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Google's Upcoming 'Fuchsia' Smartphone OS Dumps Linux, Has a Wild New UI (arstechnica.com)
More details have emerged about Fuchsia, the new mobile OS Google has been working on. ArsTechnica reports that Fuchsia is not based on Linux (unlike Android and Chrome OS). Instead, the OS uses a new, Google-developed microkernel called "Magenta." From the article: With Fuchsia, Google would not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL: the OS is licensed under a mix of BSD 3 clause, MIT, and Apache 2.0. Dumping Linux might come as a bit of a shock, but the Android ecosystem seems to have no desire to keep up with upstream Linux releases. Even the Google Pixel is still stuck on Linux Kernel 3.18, which was first released at the end of 2014. [...] The interface and apps are written using Google's Flutter SDK, a project that actually produces cross-platform code that runs on Android and iOS. Flutter apps are written in Dart, Google's reboot of JavaScript which, on mobile, has a focus on high-performance, 120fps apps. It also has a Vulkan-based graphics renderer called "Escher" that lists "Volumetric soft shadows" as one of its features, which seems custom-built to run Google's shadow-heavy "Material Design" interface guidelines. The publication put the Flutter SDK to test on an Android device to get a sneak peek into the user interface of Fuchsia. "The home screen is a giant vertically scrolling list. In the center you'll see a (placeholder) profile picture, the date, a city name, and a battery icon," the author wrote. "Above the are 'Story' cards -- basically Recent Apps -- and below it is a scrolling list of suggestions, sort of like a Google Now placeholder. Leave the main screen and you'll see a Fuchsia 'home' button pop up on the bottom of the screen, which is just a single white circle."
It's something new and from Google/Apple/Microsoft, so therefore it is a bad thing!
sounds like it was written by a bunch of Riff-Raff...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Time to completely fucking change everything so I have to re-learn how to use the phone and write my apps. Change for the sake of change, dontcha know.
Really, this thing is ugly. It could probably work on a 80" monitor. On a 6" phone, not so much. Bring back webos please
Story cards? Reading this article I get impression this new product will end up as a case study in how run-away 'UI usability design' would look like.
I am not looking forward to this backwards slide in UI design. Android borrowed Win 3.1 UI. Whats next? Norton Commander UI? CLI? Punch cards?
Not invented here... once again. Sigh. I hope it dies
What Google needs to do is upgrade Android to use cgroups for app isolation, and switch to using JVM bytecodes so they can recycle the vast amount of work in the OpenJDK project.
Fuschia Shock
Would be better if there was some kind of video to demo this.
The pics make it look unintuitive as hell.
What else could it be based on?
Well I can't stand UIs that use three very similar shades of grey, so they had to go to the other extreme.
Of course looks aren't everything, but there are plenty of GUIs that look good and are shit to use, but very few the other way round.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
no more dumbass unpatachable manufacturer OS builds and no open source security hole riddled dumpster fires. Don't you remember the story from a few days ago that there's a new android exploit discovered like every 5 minutes?
I assume the ultimate motivation for this project was as a backup plan in case of a disastrously adverse ruling in Oracle v. Google that would have led to Google deciding to excise any connection between Android and Java. It's probably since taken on a life of its own, as these things tend to do. (Also, I wonder if the names Fuchsia & Magenta are references to the ill-fated Pink OS that started life as a ground-up Mac OS rewrite at Apple and morphed into the Taligent corporation?)
I hope Sailfish would take off immediately.
What programming languages does this system officially support for application development?
That is fantastic news that they are targeting 120 fps ! I hope this helps push all the other vendors (phones, monitors, etc.) stop stop targeting a shitty 30 fps experience.
At our Fortune 50 company I'm always educating our UX and Graphic Designers about the reasons why we run our app at 60 fps. Kind of hard to argue when they see a demo first hand. :-) Now if only the rest of the company would get on board ditching the crappy 30 fps that people seem to think is "good enough."
I wonder if Google is trying to target VR at some point placing a safe bet of 120 so they can hit the magic 90+ FPS required? The 120 fps for apps is just a bonus
> Android hung around inside Google for about five years before it launched on a real product.
So basically Fuschia is a tech demo today -- that may, or may not ship.
