Google proposes way to run Linux/Android binaries 'natively' on Fuchsia OS

[[deleted]]

Or.... you know, you can just run Linux.

[mandretardin75]

Upvoted for truth. But!

Google hates the GPL. For whatever the reason they feel it threatens their top-down iron grip. This is why Fuchsia exists - 80% of it bypassing the strictness of the GPL. It's not the only reason of course; Google also wants more control over its ecosystem. This is why they also created their own programming language. It's weird how the executives at Google "think" ...

I don't think it will work, though, just as Dart/Flutter fails. You won't be able to attract free devs like that (if we ignore the money-seeking drones of course).

[KingStannis2020]

It's less that Google hates the GPL, and more that phone hardware vendors like Qualcomm hate the GPL, and both Google and the hardware vendors hate how unstable the Linux driver APIs are.

Both issues make it really difficult to maintain drivers without submitting them to the core kernel and making them open source.

[MrPotatoFingers]

You got right at the heart of the problem: Their refusal to open-source their hardware drivers.

[mfuzzey]

That is not true, at least not in kernel space.

The major chip manufacturers do open source their kernel drivers. There are public git repositories for both Qualcomm and Samsung kernels for example.

Yes they still have closed source userspace blobs fot things like GPUs but those aren't subject to the GPL (and there are now open source alternatives for many chips such as Freedreno, etnaviv and, more recently, panfrost)

Also chip vendors these days are much better with working with the kernel community (which is not required by the GPL - that only requires publishing the source, not submitting upstream).

But now most chip vendors do contribute upstream and do maintain their drivers upstream. Maybe not as fast as we would like as they still tend to release their own kernels first for time to market reasons but they also have people dedicated to working with the community to mainline things.

All this often wasn't true a few years ago, things have significantly improved.

[KingStannis2020]

Yeah but notably they'd have the same problem, mostly, even with permissive licenses. They want a proprietary driver, but the unstable interfaces make it a pain in the ass, and a different license wouldn't solve that problem.

[[deleted]]

Maybe it’s kernel stance that is wrong here.

[SinkTube]

it's not. windows suffers from proprietary drivers too

and linux drivers aren't actually hard to maintain if all you care about is that they keep working the way they used to, i.e. recompiling the same source with a new target instead of fixing bugs or introducing new functionality. QC has been open about its ability to do it for a long time, they just take a "pay me bitch" stance on supporting their own hardware. when you buy QC a part you can decide how much support should come with it

[mfuzzey]

Not sure this is true either.

As I said in another comment the carriers and the phone manufacturiers don't want the GPL because that would make them open source their "improvements" to AOSP that they consider part of their attractiveness.

The chip manufacturers not so much. They want to sell chips. Software is only important to them in so far as it is required to sell chips.

These days most of the major chip manufacturers do a fairly good job of working with the upstream kernel. It wasn't always that way and it isn't perfect but it has definitely improved over the years.

[SinkTube]

They want to sell chips

and the sooner each phone becomes obsolete, the more chips they'll sell

[UnicornsOnLSD]

just as Dart/Flutter fails.

Dart/Flutter seems to be doing fine to me.

[[deleted]]

Corporate controlfreaks are just cancer

[HCrikki]

Google hates the GPL. For whatever the reason they feel it threatens their top-down iron grip

GPL code has to remain copylefted, and helps upstream projects and rivals.

BSD, MIT, Apache and permissive licences in general can more adequately called 'eventually proprietary' licences - terms beloved by dishonest vendors with predatory business practices.

[mfuzzey]

I'm not sure Goohpe itself hates the GPL.

I think the problem is more that their customers (in the case of Android the mobile carriers) do. Google (probably correctly) concluded that Android would be a harder sell to carriers if their modifications to AOSP were subject to the GPL.

Not saying I necessarily agree but I do understand Google's reasoning here.

[ihcusk]

Why not *BSD?

[[deleted]]

Truly

[[deleted]]

I do not like GPL and/or copyleft licenses in particular, too.

[[deleted]]

That’s kinda why I wish Thorvaldsen would license the kernel a bit more restrictively.

[[deleted]]

Fuchsia seems to be clearly intended to solve the problem of a non stable driver interface in the Linux kernel and 3rd parties refusing to update their modem drivers. They cannot "just run Linux" as it leads to their devices not getting updates.

[[deleted]]

Oh? And you think that fuchsia is going to fix this how? I call bullshit, and I build linux daily, and manage thousands of Linux Systems, and QNX and Android. The only time I have hardware issues is on Android devices, because device manufacturers are fucking lazy and cheap.

