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Google's Fuchsia OS On the Pixelbook (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Our early look at Fuchsia OS last May provided a glimpse into a number of new interface paradigms. Several months later, we now have an updated hands-on with Google's future operating system that can span various form factors. This look at the in-development OS eight months later comes courtesy of Ars Technica who managed to get Fuchsia installed on the Pixelbook. The Made by Google Chromebook is only the third officially supported "target device" for Fuchsia development. As our last dive into the non-Linux kernel OS was through an Android APK, we did not encounter a lockscreen. The Ars hands-on shows a basic one that displays the time at center and Fuchsia logo in the top-left corner to switch between phone and desktop/tablet mode, while a FAB (of sorts) in the opposite corner lets users bring up WiFi controls, Login, and Guest.
Only Guest is fully functioning at this stage -- at least for non-Google employees. Once in this mode, we encounter an interface similar to the one we spotted last year. The big difference is how Google has filled in demo information and tweaked some elements. On phones and tablets, Fuchsia essentially has three zones. Recent apps are above, at center are controls, and below is a mixture of the Google Feed and Search. The controls swap out the always-displayed profile icon for a Fuchsia button. Tapping still surfaces Quick Settings which actually reflect current device battery levels and IP address. Impressively, Ars found a working web browser that can actually surf the internet. Google.com is the default homepage, with users able to visit other sites through that search bar. Other examples of applications, which are just static images, include a (non-working) phone dialer, video player, and Google Docs. The Google Calendar is notable for having subtle differences to any known version, including the tablet or web app.
Only Guest is fully functioning at this stage -- at least for non-Google employees. Once in this mode, we encounter an interface similar to the one we spotted last year. The big difference is how Google has filled in demo information and tweaked some elements. On phones and tablets, Fuchsia essentially has three zones. Recent apps are above, at center are controls, and below is a mixture of the Google Feed and Search. The controls swap out the always-displayed profile icon for a Fuchsia button. Tapping still surfaces Quick Settings which actually reflect current device battery levels and IP address. Impressively, Ars found a working web browser that can actually surf the internet. Google.com is the default homepage, with users able to visit other sites through that search bar. Other examples of applications, which are just static images, include a (non-working) phone dialer, video player, and Google Docs. The Google Calendar is notable for having subtle differences to any known version, including the tablet or web app.
The problem to solve is why vendors, including Google's own Nexus devices, can't manage to keep hardware support going past about 2.5 years. We're supposed to dump our devices in a landfill every 2 years because they are saddled with unresolved security flaws?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Oh boy, I love new interface paradigms.
That's it? The new interface paradigm is that they have a logo in the top left?
Thank goodness. I was worried that there would be a working web browser that couldn't actually surf the internet.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Could you give an example of crapware you've found on say a Chromebook? Or how about on a Nexus device?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Even with Android in a mess when it comes to duplicate apps, Google still finds it prudent to author yet another computer operating system. How this makes sense I not sure. But you tell me whether it does.
Let them fix Android first. Let them make it near flawless first. What's wrong with that approach? Why can't Google first make a credible MS Office replacement; a MS Outlook replacement on [the] existing platform then bother with this Fuchsia?
The point about android is that it is pretty open, and can be installed on devices that are not made by Google. If you're going to limit the devices that can run Fuchsia to only those made by Google, then that's no different than Apple's iOS on it's iPhones.
Is there any indication that Fuchsia will be Google-only, at least in the long term?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The fact that Linux is the underlying OS to Android has brought a couple of things:
1. An End to the hardware Nightmares of Linux. Linux generally is not at the mercy of Windows Drivers. Linux Drivers for Android Devices has translated well to Linux Drivers on x86 for Desktop Linux.
2. Root on our devices. Our Devices are our devices. I don't care how much I paid for the Device. If I was sold a device retail and paid for it in full, its mine. I don't care if they were sold on Amazon. We all should be entitled to have root, and unlocked bootloaders on our devices we pay for. The manufacturer can void the warranty, but thats all. So what happens when root isn't a thing because of FushciaOS?