I wonder if they are going to ignore the whole Android ecosystem or embrace it, because 2 billion devices running Android is pretty hard to ignore.
They are doing this to go after the Rooters. They want to close off the "Root your device and load whatever you want" hole in these devices.
I really like having Linux as the backbone to my device. The amount of freedom and ability to script in tasks is one of the main reasons why I've gone with Android over iOS. Hopefully this new OS allows the same level of freedom and scriptability.
When will they pop up?
Also, I wonder if the names Fuchsia & Magenta are references to the ill-fated Pink OS that started life as a ground-up Mac OS rewrite at Apple
Mac homage or not, T-Mobile has sued Aio Wireless and Engadget over the use of magenta.
I've often thought that maybe a microkernel would be better suited to a phone, so resources (camera, wifi, usb, etc) could be better partitioned/isolated. I've pondered how hard it would be to base Android on Minix instead of Linux.
By removing it from the GPL, they're just tivoizing the code.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Let's hope not.
Jiri says "updating all projects", then goes autistic... doing something. Anybody know what's up with that? I thought Google was supposed to be able to handle load...
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Actually, Minix sounds like a much better base for Android, given that Google prefers BSD code in the userland, and only uses Linux for the kernel. Had they used Minix, they could have used the complete package under the same license, or even made it proprietary. Given how much Google contributes to the BSDs, I'm surprised that they didn't go that route.
I don't know about you guys, but to me that thing looks a bit like Googles Hurd. I doubt it will overtake *nix any time soon.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
As if an OS based on Java apps wasn't slow enough, now we get an OS based on Javascript shovelware.
This seems kind of like a kid's pet project. One of the kind you find in the open source world quite often. Yet another desktop interface with no apps for it. I still remember this on Linux. We had the Y Window System, Fresco, and now we had Mir and Wayland. All have gone basically nowhere.
Face it Google, Android is already entrenched, what makes you think people are going to rewrite everything to satisfy this Javascript urge?
It only makes sense if, like others said here, this OS was meant as an hedge in case Oracle won the Android lawsuit.
The microkernel itself seems to be an idea someone came up to make this buzzword compliant more than anything else.
I'm curious what it's using for an init system.
Perhaps this is partly in reaction to the migration of the major Linux distributions to systemd.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Let's hope better linuxes (than Android) come to the mobile area after this threat.
Qualcomm, they don't provide Linux drivers for later kernels.
How are they going to fix this problem by switching to yet another OS?
Android loyalists are definitely blown the fuck out by this. I know Google is famous for fucking its customers via abandoning their functional and used products, but I never thought it would happen to Android. If you can't trust them to treat Android right, they are gonna royally fuck over anything else that they have.
Just because you *have* the code, doesn't mean you can GPL the code. The author is the only one that has that right (because they own the copyrights) unless they delegate those rights to someone else
or unless they gave you a license.
like a BSD license
or is your intention to simply steal it and stick a GPL on it.
which is 100% doable when switching from BSD to GPL (but not the other way around).
BSD is license designed for the freedom of developers developers.
it basically states:
"you are allowed to do what the fuck you want with the code, even keeping it all for yourself and only releasing binaries, but you can also release it"
GPL is about freedom of end users. A user should always be provided with the freedom o code they are running, so they too can modify it not (not only you as a dev). it thus comes down to "you are allowed to do what the fuck you want to do with the code. but if you give out to someone elsr, they shoukd get the same rights to tinker ad you did".
If you look closely, the second is basically the first, but with the additional requirements to pass down the freedoms to the next.
now play close attention : nothing in a permissive license like BSD would prevent you to add this extra clause. it s all about letting you, the dev, do whatever the fuck you want, and adding the requirement is something you might want to.
(otoh, copyleft license require that transmit further down under the exact same condition you received. you receive it as GPL, the next one must be getting GPL.
And that GPL doesn't allow you to remove that requirement.
relicensing problems do exist, but they concerne smaller details.
- older BSD license required a name mention. it's not only "do what you want " (a change to GPl would be ob the list),but also "required to spell name in any product you hand out. (which goes against the GPL. GPL won't rely adding restrictions )
- gpl has versions. some softwar is licensed as "GPL v2-only" so you caan't release under anything else (because copyleft asks you to keep the rights)
other explicitly mention future: "gpl v3 or anything more recent" so on the day GPL v6 is out you can use it.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Just kidding. If the UI is as good as everything else Google touches it will be virtually unusable. Google really, really, really sucks as making UIs.
