out this back-and-forth legal rigamarole between Google and Oracle over Java. I'm guessing nowadays Kotlin plays this role? Its multi-platform nature means that the Android world can eventually be detached from the JVM backend, if I understand correctly.
  - cageface 2y ago
    In the mid to long term I think Kotlin and KMP are likely to be where Google puts its effort. Flutter is likely toast but it will be some time before KMP is polished enough to replace it.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - brabel 2y ago
      I've used Flutter and Kotlin MP. There's zero reason for me to believe Kotlin MP is superior, so why would it replace Flutter???
      - KeplerBoy 2y ago
        Because of flutters lack of success and company politics.
      - asyx 2y ago
        I mean Kotlin has actually been adopted outside of Android. Maybe it's my bubble but I've never come across an actual Dart / Flutter job.
        dzonga 2y ago
        for the simple reason that with dart / flutter you don't need a huge team. 1 - 2 people are enough. one codebase to cover web, android, iOS and desktop apps. and for that simple reason, flutter won't go away. no other UI development framework comes close to the productivity of flutter.
      - cageface 2y ago
        I like Flutter a lot and I think right now it's much more capable and mature than KMP is. The problem is Google is in aggressive cost cutting mode and it's not clear how Flutter contributes to their bottom line in a meaningful way. It's not hard to make the business case that they should shift the considerable resources they now invest in Flutter to focus on Kotlin/Compose and let JetBrains do the heavy cross-platform lifting. I hope this doesn't happen but as long as Google is willing to cut engineering resources even while they're recording record profits it's hard to be confident.
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  The thing Oracle was suing over is the thing you have to have in order to run any Java code at all. And most of Android's API surface is built in Java - including the APIs Oracle was suing over. Those can't be removed, and if you try, you're going to split the ecosystem ala Python 3.x. Android can't work without Java. This, BTW, is why the entire FOSS world was shitting itself over the Oracle lawsuit. If they were to win, it'd trigger a cascade of other companies claiming interface copyright over every competing OS and library that has a similar interface but is not entirely a compatible reimplementation[0]. The problem is that programmers thought interfaces weren't copyrightable and thus have been doing the whole "embrace and extend" dance for decades. Think less WINE and more GNU: something that's very explicitly Not UNIX, is sorta-kinda compatible enough with it, but also has a lot of its own weird extensions. That's what Oracle thought shouldn't be allowed. Fuschia replaces things lower level than the Java APIs - things Oracle doesn't own. That's the Linux kernel and a good chunk of Android userland[1]. If, say, SCO were to somehow come back from the dead with some new bullshit legal claim to the Linux kernel, then yeah, Fuschia could get Google out of that kind of a jam. But that isn't the case right now. [0] Existing Ninth Circuit[2] precedent regarding, of all things, PS1 emulation, precludes suing over compatible reimplementations of existing interfaces. The problem with Android was that it wasn't compatible; they'd taken some but not all of the Java APIs, which was against Sun policy. Sun didn't want partial implementations or extensions in the wild. In fact, Sun had already successfully sued and won against Microsoft for shipping MSJVM with COM bindings. [1] Which, funnily enough, contains no GNU code so you can't call it GNU/Android. [2] Yes, the lawsuit was in the Federal Circuit, not the Ninth Circuit.
  - LarsDu88 2y ago
    Basically Google has the resources to write their own OS and their own alternative to Java, so they did so as an escape hatch. And Fuschia+Dart+Flutter runs perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with them. Should Google keep pouring money into them? YES. Absolutely yes. But do they need 500+ people on each project? Probably not. Remember Google has on the order of 100,000 software engineers.

ggm 2y ago

I find that writing which speaks of Google as a single "it" misses the mark. I say this because the Googlers who write here show many disparate views and pressures to deliverable. Sure, we think "there is one vision" but I suspect, there will be people inside the tent who still think this is a good idea, or a variation of it, and so (not) is mostly conjectural, because nobody who CAN say with authority what is or is not being done, is going to want to commit until they understand how it affects their KPIs. Considering why Google acquired Android in the first place, Some of this is a bit bizarre. You would think by now, there was a roadmap which made sense across the generations. We're at Android 15. Thats an awful lot of time in that model of the world and Fuschia is on what release trajectory?

