Fuchsia OS is called to be the next great Google operating system . On what it is exactly, if it is going to replace Android or if it is really going to be a completely new development, these are issues that have been discussed since three years ago, Google officially announced its intentions to develop a new OS .

Since then, the news has been produced with an eyedropper since not even the latest Google I / O (the main Google developer conference) has made great announcements.

Last week, yes, Google launched a website for developers of Fuchsia OS , which offers all the necessary documentation to install the version of the new operating system and instructions for the development of Apps.

Despite this, there is still much speculation about what Fuchsia OS is and what it is not. If it really is next to Google or if we are facing an experiment that in the medium term, will end up being abandoned. This in any case is what we know.

What Google says

Since it will be the next Android, which will be a platform that will unify Android with Chrome OS, which will be a minor operating system intended only for IoT devices or even all of the above at once. Much has been written about Fuchsia OS and at the same time, playing the mistake, Google has clarified very few.

The last official statement in this regard occurs last May, when Hiroshi Lockheimer, platform and systems development engineer, states in one of the parallel sessions of Google I / O the following: «Fuchsia is an open source project of Google.

It is an investment we make to modernize and test new concepts around operating systems. Many people assume, “It’s a new Google operating system, so it must be the future of Google’s operating system.” This is not how we see it.

It’s not about replacing Android or Chrome OS. In the world of IoT there is a growing number of devices that require operating systems and new execution times, so I think there is plenty of room for multiple operating systems with different strengths and specialties. Fuchsia OS is one of those things. »

Therefore, if we consider Lockheimer’s statements valid, Fuchsia OS would be primarily focused on the management of IoT devices. End of story.

And yet, as they point out in The Register and many other media, just look at the documentation they have published to see that there is much more than that.

First, let’s start by the name itself: Fuchsia OS. Google itself leaves a clue on the website that has just been released: «Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System)» . Google refers only to these two colors … or is there something else?

If there were anything else, one possibility is that “Pink” refers to ” Apple Pink ” an object-oriented operating system developed by Apple in the 1980s, which would later become Taligent , a project developed with IBM and that It was called to be the basis of a future Mac OS. As for Purple , it could refer to the code name used by Apple in the project that led to the iPhone.

In fact, the documentation seems to confirm that Fuchsia OS represents the new Android.

A new operating system built from scratch compatible with all devices that today work under Android or Chrome OS and that would be able to support legacy applications using virtualization techniques.

More tests? The code that has been made public can now be used in the Google Pixelbook, the Acer Switch Alpha 12 or an Intel NUC … which are not exactly IoT devices.

This is one of the first images that show the development status of the new operating system

A modular operating system based on capabilities

In the documentation published on the project website, Google defines Fuchsia OS as ” capability-based or capacity -based .”

In the glossary that on the same page points to the term capability , it says: “A capacity is a value that combines an object reference and a set of rights.

When a program has a capacity, it is granted the privilege of performing certain actions using that capacity.

At the same time, the feature ” capability routing ” is described which is “a way for a component to grant capabilities to another instance that is part of the component instance tree”.

In this sense, a “capacity-based operating system” could refer to a security system in which each component only has access to the minimum privileges it needs to function, isolating it from the rest and configuring itself as truly modular.

As it has also transpired long ago, it is known that unlike Android, Fuchsia is not based on Linux . The new Google is built on a micro-kernel that has been called Zircon .

At the moment it supports ARM64 and Intel x64 architectures but not those of AMD, which does not mean that they do not have support in the future.

The big change, however, is how the operating system relates to file systems, becoming “coexisting” virtually independently. In Google they explain it in the following way: «The filesystems of Fuchsia OS are completely in the user’s space.

They are neither linked nor loaded into the kernel: file systems become processes within the user’s space, which implement servers that can appear as file systems.

As a consequence, Fuchsia file systems can be easily changed: modifications do not require kernel recompilation. In fact, the upgrade to a new Fuchsia file system can be done without restarting the system. »

An implication of this approach (which we could call “as a service file systems”) is that “any resource accessible through the appropriate channel can be shown as a file system by implementing the expected protocols.”

Among the file systems that Fuchsia OS supports right now are MemFS, MinFS, Blobfs and ThinFS (which implements FAT).

Magma and Flutter

In the graphic section, Fuchsia OS incorporates an architecture for GPU which has been called « Magma «. As in the case of file systems, the drivers do not run inside the kernel, but instead use a privileged space within the user area.

Magma is designed for Vulkan , the graphic acceleration API designed by the Khronos Group. However, they are expected to have support for OpenGL in the short term. Fuchsia also includes a rendering system of its own called Escher , and Scenic , its composer.

When designing user interfaces on Fuchsia OS, Google relies on the well-known Flutter , a set of cross-platform libraries developed by Google that is commonly used for the development of Apps on both Android and iOS.

In this sense, what at first seemed to be a strategy for the development of cross-platform Apps, now seems to go much further and it has already been made public that all applications developed with Flutter will be optimized for use in Fuchsia.

Application Development and SDK

One of the advantages of Fuchsia OS is that it has been designed to support a good number of programming languages.

At the moment it has support for C / C ++, Dart, Go, Rust and Python. In addition, it will also have its own language: FIDL (Fuchsia Interface Definition Language).

On the other hand, the APIs for Fuchsia will be examined by a special Council that will determine their legitimacy. Interested companies can now apply for admission here .

An interesting concept when developing Apps for the new operating system is what Google calls “runners.” According to the company, a “runner” is a “component that provides a runtime environment for other components such as ELF runner, Dart AOT runner or Chromiun Web runner.”

As read later in the documentation, the above implies that in addition to its “own Apps”, Fuchsia OS will allow the execution of Linux, Android and PWAs (Progressive Web Applications).

One of the first applications developed by Google itself for Fuchsia, is called “Story” , a “user-oriented logical container that encapsulates its activity throughout the day. Each of the Storys allows users to organize their activities in a much more natural way. »

Although we are probably still far from launching the first definitive version of Fuchsia OS, what seems clear is that Google is taking this project very seriously.

Is Fuchsia OS the end of Android and Chrome OS as we know them? This does not seem to be something that will happen in the medium term.

It is likely that in its first versions, Fuchsia OS coexists with two other operating systems that we do not forget, they are much more mature … and it may be true that at first it is limited to the IoT world, starting for example, with its range of equipment Nest

In the future and if Fuchsia receives the support of developers and the rest of the industry we could be talking about something very different, the first mainstream operating system in which Google has absolute control.