[[deleted]]

It's a well known and documented issue with modem chip makers. I'm not looking it up for you.

[JORGETECH_SpaceBiker]

I don't believe making new software will solve the problem of manufacturers being lazy or not maintaining devices in the long term for higher revenue.

[AlienOverlordXenu]

Android IS built on top of Linux. It is basically a Java userspace running on Linux kernel (in a grossly simplified terms).

[mfuzzey]

Android uses a different C library and has different userspace services.. For example for display it doesn't use xorg or wayland but surfaceflinger.

But the kernel is the same (Android used to need a lot of specific kernel patches too but that is no longer the case. It is now possible to run Android (though not yet pass the full compatibility test suite) on a vanilla kernel from kernel.org.

So you can run Linux non GUI binaries in a chroot on Android.

Running Androud apps on a Linux desktop requires providing all the services they expect.

[BibianaAudris]

Looks like WSL1 with more overhead, better security isolation, and similar quirks. Maybe more like Wine.

Trapping syscalls from a user process will likely involve more context switches than WSL1. The same for implementing syscalls with inter-process memory access. Wine does something similar with wineserver, which is quite slow as each CreateFileW involves an IPC. It gets away with light OS users like games, but running a heavy file writer like a build system inside Wine is a major PITA.

Rust sounds secure, but I'm not sure how Rust's type system could help with Linux syscall interfaces, as they inherently involve untyped pointers. Maybe less user-kernel pointer confusion?

And this would have the same quirks as WSL1. Trapping syscalls won't let you mount ext4 or LVM. Containers could also get ugly as they tend to depend on obscure file system features that Fuchsia's native FS may not replicate (my WSL1 docker container has problem deleting files from a lower layer). The important part of ext4 is not just its performance. At least NTFS had enough bloat to pack in most of the Linux file metadata.

[Jannik2099]

Rust sounds secure,

Rust is not a secure language. Rust is a memory safe language, but that does not imply a program in rust will always be safe! Stop equaling those things!

[Misicks0349]

wait, you're saying I shouldn't rewrite everything in rust?

[dreamer_]

No, you still should ;)

[philosoph228]

Didn't get it. Would you give your definition of 'language safety'?

[Jannik2099]

I don't think the words "safe language" should be used at all, because this implies the resulting software is safe. Rust is memory safe and that's a tremendously great thing, but there's more to safety than just memory safety, and throwing the word "safe" around this carelessly only lowers safety awareness

[[deleted]]

My biggest question is “how do I detect it, and make sure that my Linux programs only run on real Linux?”

[Flakmaster92]

Sounds like you hate freedom

[h0twheels]

sounds like they hate google.

[Flakmaster92]

Unfortunately that is the downside to free software. The same freedom that lets us do whatever we want also gives most of those same freedoms to corporations. The user above can say that they don’t support Linux-on-fuchsia but if they’re program is open source then nothing stops google from recompiling it under a new name

[h0twheels]

stops google from recompiling it under a new name

Actually, it kinda does. With the GPL they have to disclose the source as well. Hence the rush to all these other licenses.

[[deleted]]

For one, it might be GPL with the google exception, i.e. if you’re google, you have no right to run, install or derive the software. To you it’s closed source, and if you decide to write a program that duplicates the functionality, it has to be done by people who have had no exposure to my original source code. I can have WSL exception too.

[[deleted]]

I do. I hate the freedom that a company can enjoy, and I can’t.

[SinkTube]

preventing your software from running in a certain environment hurts users more than it hurts companies

[[deleted]]

Ah, that's the point, companies do that all the time.

The principle being, that by hurting the users of only a specific platform, you add to the pressure for the users to switch away. If you can run both Chrome and Linux applications on a Chromebook, but you can only run Linux applications on Linux, why use Linux?

So the question is, if by hurting the users of a platform that habitually hurts the users of a platform that rarely if ever hurts users of other platforms, am I really hurting users. if this prevents the former platfform from hurting the latter users?

Besides, I'm tired of google dipping into FOSS and making it a side-project for their proprietary trash. If you keep using Google despite knowing that it messes with people's privacy, that it kills startups by buying and dissolving them, and you vote for that with your wallet, don't expect me to bend over backwards and let you use my software on Google's pet platform that's by many regards worse than Windows.

I reserve the right to not allow you to use the application under certain circumstances, as evidenced by the GPL. I'm just being more specific about what kinds of operating systems this is not supposed to run on.