Google already have a Magenta AI project. Is it wise to reuse the same name for something else? We already had the problem with the Go language (well, in that case at least it was "Go!" vs "Go")
I think Google might roll their own distribution or at least might have someone capable of doing that for them if they didn't like the features chosen by the distributions.
They should rename Fuchsia to Firehose. Actually, it sounds like Google Wave for smartphones. Yaayy!
Look what they did there, I never thought I'd consider buying an iPhone Whoda thunk?
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
But seriously if the group backing Tizen (Intel, LG, & Samsung to name a few) get their act together they are positioned to swoop in and take the market while Google tries to steer it to their new walled garden. Tizen is OSS top to bottom so there is no locked down portion. Although I'm sure each OEM will try to slap something proprietary on it to make it their own. They need to address the security holes that were recently identified and clean up their codebase but it's theirs to lose.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
The Linux kernel development process is a total PITA and I don't mean in the combative, degrading and misogynistic attitudes prevalent on the mailing list. The actual process and leadership is broken.
* They keep flawed external user space APIs in place in "Major Releases" for compatibility with broken apps. Not that major releases mean anything anymore.
* They consistently and openly break internal APIs in a way that drivers will fail to compile as a way to brow-beat vendors into not shipping binary blobs.
* Linus himself has said it has become bloated and shitty (not an exact quote), but no push has been made to debloat or clean it up. The video drivers are probably the worst offenders; I ran duplo to detect code duplicates and it totally filled up my hard drive.
* How long has NTFS been around? Long enough that the internal driver ought to be able to safely write to it.
* The development process has become so segregated that there is no cross talk. For example compressed RAM, compressed SWAP and a compressed file system each expand and recompress data between each other even when they use the same compression method.
* The kernel continues to add unnecessary build requirements like bc and perl even though Rob Landley (toybox and formerly busybox maintainer) has provided several (not-accepted) patches. Add that to the insanely large repo size and you basically have to pay people to touch it now.
* Too many more reasons to mention, but it works, I use it, people use it, businesses use it and there is no real competitor at the moment to force them to compete and actually fix stuff - new features make news, cleaning up 1000 lines of duplicate code doesn't - I hope magenta inspires a 1000 paper-cuts cleanup campaign.
Alphabet* (Google) basically used linux in the beginning because that is what the android project started on and the alternatives at the time didn't have the same level of support for embedded architectures that could be used in phones and tablets. Sure, the BSDs had some support for the processors, but decent accelerated 3D graphics ruled them out (not that it is superb in Linux either). Now that they have a large market share, they can leverage that into vendor support, but since many of them don't want to open source their code and help their competitors reverse engineer the hardware that their company invested lots of time and money in, it is useful to have a relatively stable internal API that Alphabet can control without arbitrarily being overruled because some old IBM mainframe still uses that bug/feature.
-- Yes I said Linux without the GNU --- musl-libc, toybox, jwm, X11 and st is all you need for a basic desktop system
That's the most sly *BSD is dying troll that I've ever read.
GNU/Linux systems are migrating to systemd. Embedded systems and Android probably won't. There's really no connection to make here.
We need Linux in Google's OS so we can brag about how Linux is the most used OS in the market! OSS is winning thanks to this, Google, please, staph!
More permissive than the current GPL license. That would make you.... wrong.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I already despise this crap on modern websites and now they want this pushed to handheld UI?!
Perhaps this is partly in reaction to the migration of the major Linux distributions to systemd.
Android is not a GNU/Linux desktop. It is a Linux kernel.
Claiming that anything happened in the Linux world other than something directly with the Linux kernel itself has an effect on Android is just silly.
Wrong about Google's distribution terms; but very likely correct about the state that it will be in on the vast majority of the devices you can buy.
Given the...exciting quality...of handset vendor(and ARM SoC BSPs generally) GPL compliance; it seems very unlikely that they'll be more forthcoming about firmware based on BSD/MIT/similar licensed OS code.