3. I have enough trouble with the LineageOS Team and "unsupported devices running unofficial builds. I really hate LineageOS's behavior twoards GSM Phones, and MediaTek Devices. It makes me furious.
Could you give an example of crapware you've found on say a Chromebook? Or how about on a Nexus device?
I consider most of the Google apps for shit I don't want that hooks into their services that I don't use (be it their music store, their book store, their buggy calendar app, etc.) to be crapware. Don't even get me started on "Instant Apps" (instant ads), which isn't even listed as a separate app that needs to be enabled/updated - it's baked in deeeeeep, bluetooth "beacon" (more ads) shit, notifications (more ads) triggered by GPS when you're near a store, etc.
Android is an ad and spying platform for Google and it's getting worse and worse. The 4.2 era was the last time users had any semblance of control over it. I'd still be running that if it weren't for the fact that it's got more exploitable bugs than a Starship Troopers movie.
I have 22 Google apps on my phone, not counting shit that's not normally shown as an app (all the com.google.esoteric.name.no.one.knows.what.I.do.apk shit). From Android Auto (which cannot be disabled on my phone - if I plug it into my car, even as a passenger, my phone is completely LOCKED DOWN because there are no useful Android Auto apps and none at all which work with my car) to Android Pay to "Google" to Chrome to Photos, Slides, Docs, Sheets, Play Movies & TV, Play Games, In Apps, Music, Youtube, etc. etc.
I only really want the Play Store, Hangouts (which they keep making worse), Google Maps, and maybe GMail (but it doesn't reliably sync, so fuck it). If you're on a modern Nexus/Pixel device, you're also getting way more shit, from Allo to Duo to the shitty G launcher + themes to the Google Assistant to Messages.
Fuck all that noise.
The point about android is that it is pretty open, and can be installed on devices that are not made by Google. If you're going to limit the devices that can run Fuchsia to only those made by Google, then that's no different than Apple's iOS on it's iPhones.
Android is not open. Android is not free. Android cannot be legally installed on a non-Google approved device.
AOSP is open. AOSP is free. AOSP is not Android.
Maybe postmarketOS is the way out, the list of supported devices is very short, but theoretically it's a community driven Linux distro rather than Android's Google driven advertising platform.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The encryption and OS is the adware. Thats the idea. So that users cannot just use a no script in their own browser on an OS that respects that install.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The fact that Linux is the underlying OS to Android
Its underlying in the sense that it is the host kernel, but not underlying in the sense that Android is based on or dependent upon Linux. Linux could be replaced with Fuchsia and most Android apps would not know or care. For those apps using the NDK they may not really care either, depending on Fuchsia's POSIX support.
Edge power is what matters too. I bet spectre and meltdown are the beginning, and in time we'll know a million good reasons to have separate devices rather than EVERYONE'S CODE running on the same machines, aka the cloud. Augment, backup, do whatever with the cloud, but keep the power on the individual machine, keep it robust, tough and reliable. Cowboys use Android but Google goes for hipsters to their loss.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
Watch the Android market.
Android is crippled on the tablets. They're pushing ever tighter limits on Android apps to run in ever less memory. Driving Android Crippled(TM) onto 512Mb $30 phones that don't have a market and away from the high end where it sells loads.
Look at Samsung's response. Notice that Sammy has launched a mass of large powerful tablets, and not one of them runs Android. All their high end tablets run Windows. Nothing bigger than 10 inches, because Android needs to be rotated to do basic operation (still!).
You can see how as Google makes its choices, the effect ripples on. Android is used less at the high end, Chrome still has a niche (about 1%) that is smaller than Windows Phones before they were killed. Google's choice are failing, and the OEMs are giving up on them.
Now suppose Google makes Fuschsia. Which OEM would make a Fuschsia device? None of them. So its down to Google to make that device, and none of Google's tablets or phones sell in volume.
Google Wear? Flop. Samsung's gone with its own Tizen for better battery life and a better interface.