onion2k 2y ago
I find that writing which speaks of Google as a single "it" misses the mark. I say this because the Googlers who write here show many disparate views and pressures to deliverable. That doesn't matter if you're talking about a boolean outcome or the actions of the company as a whole. There could be 50%+1 person on one side of the internal debate and 50%-1 person on the other, and everyone outside of the company would still say "Google" to refer to the collective outcomes and actions of everyone there. The subtleties of what happens behind closed doors doesn't matter. Individually Googlers are a disparate bunch. Collectively, they are "Google".
- Sakos 2y ago
  This is the case for every company, not just Google. I've been the one internally trying to stop us from making a bad decision which ended up being made anyway. I can't distance myself from that. For everybody outside, there's only the company. My dissent as an individual doesn't exist out there.
- asplake 2y ago
  Right. And Google isn't a democracy either (nor should it be). The numbers on the winning side might be small. But as you say, “it” is what it does.
- lucianbr 2y ago

maxglute 2y ago

>It’s not clear why What Google revenue streams would full Fushsia cannabilize? Lack of USB->HDMI also bummer on pixel devices. I could probably convince a lot of people to migrate to chrome/fuschia/google OS if all it took was slapping their old phone to a usb hub. Well I could a few years ago, google kill services / lack of direction have put me off recommending any service by them. Still, seems like Google has a pathway to get into the Apple hardware game but simply chooses not to.

microtonal 2y ago
Lack of USB->HDMI also bummer on pixel devices. Google Pixel 8 supports DP-Alt, including USB-C to HDMI adapters: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2865484?hl=en https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2865484?hl=en
- IshKebab 2y ago
  > Select the Mirror display dialog that appears on your phone. So you're still completely screwed if your screen breaks. My pixel 4a screen broke and I found there was absolutely no way at all to access files on it. There are a ton of workarounds that work on some phones (e.g. on Samsung phones you can just connect them to a screen & mouse/keyboard) but nothing works for a Pixel 4: * Asking Google Assistant to cast your screen to a Chromecast brings up a confirmation dialog you can't use (keyboard doesn't work; mouse is too tricky without being able to see anything - I did try and fail to do it blind.) * TalkBack doesn't work * Can't access the files over USB because it doesn't default to file access mode. * Can't even unlock it with a keyboard because I used pattern lock and that doesn't support keyboard input (didn't make this mistake on my new phone). * There's no longer an option to connect it to a new phone via USB and transfer all your data. Does nobody drop their phone in Google?
  - KeplerBoy 2y ago
    > Does nobody drop their phone in Google? They obviously want to sell you on google drive/google one as your backup.

choppaface 2y ago

Android is going to eat Chrome, so would not be surprised to see Fuschia team layoffs as well as Chrome OS team layoffs in the next few months. Hard to say but from a revenue perspective the non-Android teams look as redundant as much of Motorola. https://blog.chromium.org/2024/06/building-faster-smarter-chromebook.html https://blog.chromium.org/2024/06/building-faster-smarter-ch...

silisili 2y ago

This project has been a complete cluster f since the beginning. I was excited when it was announced, though it seemed to get more and more relegated to nothingness since. Now it's going to run in a VM in an already 'slow' os? For what possible reason?

saghm 2y ago
I feel pretty much the same, and I suspect it's not an uncommon take. When it initially became known publicly, it seemed like they might be looking to try to make a legitimate competitor to Linux in the long term, but (and potentially be the first OS to make a compelling case for both desktop and mobile, which I still feel like we haven't seen anyone do yet), but at this point, it seems like they really don't have any concrete plans for it. In hindsight, Fuschia is a pretty good representation of my opinion of Google as a whole since it first became public in 2016; eight years ago it was a lot easier to believe that they had some sort of big-picture idea of what they wanted to do, but nowadays it feels a lot more like their major products are basically just coasting on inertia, and nothing new they try to do has any sort of coherent long-term plan.
IshKebab 2y ago
Android is not a "slow" OS. At least not at the kernel/virtualization level.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Not even at userspace level, people keep forgetting since Android 5 most code has been AOT compiled, and additionally with PGO information, alongside a generational moving GC.
wiseowise 2y ago
What makes Android ‘slow’ OS?
- xethos 2y ago
  Unironically, Google Play Services This isn't my simply having a go at Google, either. Google's assumption is that everyone is on a device released in the last 4 years - it's hard to argue with, and must be all but impossible internally, because the XDA Forums-adjacent geeks that root and ROM, re-flash and ditch GApps are a minority. The actually crazy ones that say "Google Play Services aren't worth it" are a minority of a minority, and by definition wouldn't show up in Google's stats of active devices; without Google Play Services, they aren't going to show up at the mothership. So all the data they have indicates that people don't use slower, older, devices. So Google Play Services is allowed to be heavier, because packing more and more in is both more useful to Google (more data means better traffic predictions, better ad tracking, etc.), and likely easier (I do not need to tell HN that un-optimized software is generally easier and faster to write, and typically preferred by the upper echeleons of management). All this with, as far as Google is concerned, no downside! It chugs on a 6 year old phone, but people don't use those. But even without rooting my previous phones, uninstalling everything Google via ADB gave them new life. The BlackBerry KeyOne, possibly my favourite Android ever, was binned for being slow on release. Dropping Play Services let me use it till I switched to a Linux-first device last year. It's not Android - it's Google's add-ins.

gobins 2y ago

When Fuchsia first came out, I was interested to go deep dive into it and be an early adopter/contributor. Good that I did not put in my time investment. There is always a risk with new projects but with Google there seems to be a longer wait and watch phase before you really double down on the project.

