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Google's Mysterious Fuchsia OS Can Now Run On the Pixelbook (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the shrouded-in-secrecy dept.

Google's mysterious operating system, dubbed Fuchsia, has been in the works for more than a year now with very few details about the OS made public. According to a new report from Chrome Unboxed, we have learned that Google has released documentation to allow developers to load Fuchsia onto the company's Pixelbook. The Verge reports: This isn't your typical developer operating system, and you'll need two machines to host and target a Pixelbook to load the OS. It's very much a work in progress, with early hints at a user interface and functions. It's still interesting that Google has chosen its own Pixelbook to experiment with, though. Fuchsia has mostly been linked to embedded systems like wearables and Internet of Things devices in the past, but testing was expanded to Intel's NUC and Acer's Switch Alpha 12 Chromebooks. Fuchsia has been created from the Google-built Zircon microkernel, and not the typical Linux kernels that hold Android and Chrome OS together. It's not immediately clear exactly why Google is building a new operating system, nor what devices it will run on. As testing spreads to more Chromebooks, some are now speculating this could be a successor to the "Andromeda" project that never materialized.

27 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Quidquid id est... by demon+driver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ..., timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. And no, I don't mean the Greek, and in case of Google or any such entity, it actually shouldn't be "even when they bear gifts", but "especially when they bear gifts".

    1. Re: Quidquid id est... by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 1

      It's "ferentis" in the Greenough edition. I could see "ferentes" being a variant reading though (much like "quidquid" in place of "quicquid"). Both -es and -is occur as accusative plurals for participles and adjectives of one ending.

  2. Re:An opening for the competition by DarkRookie · · Score: 1

    Google is an $101.8 Billion company. I doubt they will lose any of that if this goes to the phones. Most people do not care.

    --
    The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
  3. NIH Syndrome by rahvin112 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Google has always suffered from NIH syndrome. They will develop and abandon their own kernel rather than use the Linux kernel with billions of development hours because Google engineers didn't write linux.

    It really is that simple.

    1. Re:NIH Syndrome by jareth-0205 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Google has always suffered from NIH syndrome. They will develop and abandon their own kernel rather than use the Linux kernel with billions of development hours because Google engineers didn't write linux.

      It really is that simple.

      What? They have been using a modified Linux kernel in Android and ChromeOS for nearly a decade now. They use a modified version of the kernel in their server farms. Clearly they are using Linux. Or is that not enough? They have to use it forevermore - Linux is the be-all-and-end-all of kernels, and can never be improved upon.

      I thought this was a tech site?

    2. Re: NIH Syndrome by omnichad · · Score: 1

      They are probably hitting a wall with low-power performance that can really only be solved by such extensive modification that a new kernel is easier at this point.

    3. Re:NIH Syndrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Google don't reinvent the wheel for its own sake, they used the Linux kernel for both Android and Chrome OS. They develop tools where they think they can improve server efficiency, web development and user devices to keep the advertising revenue flowing to Google.

      Google obviously seem room for improvement over a Linux based system. Linux was designed as a Posix/Unix replacement and the kernel is now approaching 25m lines of code and contains binary code for hardware support, it's hardly the end point of OS development. Google have developed Zircon, derived from Travis Geiselbrecht's Little Kernel to run on various devices from embedded systems upwards. Smaller, more efficient and more secure has alway been the dream of microkernels from Mach 1.0. They probably picked Little Kernel over SeL4 or Minix 3.0 because of its simplicity and the decade of experience of it being used for Geiselbrecht's NewOS and Haiku (a BeOS clone). They are using this for Fuschia, an RTOS with capability based security, that they want to multiprocess their rendering and bytecode engines.

      Fuschia might be a better replacement for Android and Chrome OS for running Google's Go/Dart/Flutter/Material Design development platform. Or it may just provide information about what will or won't work for the future.

    4. Re:NIH Syndrome by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      This may come as a shock to you, but not everyone in the world thinks GNU/Linux is a perfect operating system, or even that Unix is the pinnacle of operating system design. If Google wants to try to create something better, that deserves applause. Even if they fail, we learn one more way how not to do it.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    5. Re:NIH Syndrome by Dwedit · · Score: 1

      According to Wikipedia, Fuchsia is supposed to be a Real Time OS, and that alone would distinguish it from any other posix-compatible OS.