So, if I was the Board of Google at this point, I would thank Pichai for his service, and get my shit together with Android at the high end. Fuchsia? ... how does this help Android? It doesn't? Then it's cancelled. ChromeOS.... why isn't "locked down webbrowser only mode" a setting on Android? Try to get the OEMs back on board for Android at the high end, and stop fragmenting Android (Android apps that run on Chrome, Android apps that run on Android Go etc.), and focus on the one successful OS that Google is totally fooking up right now.
One that has the mirriad of features of the Linux kernel. The many filesystems supported, iptables, so many drivers that are easily added, standard tools to monitor and control (e.g /proc) , ability to relatively easily build standard tools and software (sshd, webservers, network utils).
Even for Google replicating all this in Fuchia with the many millions of man hours Linux has had put into it is probably impossible. But I guess most user's probably don't care about any this. But many embedded Android now in use will but it's unlikely Google cares about these too much.
I wonder if say Amazon will fork Android at Fuchia , given that one of it "functions" is probably more Google control. Do they permanently want to be in a position of taking whatever Google want to hand out, for key products like Alexa and fire TV and tablets.
I would look at some of the more open Linux phones under development out there when/if this happens, personally.
On a Nexus device? Let's see, where to start? I know:
I NEVER even use Youtube on the tablet, yet there it is. Running. Using my CPU and RAM and bandwidth. With popups continually whining about timing out or running out of resources whenever WIFI is enabled - for 10-20 minutes, Youtube and the other crapware make the tablet unusable.
I installed Lineage on my latest android device, a new 10" tablet bought last year to replace the Nexus 7. No Google Play Services. No youtube or gmail or g maps. No google crapware at all. Fdroid and microG more than suffice for my needs.
I should install that on my Nexus 7 too...a 7" tablet is more portable than the 10" tablet, and useful as a backup device.
because the world needs yet another proprietary walled garden operating system that allows the manufacturer of the device to retain control over the purchaser's property.
wtf! how can anyone outside google think that this could possibly be a good thing?
fuck. that.
It's interesting you list the three of the five apps I use on an Android device.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
With Google's rich history of axing even popular projects, I fail to see how Fuchsia will get a long life. The story is always the same: A bunch of engineers get together on an exciting project. They make some progress, get their promotions, maybe even launch a half-finished product. Now comes the hard work of finishing it, but most difficult of all is to make some kind of revenue stream from it. That's where the higher VCs and senior VC come in and start cutting. Chopping projects like that might even earn somebody further promotions in "clear leadership". Rinse and repeat on a two or three year cycle.
My bet is that Fuchsia is forgotten by the end of the 2019.
sure if you buy them new and expensive they will have decent run.
but apple sells them 4+ years, making the support for a large part of the buyers(asians) a year and a half if that.
nevermind the thing that made the updates make them less usable and slower...
now the reason for this is that Apple actually does have cheapo phones on the market - their old models. well, not that cheap, 5s is still 9 900 baht (220 bucks or around).
aaand you think people are not buying them? well they are.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The problem to solve is why vendors, including Google's own Nexus devices, can't manage to keep hardware support going past about 2.5 years. We're supposed to dump our devices in a landfill every 2 years because they are saddled with unresolved security flaws?
The problem is that companies make money immediately when they sell a device.
Not over the lifetime of a device.
They have strong incentive to put immediately a new device out-of-the-door (sometime even not perfectly finished, with still bugs needing fixing), but not much incentive to write updates 2 years down the line (a that moment, writing an update won't translate in immediate money input, diverts ressources from getting the next money making device out, and might even create a competitor for the new device as the old one remains too much useful).
This is a bit alleviated if the company has a tighly concentrated line of device where work for updating one translate into "free" updates for another.
Apple, by having a small set of relatively similar devices is one such example.