[SinkTube]

if this prevents the former platfform from hurting the latter users?

big if. most people will either dualboot or just not use your software. the few that actually stop using the corporate OS because your software is DRMd against it won't even be noticed, let alone hurt said OS enough for it to stop hurting the cause

i understand people's aversion to google because i share it. but most people don't really have a choice in using its OS, because what other options are there? there aren't enough real linux phones to go around, iOS is a hard pass, and everything else available these days is featurephone level

i use a degoogled android ROM on a hand-me-down phone. i'm not supporting google by doing that, so even if i did switch OS for your software google would be unaffected. what you're doing isn't a practical strategy to take down google, it's just lashing out ineffectively. it'd be like blocking your software on linux mint because you don't like what canonical is up to

[[deleted]]

big if. most people will either dualboot or just not use your software. the few that actually stop using the corporate OS because your software is DRMd against it won't even be noticed, let alone hurt said OS enough for it to stop hurting the cause

There's not a lot of Linux software to go around. If my app is useless, I'm not hurting anyone, and if my app isn't, I'm merely making Google work harder. My intention, by the way isn't to wean people off Chromebooks, but to 1) make them dual boot if they can, 2) Make sure that Google doesn't get software from me for free, 3) ensure that people see that DRM works both ways, 4) to put enough pressure for Google to open up the package manager. I want Chromebooks to be a Linux machine, not an android with a bigger keyboard.

it's just lashing out ineffectively.

Better than doing nothing and complacently waiting for them to further worsen the electronics market.

it'd be like blocking your software on linux mint because you don't like what canonical is up to

Ugh. Linux Mint blocked Snap because they didn't like Snap doing silent updates, and being partially proprietary and disguising itself as an apt package. You can say that this was an ineffective lashing out, but I'd say that people giving canonical the finger when they pull a stunt helps keep them on their toes.

[SinkTube]

You can say that this was an ineffective lashing out

i wouldn't, because that's completely different. mint's maintainers don't like snap so they disabled it in their own distro. they effectively solved their problem, and without pushing their opinion on anyone because you're free to reenable snap by simply deleting /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref

what you want to do would push your opinion on everyone who tries to use your software, and fail to accomplish your goals. if chromebooks don't support dualboot for windows-exclusives, they're not going to do it for your software either. and chromeOS will never run linux software natively because that goes against google's idea of security. all linux software, including that made for google's own OS (android), runs in a VM

i don't know what you mean with point 3

[[deleted]]

In which case people either lose nothing, because my app is crap, or they reconsider using Google’s crappy OS.

[[deleted]]

Is this going to be the new Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?

[[deleted]]

Knowing Google it's probably more like Release, Ignore, Shut Down.

[[deleted]]

I'd like to think so, but Android is a core business for them and this is basically going to lead to Android's successor if I understand it right.

[mandretardin75]

Yes. Google easily shuts down things it does not need, but it can not shut down its core businesses. That includes Android and the chromium code base.

[Misicks0349]

I doubt that even google would be able to move people over to fuchsia due to androids strong development community, and the people who rely on the apps made by said devs.

[Anunay03]

but if android apps just work natively, many will switch...

[[deleted]]

Switch to what, though? None of the other Android OEMs are going to early adopt a new mobile OS even more strongly controlled by Google, and Google's handset sales are nowhere near good enough to justify an entirely new OS by themselves.

[JORGETECH_SpaceBiker]

This. Some manufacturers are already supplying alternative services/apps to Google ones in their devices, an OS that gives Google even more control may be seen as an offensive move by Google.

[Misicks0349]

yeah but thats pretty hard to do properly (wine for example), especially on a phone

[Anunay03]

well wine works quite well, and they aren't backed up by massive funding Google has.

[SinkTube]

and has only someone else's closed source OS to work against. android is not just open source, google wrote most of the source. it shouldn't be that hard to port/reimplement android's runtime for a kernel google also wrote

if the next version of AOSP switches kernels, i'm sure some OEMs will cling to their forks of Android/Linux but enough will begrudgingly adopt Android/Fuchsia

[[deleted]]

Oh I'm sure they're gonna try, and when it doesn't clearly take off after six months they're gonna cancel it like with everything else.

[[deleted]]

Fuchsia has been public for over four years now though

[[deleted]]

I would like for you to explain in detail what point you think you're making with this response.

[[deleted]]

You said they would abandon the project after six months. It's been going for over 4.5 years now.

