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Google is officially releasing Fuchsia OS, starting with a first-gen Nest Hub

294 points| panic | 4 years ago |9to5google.com | reply

314 comments

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[+] piokoch|4 years ago|reply
10 years ago I would be really excited, as I could expect some groundbreaking tech like search engine or revolutionary approach to something, like Gmail (no ads sent to users, great UI, hige disk space).

Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web...

Maybe I am wrong, I hope I am wrong.

[+] SiVal|4 years ago|reply
Yes, now when Google's social enforcement algorithms label you an impediment, they can not only delete your YouTube video business and cut you off from your email, calendar, and Google Docs, they'll be able to turn the heat off in your house. The march of progress.
[+] DebtDeflation|4 years ago|reply
I'm so done with this smart home stuff.

"Alexa, turn on Living Room."

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble understanding now."

I mean, yeah, I can toggle the light switch to get it to turn on, but then it gets screwed up and I need to go into the app to reset it when the internet comes back on.

I don't even want to think about a smart thermostat. My dumb thermostat from 10 years ago let's me set timers which is all I really need.

[+] rvz|4 years ago|reply
> Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web...

Since Chrome came along, the 'Web' became less free from the start and the moment Google forked WebKit (called Blink) to use it in their own browser, it has turned the web more into a walled garden each time apps use specific Chrome features and it is getting worse. Even in that early decade, we knew about how Google and others were tracking us since the PRISM program leaks.

Later DRM was added with reasons and votes unknown, devs have to keep telling users to switch from any other browser to Chrome to use their apps and now this forked engine is in tons of Electron apps with Microsoft jumping in and using it in their Edge browser. The time to complain was 10 years ago and now it is almost too late.

Now Google is doing it again with Fuchsia which will eventually replace ChromeOS and Android. Fuchsia is highly dependent on Flutter and those apps will run on Fuchsia devices on day 1. There is an extremely low chance of that being abandoned so I'm afraid it will continue.

[+] _Microft|4 years ago|reply
You might want to add: [I wonder] when it will be discontinued with just a one month's notice and will turn my device into a brick.
[+] IntelMiner|4 years ago|reply
To add to the pot of cynics

I wonder how much of it is driven to supplant Linux's "viral" GPL-ness

[+] grawprog|4 years ago|reply
>Today, instead of excitement, I am wondering how this thing is going to push me in some walled garden, how I will be tracked, how my data will be fetched and sold, what will be the trick used to move people away from free Web...

There's no need to wonder. Fuchsia's been designed to do all those things and more.

https://beebom.com/what-fuchsia-os/

Starting with a modular design that caters to device manufacturers that allows them to provide only part of the operating system. The days of devices with full os's are coming to an end.

Cloud based constant device syncing between all devices

>Dependency on Web Apps

Google and device manufacturers will have full control over the microkernel and bootloader

Honestly, I'm not excited at all. I've been dreading fuchsia since it was first announced. Everything about the os is designed around google having complete control over the os itself and everything on your device.

[+] dkersten|4 years ago|reply
Don’t worry, they’ll abandon it in a year or two because not enough people use it.
[+] ziml77|4 years ago|reply
It sucks. They tried to pull me into the walled garden by ending Works With Nest and I still hate that I had to change to a different solution. The Nest thermostats are great, but having to go through the internet for any automation sucks.
[+] Grazester|4 years ago|reply
I came here for a technical discussion about Fuchsia and it's microkernel approach instead this is mostly fill with complains about Google as a company.

Is there a social justice forum I can visit where I may be able to have a technical discussion about Fuchsia?

[+] raxxorrax|4 years ago|reply
I think the discussion cannot be really detached, since Google has strong ambitions that will undeniably influence features and capabilities of their OS.

But as for the microkernel approach, I think the advantages are on the table, but they are theoretical. Until now, no OS with a micro architecture was successful at getting significant market share.

What would your requirements at an OS like this be? For me, it would be extensibility and the minimalist approach.

