[solidangle]

> As we expand the universe of software we wish to run on Fuchsia, we are encountering software that we wish to run on Fuchsia that we do not have the ability to recompile. For example, Android applications contain native code modules that have been compiled for Linux. In order to run this software on Fuchsia, we need to be able to run binaries without modifying them.

This seems to be new (circumstantial) evidence that Fuchsia is supposed to eventually replace Linux in Android.

[rvz]

Well it’s what has been always said about those who wanted to replace Windows: A Windows replacement must be able to either run Windows applications / games (Like running WINE on Linux) or have the same officially supported native version of this application / game. (mostly like macOS)

What we can clearly see here is that an Android replacement must be able to either run Android apps / games or have the same officially supported version of this said app / game, (Like Adobe Photoshop Express or Pokémon GO for iOS or Android or ‘New Platform’)

The first route is the quickest for them to support the existing Android app ecosystem from day 1 or the alternative is to rewrite these apps for this new OS platform which takes years. The former route was the obvious choice for them.

[oldgradstudent]

> A Windows replacement must be able to either run Windows applications / games

This was true even for Microsoft.

Windows NT/2000/XP was effectively a new operating system that was able to run Windows applications.

Microsoft worked very hard to reproduce old bugs and undefined behaviors so that old binaries will continue working on the new Windows.

[maxerickson]

Windows NT predated Windows 95 (95 being the first 32 bit consumer Windows).

I think Windows 2000 didn't have nearly as much compatibility work as XP.

I guess Windows 95 came out because NT was a lot for a 386 or 486? And also different priorities as far as compatibility.

[Arainach]

Windows 95 ran on machines with 4MB of RAM (8 recommended). NT 3.1 required 12 (16 recommended). That extra 8MB was a significant amount of money in 1995. NT 3.1 also required twice the hard drive (75MB vs 35MB). Windows 95 offered better support for direct DOS mode access, VxD, etc. Which was crucial at the time for games and multimedia applications in a manner that NT simply couldn't match.

Additional useful reading: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20120102-00/?p=87...

[anthk]

It dependens, in w2k you had the compat mode from sp2? and beyond which enabled an xp like compat mode, and often games ran better than under xp.

You had to enable it with regsvr32 /enable slayerui.dll or something like that.

[rblatz]

Wasn’t the ability to run Windows apps one of the reasons OS/2 failed? If you had to support both you just wrote a windows app.

[diggernet]

I've seen exactly that argument used for why Purism and Pine phones should not be able to run Android apps. But I'm sorry, as much as I would like to migrate to one of those, it's simply not going to happen if it means ending up with a phone that cannot run various important apps.

Yes, supporting apps for a competing platform gives some developers a convenient excuse to not develop for your platform specifically. But you still get the benefit of their work for the other platform. And not supporting those apps gives users a solid reason to not use your platform at all.

[sammorrowdrums]

This has been stressing me out this week. I have had the Pinephone and Purism shopping cart tabs open for a week, and I just can't bring myself to do it.

I could maybe justify the current iteration of Pinephone as an experiment, try and make an app and buy it through my company as a freelancer, but Purism would need to have quite a few major apps before I could justify the cost. My heart wants me to support these projects. It almost feels like a moral imperative if we want to actually own and control our mobile hardware ever.

But it almost feels like going off and living in the woods to save the environment, the altenative needs a few more of the mod cons for any kind of serious adoption.

This has genuinely caused me a lot of anguish.

[sammorrowdrums]

As a follow up, I actually changed my mind. I've ordered both, I'm going to review them and hopefully do some development for them.

I'm considering trying to drop my day job hours to 4 days so I have more freedom for side projects and this might be the nudge I needed.

[benley]

Sure, but I think a more apt comparison in this context would be to Windows NT, given that Android and Fuchsia are both made by the same company: the ability to run win16 apps was crucial to its initial success. If every existing Windows 3.1 app had to be rewritten and rebuilt to work on NT at all, it would have been a much more difficult migration.

[Sophistifunk]

It's necessary, but not sufficient. You still need a reason for users to switch to your platform, but you remove a big reason not to.

[not2b]

If it hadn't been able to run DOS and Windows apps it never would have been as successful as it was, so I don't think so.

[throwawayboise]

OS/2 was really only ever used in IBM shops: big enterprises that bought all their IT infrastructure, from Mainframes to network technology to printers to desktops from IBM.

OS/2 was never really successful outside of that domain.

[tadfisher]

It was also huge in the embedded space, e.g. ATMs, various kiosks, and POS terminals. I regularly encounter ATMs running some ancient version of Warp.

[Wowfunhappy]

Wouldn't the increasing dominance of mobile platforms and prevalence of macOS be a counterexample to theory?

It depends on how you define "replace", I suppose, but Windows really seems to have less and less importance in a lot of spaces.

[spijdar]

Neither mobile platforms nor MacOS are really trying to "replace" Windows, never have been. They have some overlapping markets, but the target has really been very different all around.

On the other hand, Apple has been very careful to include this sort of "backwards compatibility" in all their systems for a while. It's usually not maintained as long as Microsoft does, but from m68k -> ppc -> i386 -> amd64 -> armv8 they're always supported at least the last architecture and runtime, so early OS X could run apps from System 7/8/9.

[jayd16]

Could also simply be for bootstrapping or even for ChromeOS which currently supports Linux and Android apps.

[ghego1]

Why not both?