A company such as Jolla making a OS like Sailfish is mostly dealing with user space software suite, and beside a few problems with kernels locked to whatever version the hardware manufacturer supports, can actual transfer their update efforts to the whole range too (Jolla1 smartphone is still benefiting of the updates effort and runs the same version of OS as the latest Sailfish X running on Sony Xperia X devices).
The hope of Google, by making their own OS and by making it micro kernel, is that most of the hardware-manufacturer dependant shit will be locked inside a few daemons with precisely set APIs and Google should be able to to replace all the other daemons as needed (file systems, etc.).
As opposed to linux, which is in a constant flux of evolving, and on purpose only exposes an external API to the userland, but might break its own internal interfaces. (So it's hard to port a 4.4 kernel on a piece of hardware whose manufacturer only provided a 3.2 kernel and drivers set).
Of course, if hardware manufacturer took example of the desktop/laptop world, specially with AMD and Intel, and had opensource drivers stack maintained in the upstream vanilla kernel, things would be much more easy...
My expectation regarding Fuschia are actually rather low.
There is a ginormous invested know-how in Linux in the embed world (which itself leverage the even more giant community around Linux). It would be hard to convince all the hardware manufacturer to switch to another completely different kernel and way to develop drivers. It's a very steep uphill battle.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
On a Chromebook with Crouton on it, the crapware is the OS verification that comes up in developer mode.
It is so bad. I hide my Chromebook when anyone visits my place. Because if I don't and they open the screen. They'll just follow the instruction on the screen which says to press the spacebar and that will wipe my own custom version of linux and reinstall ChromeOS on it.
Are there any credible alternatives to Android and iOS?
All I really need is email, a calendar, CalDAV/CardDAV sync and a full-featured web browser (Firefox, ideally). Everything else is secondary, and most things I actually need can be used in a browser.
If the browser experience wasn't so shitty on dumbphones/featurephones, I would just be using one of those instead.
Eat the rich.
They are trying to replace the OS (Android or ChromeOS -> Fuchsia), and replace the UI Framework (Java -> Flutter/Dart).
They would be better off if they do both independently.
Perhaps this would lfirst try to replace ChromeOS.
But Dart? I wonder why they did not use Go?
Internal politics at Google for Android vs ChromeOS vs Fuchsia vs Go will make things interesting.
The iPhone 5s is not out of support.
You can disable any app you want in Android, even built in ones. Go into the app settings and click "Disable". This will uninstall all the updates for that app, remove it from your app drawer, and prevent it from ever running.
The only thing it won't do is reclaim the space for the original (unpatched) app. It will still exist in the system partition, but it won't ever run until you re-enable it.
I have the Pixel, the hardware it has is overkill for a Chromebook and it sucks the battery dry like no other Chromebook.
For guests, I keep an older Chromebook around. That one is great for that purpose. The thing never shuts down.
Or, you could not install them at all, if you can do without
- network localization services, which means that you can only use the GPS for the positioning
- Google Cloud Messaging, so you won't receive any push notification for any app that relies on it
- the Maps API, which means that any app that uses Google Maps through the Maps API will probably crash
See the microg FAQ for more info.
file:
I've done that and no, it doesn't stop the unwanted apps from ever running. If it did, then my Nexus 7 wouldn't exhibit the thundering herd of google crapware slowing the tablet to an unusable crawl every time I enable WIFI.
How do I know it's Youtube or whatever running? Because Youtube (etc) pops up dialog boxes complaining about timing out or running out of RAM or other resources. (BTW, clicking "OK" rather than "Cancel" is the right thing to do at this point because "Cancel" apparently means "Exit and re-start whatever the fuck you were doing from the fucking beginning", not the expected "Fuck off and just fucking die"...making things worse and extending the period of unusability by another 10 or 20 minutes).
This shouldn't happen. I never run Youtube on the tablet. Ever. I never run Google Maps either (i use OSM when I need a map). I've disabled them. I'm not allowed to uninstall them (on my own fucking property!), otherwise I would have done so long ago. They shouldn't be running at all. So, it shouldn't happen. But it does. Every Single Fucking Time that I enable WIFI on the tablet.