  4. "Mysterious?" by Elf+M.+Sternberg · · Score: 2

    I am at a complete loss to understand how a project that is completely open source (https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/) can be considered in any way "mysterious."

    1. Re:"Mysterious?" by slack_justyb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's a fair statement. Strictly speaking code-wise, there's no mystery. However, I'm pretty sure that a very limited number of folks have commit access to the code on the main branch, so if those individuals are being awfully quiet about what goals they're trying to reach with their code, it can be "mysterious" as to the purpose of the code (like what problem is it trying to solve or is this just some kind of wack-a-hack project, etc...). Not knowing what the point of the code is, makes it a bit difficult to know what the next move is. Maybe they want to add POSIX compatibility, maybe not, no one knows if POSIX compatibility missing is a bug or on purpose (and yes, I'm just pulling an example out of thin air, it really could be anything). However, not knowing the point makes it hard for a new coder to jump in with the main branch. Now if they wanted to start their own derived project, totes cool there. However, imagine if their some issue with libc compatibility that someone spots, they develop a patch for it and the devs with commit access are like, "nope we did that on purpose because the goal isn't to be compat with libc" or something like that (again, just random example pulling out of thin air here). The best we can do is guess at what the devs are ultimately trying to get at here or even if there is a point to all of this or if this is just some academic dumping ground project for them.

      That's a critical thing with projects. You might have amazingly well written code, but if the communication between the programmers is crap, you're going to end up with crap. A project is more than just the codebase. A project is a multitude of things, of which, the codebase, the communication, and the leadership, among others, are major players in.

  5. Why develop your own OS? by MAXOMENOS · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not immediately clear exactly why Google is building a new operating system...

    Possibly to un-encumber themselves from the GPL? I note that Fuchsia's licenses are a mix of MIT, BSD, and Apache. This would potentially allow them to adapt the OS to just about any environment without having to release the source code.

    --
    Finding God in a Dog
    1. Re: Why develop your own OS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If that is the case, it probably wouldn't be the first time. I wouldn't be surprised if a huge part of Apple's motivation behind supporting LLVM and Clang was to free itself of the onerous and limiting restraints that the GPL family of licenses imposes on users (modifiers and derivers are users, too). Despite so many claims to the opposite from its supporters, the fact remains that the GPL family of licenses is very restrictive, and they do deprived users of many critical rights, including the right to modify and to distribute software without releasing the source code changes.

    2. Re:Why develop your own OS? by swillden · · Score: 1

      It's not immediately clear exactly why Google is building a new operating system...

      Possibly to un-encumber themselves from the GPL? I note that Fuchsia's licenses are a mix of MIT, BSD, and Apache. This would potentially allow them to adapt the OS to just about any environment without having to release the source code.

      Note that those are the same FOSS licenses Google uses on all of its open source projects. I wouldn't read anything into those choices.

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      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    3. Re:Why develop your own OS? by Misagon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There are technical reasons also. Android under the Linux kernel does sandboxing by giving each app its own user, which I find to be a bit of a kludge.

      Fuchsia's microkernel Zircon (nee Magenta) instead uses capability-based security, in a model where Processes live in Jobs and Jobs can be nested, allowing the ones that are deeper nested having lesser privileges.
      However, Zircon has a major flaw: capabilities can not be revoked, other than by killing the whole process, or jobs.
      If I had been in charge, I would have instead chosen seL4, which has revocation, is stable on ARM and which has a formal proof of correctness (was it ten or twenty man-years of work just for the proof? I forget).
      But, yeah... seL4 is licensed under GPL. ;-P

      --
      "We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
    4. Re: Why develop your own OS? by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      I wouldn't be surprised if a huge part of Apple's motivation behind supporting LLVM and Clang was to free itself of the onerous and limiting restraints that the GPL family of licenses imposes on users (modifiers and derivers are users, too).

      That WAS the motivator for it - Apple pushed LLVM because it wasn't GPL. More specifically, it was GPLv3. Apple saw what was in the draft GPLv3 proposals, didn't like what they saw, and expended about 4-5 years of effort to bring LLVM to usability, including writing the bulk of CLang.

      Apple had no problem with the GPLv2, but GPLv3 was going to be an issue, and they migrated. Apple's last patch to GCC was to add support for Grand Central Dispatch structures. (It took 4-5 years - at first LLVM was an option, but GCC was primary, then it slowly switched over to LLVM being primary and GCC an option, and finally only LLVM).