BoredPositron 2y ago

I really believe we are not able to ship big new software projects anymore. If there isn't a pile of garbage to build up on...it's going to be vaporware. What a shame I was really excited about fuchsia in the beginning.

tjpnz 2y ago
Big software projects still get shipped. You're just less likely to hear about them unless they're developed at FAANG.
n3storm 2y ago
Are even more one-and-only-corporation-controlled-software did not excited me at all. Heterogeneous components software may be suboptimal, well it is, but at least is not ramsonware technology.

spankalee 2y ago

If you want to be able to run Fuchsia and Fuchsia apps on devices without having to first install a complete new OS - which might require root - this seems like a great advancement. For me, if there's a Fuchsia app on the Play Store, or one I can easily sideload, I'll definitely try it out.

wiseowise 2y ago

Oh no, who could’ve thought that Google won’t replace most popular OS in the world with experimental thing that has nothing behind it but tech journalist hype?

karlgkk 2y ago
> nothing behind it but tech journalist hype It's been shipped to millions of devices, quietly.
- dmitrygr 2y ago
  > It's been shipped to millions of devices, quietly. yeah...to wide unhappiness and many demands for refunds... https://www.google.com/search?q=fuchsia+update+nest+broken+site%3Agooglenestcommunity.com https://www.google.com/search?q=fuchsia+update+nest+broken+s...
  - karlgkk 2y ago
    The minority of those issues are for the fuchsia update, despite your lame attempts at searching. The simple fact is that they pulled it off, and many millions more are shipping with it without a problem.
- wiseowise 2y ago
  So what? Millions of crap has been shipped. This is pale compared to original of “here’s a killer of Android”. And here we are, where Android is consuming Chrome OS and will be dominant platform for foreseeable future.
  - karlgkk 2y ago
    I didn't say it was an Android killer. I just said that it wasn't vaporware hype - since it's shipped and lots of people have been using it. You made the rest of that up in your own head and then got mad about it.
    - 2y ago

MaximilianEmel 2y ago

It could just be a stop-gap, or a low-risk test. They haven't said that it won't properly come to Android devices - if anything, this shows that there is interest for it.

prmoustache 2y ago

I translate this to: even google doesn't have enough leverage to force chips vendors to write drivers for fushia when linux is so ubiquitous.

cubefox 2y ago

Replacing an already very successful OS with a rewritten one, including a completely new kernel -- that would fundamentally break backward compatibility. And therefore it simply doesn't happen. Only Apple could perhaps pull that off by forcing it on everyone by way of controlling the hardware base. Google and Microsoft don't have that amount of control.

Daub 2y ago
Agreed. RIP Blackberry and also Palm, who tried and failed to introduce new OSs.
Raqbit 2y ago
The Fuchsia team is working on a Linux compatibility-layer, named Starnix[1], which is much like WINE on Linux. This would allow Linux applications to run on Fuchsia as-if they were running on a Linux kernel. A massive amount of work, but less work than adapting every single existing application to run on Fuchsia. Back in 2022, there were signs[2] that Google was working on testing the Android Runtime (ART) on top of Starnix, by trying to get the clock app running on top of it. Most of this work has been done in private though, the tracking-issues mentioned in the article were quickly set to private after they were found. [1]: https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/starnix https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/concepts/starnix [2]: https://9to5google.com/2022/07/15/android-removes-fuchsia-code-starnix/ https://9to5google.com/2022/07/15/android-removes-fuchsia-co...
- cubefox 2y ago
  Interesting. I guess this isn't so impossible then. Still, it seems they would need a very strong will in the company, up to Sundar Pichai, to really commit to switch over Android to Fuchsia. Which likely requires a large and years-long developer effort until the switch can be made in a reasonably seamless manner. But the management will likely ask whether the advantages (better security?) are worth such an investment.
- bodqhrohro 2y ago
  > testing the Android Runtime (ART) on top of Starnix It reminds me how early Wayland compositors barely could ran on bare hardware and worked as X11 clients for testing purposes, hehe (many, like Weston or Cage, still can).

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edderly 2y ago

Wouldn't it be a problem for Nest devices running on Fuchsia OS to get the hardware support they need? Most companies building consumer electronics products rely on hardware vendors to provide working kernels, drivers, etc. Speculatively, if you were able to leverage Android/Linux hardware support without the overhead of the rest of the Android OS, that would free up Nest from having to handle that problem.