Don't know the implementation details, but it sounds a lot like a time when people loved OOP too much, or later disliked it just as much.

[+] kerneis|4 years ago|reply
For what it's worth, a few Google engineers are hanging around so if you have any specific technical question I think we'd be glad to answer it :-)
[+] jeffbee|4 years ago|reply
I think the cause of this phenomenon is that most HN readers are not qualified to comment on Fuchsia, are ignorant of any and all facts about it, but are also compelled to comment. So you get this thread, and most threads here. Actual technical exchange between people who are both not obviously wrong is rare here.
[+] phendrenad2|4 years ago|reply
Hacker News is still the best place for such discussions. There's just a lot of low-effort noise from people who force every topic to conform to their existing knowledge areas.
[+] tempest_|4 years ago|reply
It should at the very least tell you how aggressively google has been burning its goodwill as of late.

Google offers things with the left hand while slapping you with the right and you seem surprised that people only want to talk about the slapping.

[+] e12e|4 years ago|reply
Has anyone done a comparison with Minix 3? What are the (dis)advantages to a new microkernel rather than building on Minix 3?
[+] arthur_sav|4 years ago|reply
Fuschia forums? People are discussing the news of a new OS release and its implications.
[+] cpach|4 years ago|reply
Please post your thoughts and questions about Fuchsia!

I wonder where Fuchsia will be in 5-10 years. Will it thrive? If so, in what space will it thrive?

[+] dqpb|4 years ago|reply
There’s no clear line here - it’s systems all the way down.

When a new component is added to the critical path, its vital to ask “What happens if my account gets flagged? How much of my life can Google shut down with a single bit flip?”

[+] edent|4 years ago|reply
The personal is political. And the technical is political.

You cannot separate a work from the context in which it operates.

[+] zentiggr|4 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, every new project coming from Google now has a couple of decades of baggage, directly caused by the unexpected / manipulative cancellation of projects.

While I am not Google-free at the moment, especially email, I have long ago learned to avoid trusting any Google product to stay stable, or even available.

And that doesn't even scratch the surface of the decades of "everything we do is tuned to collect as much data as we can steal without getting caught, and using it to our benefit in any way we can hide from you, our users."

Cynicism is pretty much the norm now, and is going to color everything Google does forever.

I'm sure there are forums and github sites with actual technical details, but that's only a fraction of what gets traded here. YMMV.

[+] axegon_|4 years ago|reply
I've only recently started fiddling with Fuchsia and I'd be interested to see it running on a device and see how truly usable it could be in the real world. It seems the community is pretty active online which is a good thing: I raised a concern about building Fuchsia on non-Debian based distros and potential solutions(one of which I tested and workes) and I had 4 or 5 replies in a couple of hours. And while the thread has turned into yet another "bash Google" thread, I'd like to thank the engineers for their work and hoping to see more in the future. As I said I haven't tested it on an actual device but if it is as lightweight and versatile as advertised, it has the potential to become incredibly big and valuable. I guess only time will tell.
[+] mbStavola|4 years ago|reply
Around December or January I tried to get Fuchsia going in QEMU to play around a bit and maybe contribute back some code, but nothing quite worked as I expected. Based on this experience I had figured they were still years off from shipping but I'm pleasantly surprised to see that I was (obviously) wrong.

Congrats to the team and looking forward to seeing it work as intended!

[+] usbfingers|4 years ago|reply
I'm almost more excited because of the proxy network affect this will have on microkernel popularization and alternatives like Dahlia OS (https://dahliaos.io/) that are looking to be independent distros of Fuchsia.

I understand peoples concern about a walled garden situation here, but I'd argue to only become worried if Fuchsia suddenly stopped being committed to openly and someone needed to maintain a fork. The working code for both the microkernel and the OS is all open source.

[+] vbsteven|4 years ago|reply
What is interesting about Fuchsia is how Google first created Flutter and made it popular for Android/iOS and to a lesser extent the web. And now they start releasing Fuchsia OS/devices and developing apps/software for it will immediately feel familiar to many mobile developers.