      The other thing was there was a lot of stuff Apple couldn't do with GCC that they wanted to - because GCC wasn't modular. Things like using the GCC front end to do stuff like syntax highlighting, code flow evaluation and even syntax error analysis were impossible to do in GCC (on purpose). LLVM is more flexible and thus let Apple make XCode support partial recompilation and dynamic recompilation so your code recompiles automatically, and only the block that changed, not the entire file.

      That said, I'd say LLVM made GCC better. Using modern GCC is so much nicer now - error messages are way more useful. At the very least, competition has improved both projects and we have much better tools as a result.

    5. Re:Why develop your own OS? by swillden · · Score: 1

      It's not immediately clear exactly why Google is building a new operating system...

      Possibly to un-encumber themselves from the GPL? I note that Fuchsia's licenses are a mix of MIT, BSD, and Apache. This would potentially allow them to adapt the OS to just about any environment without having to release the source code.

      Note that those are the same FOSS licenses Google uses on all of its open source projects. I wouldn't read anything into those choices.

      Other than GPL isn’t one of them?

      Right, GPL isn't one of them. The point is that the same licenses are used by Google on lots of stuff, for which they don't hold back source code, so there's no reason to assume that the same choice of licenses indicate that Google is planning on holding back source in this case.

      For that matter, they could use the GPL without losing the ability to hold back source when they want to. The owner of GPL'd code is not required to abide by the terms of the GPL. That only applies to other people who want to use it. In many cases, even the original author is eventually constrained because of third party contributions which they don't own or have any license to other than the GPL. But Google isn't accepting third party contributions now and even if they were to do so in the future the standard Google open source contributor agreement requires that contributors grant Google an unlimited license to do anything at all with the code, so that wouldn't restrict what Google can do either.

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      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  6. What big eyes you have Grandma! by jenningsthecat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not immediately clear exactly why Google is building a new operating system ...

    All the better to spy on you, my dear!

    --
    'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
  7. Re: This will likely be disastrous for Linux. by zaivala · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Solaris is dead, Windows Server almost dead. Systemd issues are mostly between old users' ears, people who like using hundreds of no-longer-supported programs to run their OS instead of a unified system which does it better.

  8. Hopefully, innovation by Camembert · · Score: 1

    âoeIt's not immediately clear exactly why Google is building a new operating system...â

    Unix is more than 40 years old. Granted, it works well on computers of different size levels and below the hood on both android and iOS devices.
    But still, it is conceptually old, certainly by IT evolution standards.
    I can imagine that a company with the funds and intellectual workforce like Google would be capable of innovating operating system principles taking into account the advances in academic research.
    It wouldnâ(TM)t surprise me if a team of Apple engineers were also, and obviously more secretively, working on a next generation operating system as well.

  9. We can't predict what they will do next by InterGuru · · Score: 1

    Unforeseeable Fuchsia!

  10. As a professional System SW Engineer by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

    I can tell you it takes a very short time to port a simple kernel/microkernel/nanokernel to a new architecture. Some of the kernels we deal with in the industry have been brought over to entirely new CPU architectures as a proof of concept over a weekend. So that someone at Google got a hankering for some porting work is not surprising, but it's not likely a terrible amount of effort either. (still cool work though)

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  11. Re:A TECH site? Are you serious? by KozmoStevnNaut · · Score: 1

    Who cares about karma on some random past-its-prime "news" site?

    --
    Eat the rich.
  12. Re: GPL by Megol · · Score: 1

    I hope you are trolling.

  13. Re: GPL by ArtemaOne · · Score: 1

    This assigning of left and right to everything is some of the stupidest stuff I've read on the internet all year.

  14. Re: An opening for the competition by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

    No, the companies with the most marketing successes include Apple and Bose. Google isn't much of a marketing company, nor are they anything special when it comes to advertising (Apple and Bose are way ahead of them here.) Google's success is being a master at matching advertisers with their target audience, and they sell a TON of ad space.

  15. Re: An opening for the competition by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Google got search right (or good enough) at the time there was no incumbent. Alta Vista dropped the ball for no apparent reason and it landed at Google's feet.

    Everything else they've done had been mediocre at best. That or they bought it in, *then* made it mediocre after optionally fucking the UI up. If by pure dumb luck some renegade skunk works cowboy lunchtime side project makes something even half useful they discontinue it.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."