Perhaps I'll end up being pleasantly surprised; but (at least in the context of the ARM SoC market) a highly permissive license could easily be the case that leaves the end user(or anyone who isn't purchasing in volumes large enough to get enthusiastic cooperation from the chipset vendor) in the worst situation.
With fully proprietary; and generally binary-only, OSes(Windows being the obvious example), vendors don't tend to provide OSS drivers; but they have to provide drivers that are more or less cleanly separated from the OS; because they don't have the right to distribute a modified version of the OS. You want to run Windows, you don't get to bodge some version of the NT kernel into a BSP, it has to work with stock NT plus your drivers, period.
With GPLed OSes, you can(and vendors frequently do, especially with all the deeply weird embedded variants) make nontrivial modifications to the OS; up to and including BSPs that are essentially forks with no interest in mainline support; but are theoretically obligated(and, while this has proven to be imperfect; it has resulted in many devices and chipsets gaining at least some degree of 3rd party support, or even being mainlined) to provide your customers with the changes you've made.
With BSD/MIT licensed OSes, you have no need to disclose anything about what you did to get the source OS working on your hardware; and their current attitude doesn't suggest that most of the ARM types will be interested in doing so out of the goodness of their hearts.
I certainly respect the rights of software authors to choose whatever license suits them; it's their software; and I have a personal fondness for the BSDs; but it is the case that Linux's GPL requirements have made 3rd party development a possibility on a wide variety of devices that would otherwise have remained closed(router firmwares, Android ROMs, etc.) while BSD support is considerably patchier outside of relatively well understood platforms and/or ones with genuinely cooperative vendors. The handset market, unfortunately, isn't a particularly good example of either; so I wouldn't be too optimistic about actually being able to run anything other than the vendor binaries on most of the hardware you'll actually be able to buy.
We are using systemd for our commercial Embedded ARM Linux system solutions for our customers. You have heard of Yocto, right ? https://www.yoctoproject.org/
Just because the GUI is different doesn't mean the only Linux is the kernel.
It uses a custom in-house developed init just like Android does. Since Android only uses the Linux kernel this have nothing what so ever to do with systemd. https://fuchsia.googlesource.c...
I doubt that. systemd isnt a problem for people who actually understand it.
Have a look at this http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html
Much of what we have heard about it is disinformation from the anti-systemd group. The first fact is it is backward compatible with sysv init so you can start your services with sysv if desired. You are more than welcome to write shell scripts as you did before. As I will explain, if you want to write your own init code, systemd is actually gives you more control and flexibility.
The fact is its actually more modularized and configurable than the old system. Thats because the system is based around a dbus architecture and is decentralized. You can write daemons that listen for event messages on DBUS and respond to those events. This also allows parts of the system to be interchangeable. So if you want to start mygoodservice whenever the network card goes up, you can write a daemon to watch for a "network card goes up" message on DBUS and start mygoodservice when that happens. systemd has a stock daemon that does that and is controlled by the declarative unit files, but you could add custom written daemons as well written in any language that can communicate over DBUS. So, its totally decentralized because starting and stopping services can be done by any number of independant daemons that communicate via dbus, its a modular, decentralized, loosely coupled design.
The declarative unit files are also easier to write since you make simple declarations to have programs started, Shell code is not as readable and intuitive as the declarative language.
All of these lies against systemd badly need to be debunked. Its like people hear the lies and they just parrot them over and over again without really knowing what they are talking about.
systemd is actually far more modular and decentralized than the old event system and more customizable. The people who oppose it don't know what they are talking about and just oppose it as a knee jerk reaction because its new. Since systemd supports sysv init scripts, it has all of the functionality of sysv, it only adds additional functionality. So the anti-systemd mentality is not that they cannot use it the way they want, but they do not think that people should be allowed to use the additional functionality that systemd provides.
For instance, systemd is far more elegant if you need to be able to start service only when multiple other events have occured and multiple conditions have been met and provides a very elegant way to monitor and generate events in a standardized way. Its decentralized and loosely coupled because of the dbus oriented design. If you want to start a service when a user does an su, this becomes much easier with systemd.
You can write new daemons that monitor dbus that can be custom programmed however someone wants in any programming language to define when a service should be started. systemd has stock daemons that are controlled by the unit files, but you can also write init daemons in any programming language that have custom logic.
