
The Pixelbook is being used to test Google's Fuchsia OS - platinum1
http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/12/30/pixelbook-used-test-googles-fuchsia-os/
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jkmcf
Aside from control, what does this provide over Linux?

IMO, the Linux desktop problem is due partially to relying on the antiquated X
Windows system, but mostly a lack of funding a good vision, e.g. Unity.

After growing up with OpenLook, then Motif, the plethora of Linux window
managers, and unhappy years with Windows, I noticed most of the elegant apps
were being written for OSX. I’m not sure how much of this is due to the devs
or the OS/libraries, but probably both.

The solution I want is a Linux OS, a WM with a good, cohesive, long term
vision, and an easy way to build apps within at vision — something like a
native Electron minus the memory and CPU overhead. I believe Google could do
this.

~~~
cbhl
Control is all of it.

Security on Android is a joke for 80%+ of users. They can't run on the latest
version of Android, because various vendors' drivers are in out-of-tree kernel
patches that are un-upstreamable for non-technical reasons.

(By comparison, Chrome OS is also Linux-based, but, IIRC, it requires all
shipping devices to have drivers upstreamed.)

Owning an OS with a stable device driver ABI would allow Google to fix the
Android fragmentation problem, and make sure all devices stay up-to-date ala
Chrome OS.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> un-upstreamable for non-technical reasons

It was my understanding that it was almost completely technical reason, i.e.,
vendors write drivers that mostly work but are completely terrible from a
quality perspective.

~~~
derefr
Quality problems with code at this magnitude aren't really a technical problem
(i.e. not something you can fix by asking the same programmers who created the
problems to fix them.) It's rare that good programmers could write code as
badly as these patches demonstrate. Even actively-harmful coding standards
directed from the top down wouldn't cause this kind of code.

Instead, the kind of code that ends up in these driver blobs is caused by, in
essence, a political problem: they simply _hired bad programmers_. The only
way to fix that, is to demand that the driver vendors' management teams adopt
higher standards for their software hires: that they fire many of the
programmers they have, and hire new ones in a much more stringent process. And
probably also pay them more, because that stringent process will likely choke
their existing funnel out of existence.

It's much the same as, say, finding that a company is using a low-quality
outsourcing firm. Would you say that there's a technical problem inside the
outsourcing firm? No, you'd say that there's a management problem in the
_choice_ of outsourcing firm.

~~~
taneq
I don't know if this applies so much at the phone / laptop level, but for
embedded devices, the example code / reference drivers are often _terrible_ ,
but it's not entirely fair to blame the devs. This issue is usually not so
much that they're bad programmers and more that they're good _electronics
engineers_ who, once the hardware is done, are the only people with the
knowledge required to implement the drivers.

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kyrra
The actual commit includes some details on disk paver.

[https://github.com/fuchsia-
mirror/docs/commit/520ed01fd6f258...](https://github.com/fuchsia-
mirror/docs/commit/520ed01fd6f2585bd75607e3671604b5de7998fa)

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sitkack
Linux is the last Unix and that is ok. Unix is a philosophy, not an
implementation. Linux mocked Mach, but was usurped by the hypervisor,
violently corralling Linux in a microkernel environment anyway. Lots of things
are in the kernel that don't need to be, making them non-updatable, as someone
else controls the keys. That past, present and future is awesome. But lets
build from the past and build the future. Not saying Fuschia is it, but as
Unikernels and Exokernels have shown us, Linux itself is just an app in the
stack. Unix is a framework for running processes. Your domain problems are the
real problems, the OS is an implementation detail.

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krylon
I wish Google was more outspoken about their plans for Fuchsia. So far, all we
have is a lot of speculation.

~~~
Shoothe
I think they don't know themselves what will become of it. It's more a
research project similarly to Midori.

~~~
blablabla123
Yes, and there are tons of research OSs. Most of them suffer from a lack of
Hardware support. I'd be ready to switch to OpenBSD/Solaris/QNX/other fancy OS
tomorrow if all my HW components were supported.

I doubt anything non-Linux based is ever becoming popular within the next 100
years. ;)

~~~
Shoothe
They don't need to replace Linux in one big event. They'll probably test and
safely move some working ideas to their production OSes (similarly as Span was
introduced in .NET from Midori).

There is also some effort in abstracting device drivers in Android (Project
Treble) but how it could be used in Magenta is not clear.

Personally I'd be really interested in seeing this OS deployed in production.
I like Linux but it's XXI century, we should be slowly adopting basic security
principles in our OSes (capabilities, microkernels). But I fear that Magenta
will look similar to Android, while it is open source Google will internally
use a customized version that the customers will not be able to compile
themselves.

~~~
blablabla123
Sure, it could be a process and Project Treble goes in the right direction.

However it's insane if you consider how many device drivers there are for
Windows and Linux. The large majority of Linux kernel code is drivers. When
you consider that Linux still has problems to run on certain hardware, then
the problem becomes more obvious.

My bet is, in case this ever becomes a success, then only for a subset of
vendors that are willing to cooperate closely with Google. (Oh yeah, and
everybody needs to throw away the old hardware.)

I wished efforts would instead go into improving Linux Kernel. It reminds me
of Google saying that JavaScript is a complete dead end and must be replaced.
So they created Dart which surely has a great design but nobody uses it - and
JS is now better than ever.

Moreover it's a bit of a lame excuse that vendors don't update their Android
modifications. It already start that Google doesn't manage to get their Linux
kernel modifications into the mainline Kernel - almost violating OpenSource
principles...

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cmurf
From Wikipedia: _Chrome OS is an operating system designed by Google that is
based on the Linux kernel and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its
principal user interface._

OK so why not Google Chrome web browser on top of Fuchsia, instead of Linux
kernel and the usual user space stuff? Google can call that retrofit anything
they want, so it could still be Chrome OS.

~~~
sebe
Fuchsia can display web content, it has a web view that currently webkit based
not chrome/blink. I think the plan is to use chrome/chromium web browser,
once/if arrives in fuchsia,that will be interesting.

~~~
fabrice_d
There is actually a fuchsia port in the upstream chromium tree.

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jancsika
Under this OS, who decides what capabilities an app has?

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nickthemagicman
I would love this so much. A Linux OS with the support of a major company and
decent UI/UX? Yes please.

~~~
hobo_mark
Except it's not Linux?

