Google, never one to compete in a market with a single product, is apparently hard at work on a third operating system after Android and Chrome OS. This one is an open source, real-time OS called “Fuchsia.” The OS first popped up in August last year, but back then it was just a command line. Now the mysterious project has a crazy new UI we can look at, so let’s dive in.
Unlike Android and Chrome OS, Fuchsia is not based on Linux—it uses a new, Google-developed microkernel called “Magenta.” With Fuchsia, Google would not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL: the OS is licensed under a mix of BSD 3 clause, MIT, and Apache 2.0. Dumping Linux might come as a bit of a shock, but the Android ecosystem seems to have no desire to keep up with upstream Linux releases. Even the Google Pixel is still stuck on Linux Kernel 3.18, which was first released at the end of 2014.
Google’s documentation describes Magenta as targeting “modern phones and modern personal computers with fast processors, non-trivial amounts of RAM with arbitrary peripherals doing open-ended computation.” Google hasn’t made any public, official comments on why Fuchsia exists or what it is for, leaving us only to speculate. The “modern phone” shout out certainly sounds like something that could eventually compete with Android, but for now the OS is so early, it’s hard to tell.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/googles-fuchsia-smartphone-os-dumps-linux-has-a-wild-new-ui/
Submitted by: Arnfried Walbrecht
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