zlacker

> Take a look at Fuchsia for another example ... they are losing the control on Android, so they started this new project

I work on fuchsia and can honestly say I have no idea what you're talking about. Fuchsia and android are more complimentary than they are competitive. I've noticed that when there is a lack of information, people tend to invent things that fit their narrative, but that's a really dangerous habit.

>>surajr+(OP)
Taken from Wikipedia : Fuchsia is an open-source capability-based operating system developed by Google. In contrast to Google's Linux-based operating systems such as ChromeOS and Android, Fuchsia is based on a custom kernel named Zircon. It publicly debuted as a self-hosted git repository in August 2016 without any official corporate announcement. After years of development, its official product launch was on the first-generation Google Nest Hub, replacing its original Linux-based Cast OS.

And from 9to5google.com Work on this Fuchsia project within Android — dubbed “device/google/fuchsia” — stalled in February 2021, with no public indication of how things were progressing. This week, all of the code for “device/google/fuchsia” was removed from Android, formally signaling the end of this particular avenue.

In its place, we have a lone “TODO” message, suggesting that Google may be building up something new in its place. The developer responsible for the change primarily works on Fuchsia’s “Starnix” project.

First shared in early 2021 as a proposal, Starnix is designed to make it possible for Fuchsia to “natively” run apps and libraries that were built for Linux or Android. To do this, Starnix would act to translate the low-level kernel instructions from what Linux expects to what Fuchsia’s Zircon kernel expects.

So ... custom kernel and a custom OS that will support Android applications as far as I understand ...

>>surajr+(OP)
Perhaps you mean Flutter ?

>>Daril+xb
Hiroshi Lockheimer once confirmed that Fuchsia at this stage (to be exact, 4 years ago) is more of testbed for OS technologies that cannot be readily integrated into Android. It is quite absurd to say that Fuchsia is a competitor against Android. It is more close to Midori with a slightly clearer path to productization.

>>summer+nk
And in the meantime it landed to the Nest Hubs ... I think Google will try to abandon Android.

>>Daril+am
Yeah, I think that's the ambitious moonshot at least for Fuchsia team, and Google might hope it to be realized. But it probably also acknowledges that it's a very unrealistic goal. More likely scenario is to gradually replace some important core systems (including its kernel?) with Fuchsia while keeping the overall Android ecosystem.

>>summer+P05
I agree. I don't think they can abandon the Android ecosystem at all, I mean all the apps and the store, that's the real value. They could design a migration path for the apps and make them work seamlessly on Fuchsia in the meantime, gradually replacing the ecosystem with the promise of new "shiny" features for developers. Building an OS from scratch is very expensive in terms of resources and money. I cannot see a valid technical reason for this move. My view is that many projects are now using AOSP to build their own operating system and trying to get rid of Google services, which is a threat to Google and its business based on bombarding the user with ads. The biggest obstacle at the moment is getting the applications that rely on Google services to work. e/OS/ uses MicroG and in my personal experience everything works seamlessly, including banking applications. The other crucial aspect is the availability of stores for the apps. Aurora is just an alternative front-end client to Google PlayStore, but it is a huge step forward in removing direct dependency. e/OS/ has AppLounge which does the same thing. I'd certainly prefer to download and install my bank's app directly from a protected area of the bank's website rather than from a generic store. Implementing a custom authentication mechanism (e.g. signed with GPG) and an auto-update feature is certainly doable.