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.
Related Stories
Google will contribute changes to Apple's Swift programming language, and will support the language in the Fuchsia OS, a presumed replacement for Android, ChromeOS, etc. that is designed to work on all devices:
Fuchsia is Google's not-at-all-but-kind-of-secret operating system that's being developed in the open, but with almost zero official messaging about what it's for, or what it's built to replace. (Android? Chrome OS? Both? Neither?) The operating system's core is written in mostly C and C++, with Dart for the default "Flutter" UI, but other languages like Go, Rust, Python, and now Swift have also found a home in the project.
Of course, just because you'll be able to compile Swift to run on Fuchsia doesn't mean you'll be able to instantly port any iOS app to Google's new OS when or if it ships. While Apple has open sourced the Swift language itself, much of the iOS platform (like the UI stuff, for instance) is closed source, so code that relies on those closed Apple libraries won't be portable.
One possible future in a world where Fuchsia is an important and relevant platform for apps is that you write the "core logic" of your app in your language of choice — Swift, Go, Rust, JavaScript, etc. — and then you build a custom UI for each platform — Android, iOS, Fuchsia, Linux, Windows, the web — using the appropriate tools for each.
Also at Android Police.
Previously: Google's New Non-Linux OS: Fuchsia
Google's Not-So-Secret New OS
Google Fuchsia UI Previewed
Google's Fuchsia OS will support Linux apps
Google's non-Linux-based Fuchsia OS has added an emulator for running Debian Linux apps. Like its upcoming Linux emulator for Chrome OS, Fuchsia's "Guest" app will offer tighter integration than typical emulators.
Google has added a Guest app to its emergent and currently open source Fuchsia OS to enable Linux apps to run within Fuchsia as a virtual machine (VM). The Guest app makes use of a library called Machina that permits closer integration with the OS than is available with typical emulators, according to a recent 9to5Google story.
Last month, Google announced a Project Crostini technology that will soon let Chromebook users more easily run mainstream Linux applications within a Chrome OS VM. This week, Acer's Chromebook Flip C101 joined the short list of Chromebooks that will offer Linux support later this year.
Previously: Google's New Non-Linux OS: Fuchsia
Google's Not-So-Secret New OS
Google Fuchsia UI Previewed
Google to Add Swift Language Support to Fuchsia OS
ChromeOS Gains the Ability to Run Linux Applications
Google has updated a mobile framework that targets Android, iOS, and the in-development Google Fuchsia OS:
On Wednesday, Google's cross-platform mobile framework Flutter reached Preview Release 1, a designation that places the code somewhere between buggy beta and less buggy 1.0.
"The shift from beta to release preview signals our confidence in the stability and quality of what we have, and our focus on bug fixing and stabilization," said Google group product manager Tim Sneath in a blog post.
Introduced in May 2017, Flutter provides a way for Linux, macOS and Windows developers to create mobile apps in the Dart programming language that can run on Android, iOS or Google Fuchsia, an operating system that Google is working on.
Apps would be bundled with the Flutter engine:
Flutter is Google's second swing at a mobile SDK (the first being a little platform called "Android"). Flutter's claim to fame is that it's cross-platform—Flutter apps run on Android and iOS—and it's really fast. Flutter apps sidestep the app platforms of Android and iOS and instead run on the Flutter rendering engine (written in C++) and Flutter framework (written in Google's Dart language, just like Flutter apps). When it's time to ship a Flutter app off to Google's and Apple's respective app stores, the requisite Flutter engine code gets bundled up with the app code, and the Flutter SDK spits out Android and iOS versions of your single code base. Each version comes complete with built-in app themes for Android or iOS, so they still feel like native apps. Along with Android and iOS, Flutter is also the platform used for apps in Google's experimental Fuchsia OS.