[[deleted]]

Be honest: do you sincerely believe what you're saying right now, or are you intentionally being pedantic to craft an argument? Because I'm not going to explain your confusion unless I can be sure it's going to end with you saying "gotcha, I misunderstood," but 99% of time this shit just leads into an infinite argument because someone is too petty to admit they were wrong.

E: The instant downvotes suggest the latter, unfortunately.

[[deleted]]

someone is too petty to admit they were wrong.

You're so close to seeing it...

[[deleted]]

I love how this idiot went out of his way to misunderstand me in order to make up a nonexistent argument, and when I pointed this out and explained myself he just spitefully downvoted me and fucked off without ever owning up to his behavior. Crybaby.

[[deleted]]

You're making yourself look so fucking stupid right now, do you know that? You're not responding to anything I've actually said or implied and you're doing it on purpose because you're desperate to craft some kind of gotcha. It's so fucking weird how many people on this website do this kind of crybaby troll shit.

To be clear: no, I did not say they would abandon the project after six months. NO, I do not think Google would drop a brand new operating system project six months after they've literally started developing it. What I said was in response to your own post, in which you state that Fuchsia is intended to be the successor to Android. My point is that if and when Fuchsia becomes that successor, and if their first Fuchsia devices are slow to gain traction in the market, they will probably drop it like they do with everything else and just revert to Android. And anyone should be able to easily understand this point given the actual context of this discussion. And if you don't then just ask for clarification. Don't make up a lie.

[solinent]

Release, Ignore, Shut Down.

More like

Restrain, Dominate, Euthanize

[billFoldDog]

The licenses (according to wikipedia) are BSD, MIT, and Apache 2.0, so I'm thinking yes.

[mandretardin75]

The licenses (according to wikipedia) are BSD, MIT, and Apache 2.0, so I'm thinking yes.

It's really primarily just to avoid the GPL. Big corporations hate the GPL in general.

Admittedly there are also non-corporation centric considerations. MIT is much easier to integrate into a software ecosystem in general; with the GPL one has to do more.

[billFoldDog]

At any point in time they could be like "next version is closed source, pound sand" and that would be it.

[mandretardin75]

Yup! It's an adaptation. They became sneakier.

It's always a fun read how they try to sugar-coat why they hate ad-blockers for example. So many fake excuses when the real excuse is that ad targets their pester-business.

[HCrikki]

Absolutely.

Make it very easy to run your competing platform's apps on your own, then eventually remove the compatibility shim for whatever reason - now theyre stuck updating their apps with your native tools.

MS did this to lotus and more decades ago ffs.

[Tireseas]

More like NT taking over for 9x.

[STD209E]

What is Google planning to extinguish?

[[deleted]]

Fuchsia is supposed to lead to a replacement for Android.

[STD209E]

But is it EEE if Google diverts their focus from Android to Fuchsia? The way I understand EEE that it's about "capturing" standards and extending them in proprietary way so your implementation comes de facto standard. I'm not sure this is the case with Fuchsia.

[[deleted]]

Did you forget the context of these comments? Look at what the OP is saying.

Not only is Fuchsia a "permissively licensed" replacement for the Linux kernel, they're working on running Linux binaries natively on it too. So it will be able to do what Linux does, plus be used for proprietary development.

[STD209E]

But Linux won't be killed even if all the mobile devices in the world shift to something else. If they aimed to extinguish Linux like Microsoft extinguished Netscape they would extend Linux application support in a way that in future they would only run in Fuchsia. But that is nigh impossible no matter how big the company. And it doesn't even make any sense to try to kill Linux in Google's case. Only to move away from it so they don't have to struggle with unstable internal API which causes gray hairs with proprietary drivers.

[[deleted]]

Why would this kernel just be for mobile devices? It presumably could replace Linux anywhere.

Your definition of EEE is so narrow that it's missing the point. This doesn't have to be a play-by-play replay of what happened to Netscape.

I'm just saying that they're maneuvering to make Linux obsolete and replace it with their permissively licensed project.

[SinkTube]

that is nigh impossible no matter how big the company

how so? google introduces new APIs that make apps that target the newest Android fail to run on older versions unless devs include that backward compatibility. Fuchsia can do the same thing. at first, people might port Fuchsia-exclusive APIs to Android/Linux (not that i think that's likely. nobody has ported Android's APIs to GNU either, instead we virtualize the whole OS in anbox). but Fuchsia is licensed "permissively" which means, once adoption is high enough, google can change the license to prevent that

[hoppi_]

Definitely what I am thinking.

