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Everything We Knew About Fuchsia's UI, Armadillo, Is Gone (9to5google.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

Over the last two years, we have heard numerous reports about Fuchsia, a new operating system for phones, computers, and just about everything else by Google. We've seen it in a variety of demos, all of which featured a UI, codenamed "Armadillo." Now it seems that Armadillo, and thus everything about Fuchsia we've "seen," has been removed. Reader Suren Enfiajyan shares a report: Everything we've known Fuchsia to look like falls under Armadillo. Last May, when we got our first look at Fuchsia UI, it was possible because Armadillo was simply a Flutter app that could be built to run on Android. After some months, we were also able to show off the first five minutes of Fuchsia UI on the Pixelbook using Fuchsia's screenshot tool, and we saw improvements to Armadillo, like Google Sign-In support. All in all, it was clear Fuchsia was shaping up to become a clean operating system that implements and extends Material Design. Unfortunately, none of the demos and examples are accurate anymore. With a recent code change, humorously titled "Armadillo fainted!", spotted by Redditor alawami, we've reached the end of an era. Every single piece of Armadillo code has now been permanently removed from Fuchsia's Topaz repo.

36 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    oops. they were just testing to see how many internal /. links would fit into a post.

  2. If now one has it... by houstonbofh · · Score: 2

    It was open source. If really no one has a mirror it was not worth having!

    1. Re:If now one has it... by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      At least they killed it early before people started using and liking it.

    2. Re:If now one has it... by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you want to look at the Fuschia source code, it's available here. To me, it looks more like a college-level project, rather than a kernel that has come into contact with the messy realities of the real world.

      Their goal is to make things secure, and they want to do things 'right' by making it a micro-kernel.

      Again, to me it looks like the authors have good knowledge on the theory side of things, but lack understanding of a lot of real-world use cases. For example, they removed a lot of the syscalls that the Linux kernel has, it's not Posix compliant, and you really should think long and hard before removing things in a decades-old, well-tested standard.

      But who knows, maybe they'll get lucky and hit all the use cases Android needs. Maybe someone with experience will help them make the kernel solid. But most likely, the code will get uglier and uglier as it needs to accomodate more use cases, until it's so ugly that someone at Google starts a side project to replace it.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    3. Re:If now one has it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It wasn't worth having. The lack of options for phone OSes isn't the only issue--it's the lack of players as well. Armadillo was still Google. Google is still...ugh. We need someone else besides Google and Apple in the game. Microsoft tried and failed. Not that they were any better of an option. I'd say it's too little too late now anyway. Android and iOS dominate. Getting coders, telcos, device makers, and end users into the idea of a new OS is just too daunting at this point. Any entry into the market would be purely niche.

      Though everyone said Android wouldn't make it versus Apple. So maybe it's possible something could come along to compete. That's going to be a long, long road, however.

    4. Re: If now one has it... by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Bitter are we?

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    5. Re: If now one has it... by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Greybeards are the ones who've built a bunch of OSes. They have the experience.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    6. Re:If now one has it... by Kjella · · Score: 2

      Well what you say it looks like is also roughly what it was meant to be. It was meant to be a concept/model OS, like what if we could start over and forget all the baggage we already have. Sometimes you manage to come up with really bright ideas when you start with blank sheets. If the new OS is so great you want it to take over you make some kind of legacy/compatilibility mode for the old, but more likely it'll be something like concept cars... some of the ideas will make it into production models. And some will be more like okay it was an interesting concept but let's pass on that for now.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    7. Re: If now one has it... by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      As a concept OS, what is there that's new or interesting? People are talking about Fuschia replacing Linux in Android.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    8. Re: If now one has it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I never understand this metaphor. Dems do get outraged more often than they should, but if there's someone wailing "but muh riiiiights!" then usually you can make a pretty good guess which party they represent, especially if the asserted "rights" are a gross misrepresentation of the actual law.

    9. Re: If now one has it... by vtcodger · · Score: 2

      Material Design: "The visual details are delightful, and the paradigmatic underpinnings — that interfaces are three-dimensional constructions, composed of layers of “physical” components — are refreshingly novel. But I’ll spare you more “oohs” and “aahs” over the language’s use of bright colors, large images, and depth. If we take anything from Material Design it isn’t how to use color,how your ease timing should be set, or what the resting elevation of an object should be.It’s not the details themselves we take away, it’s how the details combine to create purposeful brand experience...." https://www.wired.com/insights...

      And that, unlikely as it might seem, is the most comprehensible of the first page of links a quick search turned up.

      Now that you've been enlightened, you are no doubt ready to embrace those paradigmatic underpinnings (whatever that means). Good luck to you on your journey into this fantastic new technology.

      --
      You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
    10. Re: If now one has it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Greybeards are the ones who've built a bunch of OSes. They have the experience.

      Some of us are so goddamn old we no longer have beards, or hair, for that matter.

    11. Re: If now one has it... by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 3, Funny

      "the paradigmatic underpinnings...are refreshingly novel.

      Because the first requirement of a UI is of course that the user should be totally unfamiliar with it.

    12. Re:If now one has it... by houstonbofh · · Score: 1

      One thing that always happens... The dominant players always fall. If someone was to come up with a secure phone OS that could still access the play store or the Apple ecosystem, it would sell. (Secure meaning I decide what access an app gets.)

  3. And nothing of value was lost. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I don't go to funerals of people I've never heard about. I have even less interest in dead vaporware. The degradation of /. is complete.

  4. open source homonym? by Crash+McBang · · Score: 1

    perhaps this is an armadillo feinting...