This could help adoption instead of yet another GUI framework to learn from scratch.

[+] dragonelite|4 years ago|reply
Huawei is doing the same kind of approach, make android apps compatible with their Harmony system. I think everybody has learned from Microsoft and Samsung's experience trying to launch a new ecosystem without support for current application android ecosystems.
[+] hollerith|4 years ago|reply
Similarly, free software running on proprietary Unix OSes became (during the years 1983 through 1991) very popular before any free Unix kernel started getting traction.
[+] wyldfire|4 years ago|reply
Congratulations to the team, this is a big milestone. I worry that this will permit Google to disengage from the linux community, but I'm optimistic that it will result in improved device security.
[+] getcrunk|4 years ago|reply
This is exciting to see (in a neutral way, I'm not rooting for it) because I wonder how large fuchsia will grow and if it will contend with Linux. Why wouldn't Google want to push containers running it's brand spanking new os without 30+ years of cruft on gcp. And if it has performance/security why wouldn't developers start moving over.
[+] SV_BubbleTime|4 years ago|reply
Hmm, looks like Fuchsia still uses Dart/Flutter for the front end. My experiences have been positive (although I’m sure someone will be happy to explain how my opinion of Flutter is wrong) so I’m glad to see it.
[+] phendrenad2|4 years ago|reply
Congrats to the Fuschia/Zircon team! It's very exciting to see a freshly-architected OS appear on the scene, with a non-copyleft license, a big company behind it (so hardware vendors will actually write drivers for it), and direction set by one company (instead of 10+ as is the case with Linux/Android). Can't wait to play around with it :-)
[+] criddell|4 years ago|reply
What problem does Fuchsia solve? Google already has at least three other operating systems to use.

On the other hand, Google has never seemed particularly shy about starting something new rather than work on something old. I'm thinking of their messaging systems that they start every couple of years.

Also, the branding isn't great. The top image in the linked story immediately makes me think this has something to do with T-Mobile.

[+] RavlaAlvar|4 years ago|reply
Would this solve the extreme UI lag and make google hub finally useable?
[+] jasonvorhe|4 years ago|reply
It really depends on the polish of Fuchsia for Nest Hubs. Getting a few more FPS out of the 1st gen hardware is something I'm actually hoping for because it's gotten really slow and I rarily touch the screen anymore because of the lag.
[+] wikibob|4 years ago|reply
A big success for Rust in the wild
[+] dragonsh|4 years ago|reply
By that metric JSON is the clear winner but that's not the case, its a win for Rust and also for C, C++, Dart, GO, Python and many more.

