TechSpecs Blog ponders:
I decided to dig through open source to examine the state of Google's upcoming Andromeda OS. For anyone unfamiliar, Andromeda seems to be the replacement for both Android and Chrome OS (cue endless debates over the semantics of that, and what it all entails). Fuchsia is the actual name of the operating system, while Magenta is the name of the kernel, or more correctly, the microkernel. Many of the architectural design decisions appear to have unsurprisingly been focused on creating a highly scalable platform.
It goes without saying that Google isn't trying to hide Fuchsia. People have clearly discovered that Google is replacing Android's Linux kernel. Still, I thought it would be interesting for people to get a better sense of what the OS actually is. This article is only intended to be an overview of the basics, as far as I can comment reasonably competently. (I certainly never took an operating systems class!)
To my naive eyes, rather than saying Chrome OS is being merged into Android, it looks more like Android and Chrome OS are both being merged into Fuchsia. It's worth noting that these operating systems had previously already begun to merge together to an extent, such as when the Android team worked with the Chrome OS team in order to bring Update Engine to Nougat, which introduced A/B updates to the platform.
Google is unsurprisingly bringing up Andromeda on a number of platforms, including the humble Intel NUC. ARM, x86, and MIPS bring-up is exactly what you would expect for an Android successor, and it also seems clear that this platform will run on Intel laptops.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @11:59AM
What is gained by dropping linux and replacing it with something else?
And why the merge with ChromeOS? Are there actually people out there using ChromeOS?
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday February 16 2017, @02:30PM
Just Chromebooks as far as i know.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @03:02PM
Duh.
(Score: 1) by andersjm on Thursday February 16 2017, @05:14PM
So what is the license? Presumably you found out, so why not tell the rest of us?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 16 2017, @07:37PM
They do seem to be rather shy about specifying the license. You may need to download the source to find out what it is, as I didn't see anything while around the site. A short google search reports "License, Various, including Revised BSD, MIT and Apache 2. ", so perhaps there's no consistent license.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by andersjm on Thursday February 16 2017, @08:25PM
That's a bit scary. If the "various licenses" are for libraries used by Andromeda and not Andromeda itself, it could be that there is no license at all. And that doesn't mean a free-for-all: If there's no license then they haven't granted the public license to do anything, and that means they could at any time sue anyone who's using their code for copyright violation.
I'm not going near that code with a 1.5m pole.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 17 2017, @04:22PM
Don't worry, you don't need a license if you just drive it on your own property. If you cross the highway, just get off and push.
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Friday February 17 2017, @02:58AM
The Magenta Kernel (kernel/...) is under the MIT License, a copy of which
may be found in kernel/LICENSE
The Magenta System (system/...) and Bootloader (bootloader/...) are under the
BSD License, a copy of which may be found in system/LICENSE
The Third Party Components (third_party/...) are under various licenses
(of the BSD, MIT, or Zlib style), which may be found in the root directory
of each component, respectively.
-- https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/magenta/blob/4e0dd124b4e5f512b733bbbe517c028f1d3ecf05/LICENSE [github.com]
(Score: 2) by joshuajon on Thursday February 16 2017, @03:40PM
I understand chromebooks are pretty popular in the k-12 market.
(Score: 2) by Foobar Bazbot on Thursday February 16 2017, @08:05PM
Well, yes. I use a chromebook -- Asus Chromebook Flip; the best ARM netbook I know of. I was thinking of blowing away ChromeOS completely, but initially set up Crouton (a chroot-based heap of scripts and what-not to run Debian, Ubuntu, etc. alongside ChromeOS) and was won over by the convenience of that combination; I have ChromeOS on one hand for the 2/3 (or more) of time I'm in a web browser or ssh terminal, and an X server on the second virtual console for everything else.
I'm not real concerned with Google spying on me, because even if I had nuked ChromeOS, I would still be running Chrome or Chromium, still using GMail, etc.; this computer was always going to be pre-compromised in the name of convenience. (I have other computers that I'm less tolerant of spyware on, but this one's not meant for serious business.)
FWIW, I don't think I'll be interested in this successor OS; ChromeOS iis only handy because of the ease of running normal Linux distros alongside, and I don't expect that will be a priority for Andromeda.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday February 16 2017, @09:56PM
What is gained by dropping linux and replacing it with something else?
Either:
(1) the work and headaches involved in developing a new OS to ease NIH syndrome;
or
(2) the work and headaches involved in developing a new OS to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
Are there actually people out there using ChromeOS?
I suppose there are, but I don't know them.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.