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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

why new kernel and not linux?

To see whether a new kernel, designed 25+ years after Linux, can do things better.

Linux is already there, what insight would it bring to do the same thing again?

The Linux kernel was made for desktops/workstations/servers, no? I think this kernel was designed with the use case of mobile/tablet/PixelBook in mind.

A feature I would like to see in a mobile OS is per-process power quotas.

https://lwn.net/Articles/749738/

Because Linux is GPL licensed, written in C and isn't a micro-kernel.

While Fuchsia is MIT/BSD/Apache licensed, is written in a mix of C++, Rust, Go and Dart, while using the best practices from micro-kernels.

The massive fragmentation and security problems caused by each device vendor creating a board support package based on an ancient version of whatever kernel they plan to run on the hardware they sell won't be resolved or seriously helped by Fuchsia.

Google isn't willing to address the root issues of upstreaming their device specific code and pushing updates often like Nokia has with their Android line and Microsoft did with the exact same vendors with Windows Phone. Until Google forces their licensees to upstream the BSP patches they create, nothing will change.

They could address it going forward by mandating a specific kernel version which will then receive long term support. Say something like 6 years. And then periodically update the required kernel version to another release which will receive the same 6 years of support.

In addition they could decouple the rest of the Android stack so it can upgraded and run on either of the currently supported kernel versions.

Oh wait, already done.

Yet security on nearly every android phone is still a joke, with Samsung and LG rarely releasing even the most basic patches.

Umm..maybe I'm missing something but I don't recall reading about a lot of security breaches with Android, outside of some dumb users downloading very shady apps here and there.

Now, you wanna talk jokes, let's talk about the history of Microsoft's products, such as Windows. It is hard to keep a Windows machine going for over a year, no matter how careful you are.

I think, all things considered, that Google bakes excellent security into everything it does.

Kind of, given the way that they left the Treble updates to OEMs and only required compliance to Oreo devices, they arrived at IO 2018 with a mere 10% adoption of Oreo, mostly on Pixel devices.

Which was quite good the adoption being so bad, because they finally announced at IO that they will be requiring updates for certification after P's release.

Fuchsia has nothing to do with updates, rather breaking with the UNIX clones while pursuing more modern ideas with a license that Google favours.

They announced at Google IO that they will finally start requiring updates as part of the store access certification.

How this will work out, remains to be seen.

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