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Google's Not-so-secret New OS (techspecs.blog)
According to reports late last year, Google is working on a new operating system called Andromeda. Much about it is still unknown, but according to the documentations Google has provided on its website, it's clear that the Fuchsia is the actual name of the operating system, and the kernel is called Magenta. A tech enthusiast dug around the documentations to share the followings: To my naive eyes, rather than saying Chrome OS is being merged into Android, it looks more like Android and Chrome OS are both being merged into Fuchsia. It's worth noting that these operating systems had previously already begun to merge together to an extent, such as when the Android team worked with the Chrome OS team in order to bring Update Engine to Nougat, which introduced A/B updates to the platform. Google is unsurprisingly bringing up Andromeda on a number of platforms, including the humble Intel NUC. ARM, x86, and MIPS bring-up is exactly what you would expect for an Android successor, and it also seems clear that this platform will run on Intel laptops. My best guess is that Android as an API and runtime will live on as a legacy environment within Andromeda. That's not to say that all development of Android would immediately stop, which seems extremely unlikely. But Google can't push two UI APIs as equal app frameworks over the long term: Mojo is clearly the future. Ah, but what is Mojo? Well it's the new API for writing Andromeda apps, and it comes from Chromium. Mojo was originally created to "extract a common platform out of Chrome's renderer and plugin processes that can support multiple types of sandboxed content."
If it gains popularity when will Google pull the plug on this one?
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Why do we refer to a userspace infrastructure/UI API as an OS? Are KDE and GNOME OSes now?
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Chrome OS and Android are both untrusted, and inherently untrustable OS's. I would never allow one of them to run on any hardware I owned due to Google being a marketing and data harvesting company above all else. That is in their DNA and pervasive in their software which exists to collect as much of your data as possible.
Merging them into one OS is not going to make that any better.
Replacing Linux with a home-rolled kernel?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Just because it's small doesn't mean that it's humble. With i7's and 32G ram they easily out perform the humble mac mini which used to be a new development, throw in a closet and let it run box.
I'm running ESXi with decent results as well as other home lab experiments. (NVR, etc)
Since much of this already exists in Chromium, does that mean that Google is pushing for JavaScript / Progressive Web Apps? You could have lighter installs of application or just links to web apps run. It almost sounds like they're going the Firefox OS route.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
and I will hug him, and pet him, and squeeze him
I'm old enough to remember when OS's and browsers were completely separate things, and tying them together was something only monopolists did.
If I could quickly and easily switch users on my phone, I'd immediately set up three profiles to keep things separate:
Ray@work
Ray@play
RaysKid
No more accidentally triggering auto-complete of a personal URL while at work. I can let the kid play a game on the phone while I'm driving, knowing the toddler won't be clicking on important work or personal stuff.
Google has done a wonderful job of obfuscation to the fact that Android and Chrome are Linux distributions not OSes. They both use the Linux kernel and Google's in house Desktop Environment. Does Fuchsia replace the Linux kernel or is it simply a new distribution with yet another Desktop Environment?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Despite a blinding array of talent that works for the organization, this is the architecture for multimedia that they produced:
Google has in no way acknowledged the exceptionally poor design of Android, and there is no evidence that the organization has improved and learned from their management mistakes. How then can they be trusted to produce a new operating system? And why would anyone trust them to produce a secure system that is closed source?
I don't care if Verizon gives it away. Absolutely not.
"it's clear that the Fuchsia is the actual name of the operating system"
I have no problems with the color itself, but i don't want to have to either spell or pronounce "Fuchsia" on a regular basis when talking about my phone or looking up stuff about it on the internet. Also Fuchsia seems like a horrible idea for a mascot.
Either this is a really poor choice, or somebody (possibly me) is misunderstanding what is meant by "actual name of the operating system." (If it's just a code name during development and the _real_ actual name will end up being something else that's fine.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
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What is Mojo? Well it's the new API for writing Andromeda apps, and it comes from Chromium. Mojo was originally created to "extract a common platform out of Chrome's renderer and plugin processes that can support multiple types of sandboxed content."
As a former developer of Palm/HP WebOS applications, this statement fills me with dread.
The WebOS application framework was also called Mojo and forced developers to use (WebKit) HTML, CSS & JavaScript for their entire application. Writing a UI, fine ... but having to write your entire application in JavaScript -- this glorious idea alone caused otherwise decent hardware to be about as powerful as a 286* as soon as you needed to push some heavier math operations (say, for de-/compression).
Even once WebOS allowed native C/C++, the call overhead between the HTML UI and the C/C++ backend was still ludicrously high (>20ms per callback) and close to useless, unless you abandoned the UI framework entirely and wrote everything from scratch.
So unless Google only uses Mojo for the UI and allows developers to use something nicer and faster for the backend, with good callback support, I feel this platform will obsolete itself, just like WebOS did.
[*] - Of course, that was before the Google V8 engine hit the market and before asm.js and node.js were available, but still...
You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.
Few-sha.
My bigger worry with Fuchsia and Magenta is whether T-Mobile's legal department will spring into action, as it once did against the color scheme of Engadget Mobile.
Will such a firmware patch void the warranty on the display hinge, the keyboard, and the power jack? I worry about the warranty because I've had to have my current laptop serviced once under warranty to replace the power jack.