Google PixelBook Serving As Testbed For Revolutionary Fuchsia OS
At this point in the game, it is hard to imagine Google moving on from Android, which dominates the mobile market in terms of overall market share. Yet Google has been working on a brand new operating system called Fuschia, the existence of which was first discovered in a codebase post on GitHub in August 2016. Now nearly a year and a half later, Google is testing the OS on a PixelBook.
Though Google has not publicly announced anything related to Fuschia, the OS's open source status makes it somewhat easy to track its development. Furthermore, Fuschia's developer Travis Geiselbrecht previously said that this "isn't a toy thing, it's not a 20 percent project. it's not a dumping ground of a dead thing that we don't care about anymore." Translation? This is something that Google is very much serious about developing.
Google's mysterious Fuschia OS can now run on the PixelBook.
Fuchsia's documentation notes that it has "good support for a few different hardware platforms." Listed among them are the Acer Switch Alpha 12 and Intel NUC, and now Google's PixelBook.
"The install process is not currently compatible with ARM-based targets. The Fuchsia install process, called 'paving', requires two machines, the machine on which you want to run Fuchsia ("target") and the machine on which you build Fuchsia ("host"). Host and target must be able to communicate over a local area network. On your host system you will build Fuchsia, create a piece of install media, and stream a large portion of the system over the network to the target," the documentation states.
Adding the PixelBook to the list of supported devices is interesting, though it doesn't necessarily mean Fuschia is intended as a complete replacement to Chrome OS. It's just as likely that Google wants to see how it works on a higher-end device, especially since Google seems to be developing Fuschia from the ground-up for more modern hardware. It's just too early to tell, though you can bet we will be keeping an eye on the OS's progress.
Though Google has not publicly announced anything related to Fuschia, the OS's open source status makes it somewhat easy to track its development. Furthermore, Fuschia's developer Travis Geiselbrecht previously said that this "isn't a toy thing, it's not a 20 percent project. it's not a dumping ground of a dead thing that we don't care about anymore." Translation? This is something that Google is very much serious about developing.
Google's mysterious Fuschia OS can now run on the PixelBook.
Fuchsia's documentation notes that it has "good support for a few different hardware platforms." Listed among them are the Acer Switch Alpha 12 and Intel NUC, and now Google's PixelBook.
"The install process is not currently compatible with ARM-based targets. The Fuchsia install process, called 'paving', requires two machines, the machine on which you want to run Fuchsia ("target") and the machine on which you build Fuchsia ("host"). Host and target must be able to communicate over a local area network. On your host system you will build Fuchsia, create a piece of install media, and stream a large portion of the system over the network to the target," the documentation states.
Adding the PixelBook to the list of supported devices is interesting, though it doesn't necessarily mean Fuschia is intended as a complete replacement to Chrome OS. It's just as likely that Google wants to see how it works on a higher-end device, especially since Google seems to be developing Fuschia from the ground-up for more modern hardware. It's just too early to tell, though you can bet we will be keeping an eye on the OS's progress.