    --
    To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
  5. Just another f***ed up Google project by gweihir · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They really cannot do anything except search (badly, but with a huge DB) and ads...

    This is obviously very far removed from their "vision" and "image", but in the end all Google management seems to care about is making money and only ads make money and search brings in the ads and improves targeting them. Oh, and they can operate a fairly vanilla mail-server and use it to get more information to target ads.

    As a provider of infrastructure or longer-term available services of any kind, Google is entirely the wrong choice.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:Just another f***ed up Google project by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      agreed that google is a selfish prick of a company and anything they offer to 'users' has strings attached. no doubts at all, they can't be trusted, they employ mostly young people, lacking in real world experience and google, overall, has the attention span of a teenager.

      android is total shit, from a tech POV. its not about users or user freedom, never was and never will be. the only thing android does well is deliver eyes and clicks to google's real customers, the corporations.

      given that they ruined their linux os and the update 'story' is worse than MS (and that says a lot, right there), I have zero faith in anything they do, other than to optimize their own money making machine. they do that very well. they collect and sell a lot of info about us. but makers of a trustable ANYTHING? no. not in a million years.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    2. Re:Just another f***ed up Google project by gweihir · · Score: 1

      android is total shit, from a tech POV. its not about users or user freedom, never was and never will be. the only thing android does well is deliver eyes and clicks to google's real customers, the corporations.

      given that they ruined their linux os and the update 'story' is worse than MS (and that says a lot, right there)

      This is perhaps the most striking evidence. I mean how can you support an OS _worse_ than MS? The mind boggles. Also agree about the young people with no real-world experience. These are easiest to manipulate and exploit, after all and these people will usually not realize when they are contributing to evil.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    3. Re:Just another f***ed up Google project by omnichad · · Score: 1

      MS pulled out of the phone market on their own. Ironically, right about the time they finally figured out how to make a decent phone UI.

    4. Re:Just another f***ed up Google project by iampiti · · Score: 1

      " its not about users or user freedom"
      Well, you can argue no OS is except for those that are open source. Apple does seem to have a different business model (not involving user data) but I wouldn't call them user friendly. Meanwhile Microsoft is busy androidizing Windows 10 (user data gathering, integrating ads in the OS and several apps).
      I'm not excusing Android though, I'd be nice if I could pay some money and it be ad and spying-free but alas that's not so

    5. Re:Just another f***ed up Google project by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

      I mean how can you support an OS _worse_ than MS?

      Slightly OT:
      They had some help from Microsoft there, Windows used to be better but has gone downhill in the last years.

      Say what you will about pre-Win10 OSes from MS, they promised their 10 years (security) support from release and mostly kept that promise. I'm typing this on an older Win7 machine, and it still gets security updates. The biggest (and intentional) flaw is that new processor generations don't get these updates at all for Win7. Also, there are relatively few compatibility problems with the updates in Win7.

      --
      C - the footgun of programming languages
    6. Re:Just another f***ed up Google project by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

      Oops, my logic was upside down here:
      Windows 10 made it more difficult to support an OS _worse_ than MS

      --
      C - the footgun of programming languages
  6. Wasn't fuchsias the color by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    of the magic lolipops in Santa Claus: The Motion Picture? Also, I dare you to find a more obscure reference.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  7. Re:Material UI was more of the wrong progress. by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 1

    Really, the usability of UIs have mirrored very closely the change from computing as a workstation to computing as a consumption device. It's the golden age of consumption, yay :/

  8. Re:Material UI was more of the wrong progress. by Desler · · Score: 1

    Ignoring the fact that more time has been spent by more people playing solitaire on computers than those producing content? You lost this war since at least when Windows 95 came out.

  9. Can somebody parse this for me? by jtara · · Score: 1

    Has 9To5 Google ever employed writers? Or has it always been like this?

  10. Google: The Woke ADHD child of Corporate America by Jarwulf · · Score: 1

    The only thing you can rely on Google for is starting and dropping the majority of their projects according to whats trending on the hype train in tech media, vacuuming up your pi on a massive scale, and bleating about social justice.

  11. Unforeseeable Fuchsia by InterGuru · · Score: 1

    Most did not see it coming

  12. Re:Material UI was more of the wrong progress. by omnichad · · Score: 2

    It's not just that. A lot of the shaded and skeuomorphic designs relied on bitmap elements, but we're entering an age of high DPI and resolution Independence. Sure, you can make fancy effects scale, but at a much higher processing cost than what we had.

  13. It's Google. by msauve · · Score: 2

    Google being distracted by a new shiny thing and abandoning some project isn't news. Quite the opposite - it's entirely predictable. They lack adult supervision.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  14. Can the hardware's capability expand upward? by tepples · · Score: 1

    The difference is that if someone wanted to upgrade from "do nothing more than play games and browse the web" to use as a workstation, he could do so by installing free software. Upgrading from a phone or tablet, on the other hand, generally requires purchasing new hardware.

  15. "Everything we knew" is gone?? by l2718 · · Score: 1

    How could knowledge be erased from people's brains by a change to a code repository?

  16. Re:Hipsters by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

    I really have no idea what is happening in that second paragraph. Can anyone care to rephrase this for someone not familiar with its development?

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  17. Re: Material UI was more of the wrong progress. by p91paul · · Score: 1

    I'd say not nice, but consistent. I personally found Windows 8 design guidelines really ugly (all those squares). Material design is actually nice, but then again, nice is an opinion, consistent is a fact. Today we have 90% of the apps behaving in the same way, which is awful if you don't like that interface, but it's easy for both developers and users (nobody has to think).

  18. news by matushorvath · · Score: 2

    Irrelevant project is irrelevant.