Google’s best-known software ventures may be Android and Chrome OS, but the company is actually working on a new design operating system, called Fuchsia and Google has been working on this open-source operating system since the summer of 2016.
So, What exactly is Fuchsia?
Fuchsia is a different beast. it's built on the Zircon micro-kernel, not the Linux Kernel. The UI offered a neat multi-window system, but mostly it was just a bunch of placeholder graphics. It includes a small set of userspace services, drivers, and libraries. Fuchsia is written using the Flutter SDK. This version of Fuchsia appears to be called Armadillo, and it completely reimagines the home screen. The screen, according to testing by Ars Technica, is basically presented as a big scrolling list, with a profile picture, the date, your city, and a battery icon all placed at the center. Fuchsia uses its own special renderer, Escher, that specializes in shadows. Windows, notifications, buttons, pop up boxes, and more are all cleanly layered, giving a depth. Your wallpaper feels less like a picture hiding flatly behind your applications and more like a view out of a nearby window.
Features
Assistent in Fuchsia
In Fuchsia, you can be in your browser looking at reviews for a restaurant, then you open your calendar to check a date, then say “Ok Google, invite Samantha to lunch” and it would have all that context. Assistant will have access to all entities like - an identifiable person, place, thing, event, or concept which is represented within the Fuchsia platform. And most notably that the developers have specifically called out access to entities seen on-screen in the past.
Architectural benefits
Fuchsia avoids pitfalls by using its own custom kernel, Zircon, which is designed to be consistently upgradeable. To help make this possible, applications are isolated from having direct kernel access. This both gives an extra layer of security and prevents apps from being incompatible after a system upgrade. This problem has plagued Android before.
A cross-device OS
In Fuchsia, once signed in with your Google Account, your applications automatically save their place across devices. Google describes Ledger as a distributed storage system for Fuchsia.” Everything is stored in the cloud. The idea is a futuristic but cool one. There’s no difference between Fuchsia for laptop and desktop and Fuchsia for mobile, for some there may not be a need to carry both. Theoretically, you could just plug your phone into a dock, and you can be up and running with a bigger screen and a desktop/laptop-like experience.
Developers friendly
In Fuchsia, most of the UI is written in Dart language that is designed to feel familiar to JavaScript and Java developers, through the Flutter framework. Support for Go, another Google-designed language is also included in Fuchsia. Systems developers will find comfort in the availability of Rust. Google is also targeting Apple’s developer base by introducing Swift support. Through the FIDL protocol, your Dart UI code can directly interface with your Go backend or any other combination. This gives developers the opportunity to be more expressive and use the best language for the job at hand.
Which devices can support Google Fuchsia OS?
There are a couple of devices listed in the Git with which developers can deploy and run the OS. Swetland revealed Fuchsia is booting reasonably well on small-form-factor Intel PCs and an Acer Switch Alpha 12 laptop. Chrome Unboxed reported that Google has also released documentation allowing developers to load Fuchsia onto the Pixelbook.
Conclusion
In Fuchsia, a lot of stuff is still very much to be determined. So if Fuchsia ever becomes a real product in the future, hopefully, this will serve as a fun time capsule, where it about two years into development. Thank you!