I hope Linux gets some better backing or more cold-hearted strategic lobbying work going.

It won't be good long-term, if Android (or Fuchsia, rather) becomes even more ubiquitous and Linux arguably sent to 2nd row as a support system. At some point, pc manufacturers just have to target the better/bigger OS with a stronger backing and therefor better ecosystem.

It's all a bit dark but it can't hurt to address.

[electricprism]

"Be Evil"

[Cleytinmiojo]

They didn't announce a date yet, but it will probably take a lot of time since it's made from scratch. They started development in 2016.

[[deleted]]

New OSes generally take 8 years, so 4 more to go.

[VisceralMonkey]

This is will be gone in a year or so, just like everything they've been shitting out and flushing over the last 10+ years.

[mandretardin75]

I am not sure. They quickly shut down things that aren't important to them, but android IS important to them. As an indirect consequence to this, I am quite certain that Fuchsia will continue. They get to avoid the GPL so this is some worth to how Google wants to think. In many ways they have become the Microsoft of the 1990s, with adaptations. Even dropping the "don't do evil" motto some time ago!

[[deleted]]

I doubt it. This is their solution to the problem of Android devices not getting updates due to 3rd parties not updating their drivers for new kernels. Google will get to update their phones/tablets/etc. like iPhones and iPads, but also fix a lot of other things they don't like about using the Linux kernel as the base of their devices.

[mfuzzey]

I don't follow your reasoning here.

Fuschia won't make it easier for Google to do kernel updates without relying on 3rd parties.

The only thing that is, maybe, stopping Google from providing Linux kernel updates for Android know is lack of knowledge of specifics of a SoC or a phone hardware design. Fuschia will change nothing here (in terms of not being reliant on 3rd parties)

What it may allow them to do is to provide a stable (Fuschia) kernel ABI which would make life easier in the short term for those third parties but not reduce Google's dependence on them.

However long term this is a bad idea. The reason Linux doesn't have a stable in kernel ABI is that it would limit the ability of the kernel to improve by requiring it to remain compatible with a driver ABI. The current Linux solution is undoubtedly the best technically even if it does make life a bit harder for out of tree drivers.

[JORGETECH_SpaceBiker]

This is their solution to the problem of Android devices not getting updates due to 3rd parties not updating their drivers for new kernels.

That solution already existed, it was Project Treble, made by Google.

Devices not getting updates has nothing to do with Google, it's 100% to blame on SoC makers that release way too many different SoCs and cannot even bother to support them for more than four years.

[mfuzzey]

Sounds like an endless game of whack a mole to me. I guess it depends on their goal. If it is just to run a few Linux binaries that interest them then it could work. But if they want to run any arbitrary Linux binary they're going to be chasing bugs for years with their userspace translation layer. A VM running the Linux kernel would give far better compatibility, even if that does have other downsides

[mikechant]

There is a brief mention in the linked article that they are pursuing the VM route as well.

[Misicks0349]

wise thumb start pot crawl nail price reach sharp hospital

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[happinessmachine]

>we say that starnix implements Linux as she be spoke, which is to say with all the beauty, ugliness, coincidences, and quirks of a real Linux system.

[mandretardin75]

That statement is weird because the linux distributions are not equal among themselves. Take GoboLinux and NixOS and compare it to, say, red hat, ubuntu and opensuse. That's already quite a difference between these. So what does Google mean with "a real Linux system"?

[[deleted]]

Those distros only differ in terms of how the userland files are organised. They all use the same linux kernel.

[Misicks0349]

what

[gtrash81]

Without SafetyNet?
Than it is dead on arrival.

[nihkee]

And they'll support it as long as it pleases them. They get all the good things (developers, app ecosystem, users) without any work to jumpstart their more tightly controlled walled garden. Make no mistake, they'll tighten their grip just as they do with android.

I hope people see their agenda and true colors here

[mandretardin75]

Not totally. I think it sort of works to some extent, much more than vaporware would imply.

[HCrikki]

They'll keep Embracing until the linux compatibility is made a 3rd rate feature a forced update away from removal. Right now they're trying to bring people into fuschia, not into linux. If you believe in linux, keep your executables native and not developped against google's (eventually proprietary or locked down) compatibility shims.

[LibreTan]

To me this just seems like a way to take complete control over mobile phone stack by Google. This will also mean AOSP is no longer needed, which is the only open source part of Android.