[bestorworse]

It's technically a general-purpose OS. They had a workstation build target sometime ago which was used for the desktop use-case. They've shipped only for an IoT device so far (Google Nest Hub).

Main goal would be to replace the core of AOSP considering the main work that's being done, but it seems like Google isn't convinced it's there yet.

[dekhn]

Hasn't this project been running for (checks notes) almost ten years now? Isn't that enough runway to determine that it's never going to replace AOSP at this rate?

[alex-mohr]

As far as I could tell, its main goal was to have fun writing an OS. At that, it seems to have succeeded for a number of the people involved?

In terms of impact or business case, I'm missing what the end goal for the company or execs involved is. It's not re-writing user-space components of AOSP, because that's all Java or Kotlin. Maybe it's a super-longterm super-expensive effort to replace Linux underlying Android with Fuchia? Or for ChromeOS? Again, seems like a weird motivation to justify such a huge investment in both the team building it and a later migration effort to use it. But what else?

[dekhn]

When I worked at $GOOG my manager left the team to work on Fuchsia and he described it as a "senior engineer retention project", but also the idea was to come up with a kernel that had a stable interface so that vendors could update their hardware more easily compared to linux.

Many things that google did when I was there was simply to have a hedge, if the time/opportunity arose, against other technologies. For example they kept trying to pitch non-Intel hardware, at least partly so they could have more negotiation leverage over Intel. It's amazing how much wasted effort they have created following bad ideas.

[cmrdporcupine]

The problem with Fuchsia is it went from that to "We're taking all your headcount and rewriting your entire project on Fuchsia" and then started making deadline promises to upper management that it couldn't fulfill.

They seemed to have unlimited headcount to go rewrite the entire world to put on display assistant devices that had already shipped and succeeded with an existing software stack that Google then refused to evolve or maintain.

Fuchsia itself and the people who started it? Pretty nifty and smart. Fuchsia the project inside Google? Fuck.

[andrekandre]

  > the idea was to come up with a kernel that had a stable interface so that vendors could update their hardware more easily

interesting... if that was a big goal, i wonder why they didn't go with some kind of adapter/meta-driver (and just maintain that) to the kernel that has a stable interface.

maybe long-term not viable i guess...?

[bestorworse]

Yep. It's anyone's guess what's been going on there. Lots of theories out there. IMO Google doesn't consider this a high priority and the cost to keep the development going on considering the engineers working on it is low enough.

Also note that swapping the core of a widely used comercial OS like AOSP would be no easy feat. Imagine trying to convince OEMs, writing drivers practically from scratch for all the devices (based on a different paradigm), the bugs due to incompatibility, etc.

[mmooss]

How long does it take to develop a general purpose, fully capable OS, from scratch? Not a *NIX / POSIX variant, but brand new?

(IIUC, it's brand new?)

[toast0]

It really depends. If you have a good, small enough team, and a clear design, with a well defined and limited scope, it shouldn't take that long.

If your team is too large, and especially if you don't know what the use case is, it can take a very long time. You asked for general purpose and fully capable, so you're probably in this case, but I think the desired use cases for Fuchsia could be scoped to way less than general purpose and fully capable: a ChromeOS replacement needs only to run Chrome (which isn't easy, but...), and an Android replacement needs only to run Android apps (again, not easy), and the embedded devices only run applications authored by Google with probably a much smaller scope.

But it also depends on what 'from scratch' means. Will you lean on existing development tools, hosted on an existing OS? Will you borrow libraries where the scope and license are appropriate? Are you going to build your own bootloader or use an existing one?

[bestorworse]

Yeah, it's brand new as far as you would consider in practice (they use existing libraries and the like).

The answer is not much time. The real question is how long to develop good quality drivers for a give platform (say, an x64 laptop)? How long to port/develop applications so that the OS is useful? How long to convince OEMs, app developers and such folks to start using your brand new OS? It's a bootstrap problem.

[mmooss]

> The answer is not much time.

That would be surprising. Where do you get that? I don't mean toy OSes or experiments. Linux, MacOS and Windows are still in development and I can't imagine the number of hours invested.

> they use existing libraries and the like

Where can I find out about that? Thanks.

[wqaatwt]

IIRC it didn't take that long to develop first production versions of macOS? A couple of years maybe?

It's not like Fuschia was supposed to be a "fully capable OS developed from scratch", either? I mean it's "just" the kernel and other low level components, most of the software stack would remain same as Android/Linux at least for the time being.

[RossBencina]

> first production versions of macOS? A couple of years maybe?

Ok, I'll bite. If we're talking classic Macintosh OS, perhaps.[0] macOS? No way. The first Mac OS X was released in 2001, and was in development between 1997 and 2001 according to Wikipedia.[1] But the bulk of the OS already existed 1997. Mac OS X was a reskin of NeXTStep. NeXTStep was released in 1989, final release 1995, final preview 1997 (just before Apple sold out to NeXT).[2] NeXTStep was in production for quite some time before the x86 version shipped (around '95 from memory). In case you are wondering, I can assure you that NeXTStep was a very capable OS. NeXTStep was in development for a couple of years before the first hardware shipped in 1989. NeXTStep was built on top of Mach and BSD 4.3 userspace. Mach's initial release was 1985.[3]. Not sure how long the first release of Mach took to develop. You can check BSD history yourself. But I'd say, conservatively, that macOS took at least 14 years to develop.

[0] check https://folklore.org/

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_operating_systems

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel)

[mmooss]

> IIRC it didn't take that long to develop first production versions of macOS?

If you mean the early 1980s OS, that is not comparable. It probably ran in something like 512K of memory off of a 5.25" floppy disk (or a tape?).

> It's not like Fuschia was supposed to be a "fully capable OS developed from scratch", either? I mean it's "just" the kernel and other low level components

I don't know the answer, but doesn't the second sentence describe Linux?

[kllrnohj]

Android is very unapologetically Linux and it's unlikely anyone seriously proposed doing anything other than use Linux.

Fuchsia more likely was for all the stuff that Google kept experimenting with using Android just because it was there rather than because it was a good fit - wearables, IoT, AR/VR, Auto, etc...

[rjsw]

Other operating systems have emulated Linux so that you can run Linux userland applications on top of a different kernel, WSL1 and FreeBSD are good examples.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> wearables, IoT, AR/VR, Auto, etc...

Why would Android be a poor fit for those?

[kllrnohj]

I didn't say it was, although for wearables & IoT Android is pretty large.