All of the disinformation against systemd is really destructive and damaging to Linux they misrepresent everything systemd does.
The fact is systemd is an enormous improvement that makes Linux far more flexible and easier to manage.
The lies against systemd really need to stop. Its damaging to Linux to continue to propogate this disinformation, the lies have been exposed extensively elsewhere. systemd is more modular, less centralized and more configurable than the old init system. Plus, old sysv init is still supported under systemd. I am becoming more and more convinced those propogating systemd lies are intentionally trying to damage linux by spreading this garbage disinformation against systemd.
>"About time to go back to dumbphones. Closed source garbage".
Well from what I can gather this will be licenced under a permissive licence. Which means that it can be completely locked down and you get to see no code at all. Or the other way prehaps. Guess which one they'll choose? (Hint: you won't be seeing any code ....) .
So yes I quite agree -- closed source garbage (that's where it'll be going) and time to go back to dumbphones.
I must admit I do have a smartphone - but it isn't a brand new recent one. Last (and only!) relatively recent smartphone I bought was a refurbished samsung galaxy S5 and I only bought that because I knew I could reflash it with (back then) cyanogenmod. I knew how terrible the default samsung would be! (Bloated, horrible and slow).
My next phone should the S5 break will be ..... a dumbphone! I can live without facebook or twitter (never joined, don't use them), I don't need to hang on every second on my phone, I don't feel the need to be screaming blue murder and swearing at people all the time, I don't need to know where to buy lots of junk that I'll never need "at that low, low price", I'm not going to simply physically fall over and stop existing because I didn't read the message "LOL Ur krazy!" sent to me by a "friend" for the umpteenth time, I'm not intrested in stupid cat videos and I don't need to "live" through my phone either.
If people want the latest spyware ridden survelience ad-friendly consumer no-removable-battery no-micro-sd-card no-headphone-socket use-only-our-app-$tore our-approved-stuff bloated locked down pile of blingy dog poo tat then that's up to them, but me? Do not want.
This announcement from google - although I'm not a developer - does not come as any big surprise or shock to me. In fact I'm surprised they actually took this long to do this.
To be frank though although I'm not a developer or expert I could never - for example - in google's early days get over the fact that their "don't be evil" line was nothing more than just what it was - a meaningless catchphrase.
Many people (noticably developers) in the early days I guess back in the day who hated M$ but found themselves without a place to go moved over to google/android. Google: "Hey developers! We know you hate that godawful microsoft rubbish. We know it is all closed up. You want something new? Want to develop something good? Come join us, we aren't microsoft. Make the future! Come code here! Don't be evil".
Move forward to today and google I'd say has already become fully evil. I always wondered -- once they had enough "parts" so to speak, just pull up the ladder. "Ok, this [code] is ours now. We don't need you". I guess this is the beginnings of that prehaps?
What's worse is there was already an example from history. So lots of people back then hated microsoft but imagined that google was good. Go back to the 80s and it was the same for IBM and Microsoft. IBM was portrayed as the big evil, the corporate behemoth, the boring dull company that was set in its ways, tied to the past. Microsoft: "We're young, our stuff is new, just buy and run it, we're the future!". And we all know how that one turned out!
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we should've seen/realised google would eventually turn evil and that "don't be evil" was only ever a catchphrase. History, need to learn from it.
You're idiots and I hope you die soon but not quickly.
If you want your code to be reused by others you simply have to choose an unmodified license.
What I'm saying is that under some special circumstances, the modified license can happen to be another different unmodified.
And this newly licensed code can still be acceptable under the old licensing term.
This usually happens when transitioning from permissive license (like the BSD family ; because they are on purpose done in a way that let total freedom to the developers, including even NOT releasing the code at all) to a copy-left share-alike (the addition of the restrictions that prevent developer from blocking end-users are acceptable under some forms of BSD).
Or probably from permissive license to nearly anything else, including commercial. (again, that's the whole purpose of permissive license in the first place).
(as long as the new license doesn't contradict the terms under which you got the code).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You're brave.
Their new OS sounds exactly like what Apple did with Mac's OS, except you know it'll be reliant on cloud computing. I just hope Apple doesn't take note and stays as "desktop" as possible.