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tanvach 7 days ago

I think people have forgotten about Google Fuchsia which I guess is a good sign for a new OS. They’ve done quite well in deploying it seamlessly to their consumer devices.

modeless 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

"Quite well" by what metric? It shipped on one device. That's pretty much the lowest bar you can imagine! Did it provide any tangible benefit to anyone? Let alone a benefit commensurate with the enormous cost of developing it and continuing to maintain it?

I think it was insane to start a new OS effort written in C/C++. We have plenty of OSes written in C/C++! We know how that story ends. If you're going to spend the effort, at least try a new language that could enable a better security model.

pjmlp 7 days ago | parent [-]

While I agree with the sentiment given my bias towards safe systems languages, Genode OS is pretty much mostly C++, although they added some Ada/SPARK as well, which is relatively recent research OS.

asadotzler 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It was so good Google cancelled plans to use it in meaningful products and instead delegated it to the bottom shelf products.

tanvach 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fun rumor: Google shut down the AR effort and transferred the team to project Fuchsia as a way to retain highly skilled employees. So essentially they didn’t have any real technical needs for a new OS.

klipklop 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fuchsia is pretty much a dead product at this point. For things like Phones and Laptops google is using only Android going forward.

blkhp19 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I thought they rolled back all of those efforts. What devices shipping today come with Fuchsia installed?

aschla 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

According to Wikipedia, looks like only the Nest Nub.

kyle-rb 7 days ago | parent [-]

I think some of the Nest audio devices now run it as well.

AceJohnny2 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Google Nest Hub

belval 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Isn't that somewhat debatable? Originally they were aiming at much more (chromebook OS for example) but seems like they settled for Google Home only as their scope.

Still a very interesting project, but that feels like a similar story, for limited use cases (a smart thermostat/speaker with specific hardware) it works, but for wider use cases with heterogeneus hardware and complex interfaces (actual screen, peripherals) it didn't work.

loeg 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

XROS was a Fuschia fork, actually.

koolala 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The reviews I've seen of its stability and usefulness have not been good.

3eb7988a1663 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

That was also frustrating in that sel4 was right there. Why not invest efforts in the existing thing?

loeg 7 days ago | parent [-]

The microkernel core isn't the buggy/hard part; Fuscia's got a similar microkernel that also works great. It's everything else that's hard.

tanvach 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yup it’s because they had to rewrite the drivers I presume. Always going to be the biggest issue with any new OS.