  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Language                 Files     Lines   Blanks  Comments     Code Complexity
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Rust                     10640   3126941   295777    480090  2351074     125641
  C++                       8744   2025857   318786    180185  1526886     174494
  C Header                  7293    894250   148795    199271   546184      18621
  GN                        5014    303531    38062     39284   226185       6367
  Go                        2873    800205    75566    113344   611295      87456
  Markdown                  2648    288903    74633         0   214270          0
  C                         1708    365017    49446     53285   262286      46408
  JSON                      1305   4454311       82         0  4454229          0
  FIDL                      1303     94290    13433     43888    36969          0
  Dart                       606     69163     9153     10205    49805       4425
  License                    545     21628     3271         0    18357          0
  YAML                       421     10036      784      1882     7370          0
  Plain Text                 368    127457    14426         0   113031          0
  Python                     352     56456     4845      5083    46528       4096
  Assembly                   301    128989    12067         0   116922        828
  Shell                      281     24032     3022      4754    16256       1971
  BASH                       234     22508     2795      4752    14961       2117
  TOML                        65      4043      198        90     3755          1
  JavaScript                  56     33445     1768       855    30822       3695
  GLSL                        51     12951     2347      4386     6218        756
  SVG                         48      8543        1         2     8540          0
  gitignore                   43       388       31        69      288          0
  Perl                        41     48582     3874      4185    40523        858
  Handlebars                  31       556       41         4      511         18
  Mako                        31      1453      174         0     1279         49
  XML                         31      1473       16       129     1328          0
  Protocol Buffers            28      5160     1068      1562     2530          0
  HTML                        19       882       40        12      830          0
  Makefile                    18       527      107        34      386         24
  Bazel                       17      1493      131       170     1192         37
  Dockerfile                  17       248       33        19      196         18
  C++ Header                  14     10691      214       206    10271        103
  CSV                         13    140350        0         0   140350          0
  Autoconf                    12       910       34        32      844          7
  ReStructuredText            11      1969      659         0     1310          0
  Vim Script                  10       428       65         0      363         31
  Device Tree                  9       246       32        43      171          0
  Go Template                  7       521       80         0      441          5
  Module-Definition            5       176       23         0      153          4
  Smarty Template              5        74       24         0       50          5
  CMake                        4       396       45       123      228         38
  CSS                          4       387       51        13      323          0
  JSX                          3       355       15        39      301          0
  Patch                        3      2591      105         0     2486          0
  Scala                        3        80       13         0       67          3
  Fish                         2       140       16        40       84         18
  LD Script                    2       122        4        10      108          0
  PHP                          2         4        1         0        3          0
  AWK                          1        97       14         4       79          0
  Batch                        1        23        3         0       20          2
  Emacs Lisp                   1        71       14        12       45          2
  Meson                        1        12        3         0        9          0
  Nix                          1         7        1         0        6          0
  Prolog                       1        45       11         0       34          0
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Total                    45247  13093013  1076199   1148062 10868752     478098
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Estimated Cost to Develop (organic) $467,287,312
  Estimated Schedule Effort (organic) 142.185717 months
  Estimated People Required (organic) 291.973834
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Processed 437275620 bytes, 437.276 megabytes (SI)
  ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[+] Google234|4 years ago|reply
I’m 99% sure it’s mostly C and C++
[+] roland35|4 years ago|reply
I am planning on not purchasing any new google smart home hardware. I am annoyed that my nest thermostat no longer has a way to interface with their API. I purchased it right before the Google acquisition and I would have gone with an Ecobee if I knew the Nest would be inaccessible to a regular user.

I believe having an open API is an important part of smart home hardware, even if most users don't use it.

[+] mwcampbell|4 years ago|reply
Does anyone know if Fuchsia, or any higher-level environment built on top of it like this new software for the Nest Hub, includes a screen reader for blind users? This will be necessary before Fuchsia can be considered a full replacement for Android, Chromium OS, etc.
[+] kerneis|4 years ago|reply
Yes, Nest displays have a screen reader feature: https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9167457

As explained in the article, the release of Fuchsia should not change any supported feature (please report a bug via the "send feedback" option if you notice otherwise!).

[+] bionade24|4 years ago|reply
Having a smart speaker with a display doesn't make sense for a bling person imao.
[+] cbracken|4 years ago|reply
Yes, the Home Hub includes both a screen reader and touch exploration mode.
[+] josefresco|4 years ago|reply
I can't say I've ever thought about the OS on my Nest Hub. It's a digital picture frame, and it plays YouTubeTV/Music while I'm in the kitchen. It occasionally answers a question - what will this new OS change?
[+] AtlasBarfed|4 years ago|reply
Google has officially outdid itself in under-marketing a major platform.

A brand new OS, and... barely anything even on hacker news. No barrage of media leading up to the annoucement.

Is this basically a boondoggle being relegated to IoT?

[+] bradgranath|4 years ago|reply
The badbadbad part is that this won't be open, and it'll force adoption of restricted hardware that will no longer be usable by the AOSP. Prolly 5 years out, but still; pour one out for unlocked Android-compatible hardware at any price. Gonna hafta go full tinfoil hat and get a PinePhone.