Related: Google's New Non-Linux OS: Fuchsia
Google's Not-So-Secret New OS
Google Fuchsia UI Previewed
Google to Add Swift Language Support to Fuchsia OS
Google is officially releasing its Fuchsia OS, starting w/ first-gen Nest Hub
Google's long-in-development, from-scratch operating system, Fuchsia, is now running on real Made by Google devices, namely, the first-generation Nest Hub.
Google has told us that as of today, an update is beginning to roll out to owners of the first-generation Nest Hub, first released in 2018. For all intents and purposes, this update will not change any of the functionality of the Nest Hub, but under the hood, the smart display will be running Fuchsia OS instead of the Linux-based "Cast OS" it used before. In fact, your experience with the Nest Hub should be essentially identical. This is possible because Google's smart display experience is built with Flutter, which is designed to consistently bring apps to multiple platforms, Fuchsia included.
We've been tracking the development of Fuchsia since 2016, starting from an ambitious experimental UI, to running on Google's many internal testing devices for Fuchsia, ranging the full gamut of Google's smart home and Chromebook lineup. In the time since then, the OS has gradually progressed and recently even begun a steady release schedule.
Also at The Verge and Notebookcheck.
Previously:
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday February 16 2017, @01:56AM
Sure, you can bring a new OS to take over the world. Three things:
- Security. From day 1
- Easy to get executables for it (compatibility layers or well-fed app store)
- Don't you [bleep]ing expect all form factors to use the same interface.
Good luck.
PS: if you fail, you have to fix all the Android fragmentation and security issues. If you succeed, you still have to fix all the Android security issues.
PPS: Don't bake the spyware in.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @02:57AM
Don't want the spyware? Here's the cleaned version.
begin 644 andromeda-sans-spyware
`
end
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 16 2017, @03:04AM
I don't think that Android is any less "secure" than Linux. The problem with Android is, who "owns" the device, and thus the OS. If your telco "owns" the device, and lets you use it for a fee, then the OS can be considered at least moderately secure, from their point of view. Relatively few of us actually root our phones, to take real ownership of the phone. Most phones continue to report statistics back to the telco and/or the manufacturer for all of their useful lives. That's pretty "secure" from their point of view. If other apps gain root, and report the user's data to third parties, that is inconsequential to the telco.
The business model needs to change, before end users can consider their phones to be secure. I'm not an Apple fan, but those people have a much better perspective on security than the Android crowd does. The end user owns the phone, if they agree to stay inside the garden. He still owns the phone, if he goes outside the garden, but there are consequences for wandering around outside. Still, the phone stays pretty secure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @02:03PM
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday February 17 2017, @04:19PM
I gave your post a little thought, off and on. Didn't Apple tell Big Brother to take a leap, because they couldn't break into a phone? At the least, Apple respects your ownership of a phone enough to refuse to be a party to spying on you. Apple's phone, or your phone? Whichever, it's a better deal than you're going to get on the average smart phone.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by captain normal on Thursday February 16 2017, @04:07AM
Why, oh why would Google host a new OS on Github?
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by butthurt on Thursday February 16 2017, @04:48AM
At a guess from the hostname, Google have got their own git server.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday February 16 2017, @05:23AM
Ah, I see in an earlier story that they have a copy on Github. I don't know why that might be a problem.
https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror [github.com]
/article.pl?sid=16/08/14/1252230 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Thursday February 16 2017, @02:29PM
What's the problem with hosting on github? https://github.com/torvalds/linux [github.com]
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Thursday February 16 2017, @04:59AM
Sure, you can bring a new OS to take over the world. Three things:
- Security. From day 1
- Easy to get executables for it (compatibility layers or well-fed app store)
- Don't you [bleep]ing expect all form factors to use the same interface.
- Root access without having to do more than either login as root or su as a user
- Any GNU/Linux (or BSD) software that works on my Atom netbook works on Fuschia
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @07:48AM
- An OS completely free from proprietary blobs. In other words, freedom (and likely security) from day 1.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 16 2017, @08:47PM
It also helps if you give it ample targets for pejorative nicknames. I think that fucksya is rather appropriate given the company.
(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.