At this stage it’s no secret that Google is working on a new operating system called Fuchsia, the OS is based on their own kernel called Magenta and ostensibly drops Linux as the basis for the OS. It’s been picking up steam recently, with a new logo and UI, but it has apparently progressed a little further now and there’s more screenshots of the Armadillo UI.
Exactly what Fuchsia is for hasn’t been announced, but with a full Google suite of products for building it, and of course using Google’s Flutter SDK (built with DART), it’s a Google product from beginning to end really, something that can’t be said for Android. This is slightly dangerous for Google as we can see with the recent, and possibly still ongoing Oracle vs Google legal stoush over Java.
Google has already moved to things like Android RunTime (ART) for Android rather than Dalvik, so a move away from Java, Linux with its various licenses (GPL), and any other software which could possibly be the source of a lawsuit is a smart move.
What it’s for will eventually be made clear, though it’s assumed it’s going to be for computers and mobile devices like phones eventually. Over at ArsTechnica they’re certainly speculating on the exact uses for it, but today it’s time to get a good look at what Fuchsia, or to be precise, Armadillo, the UI for Fuchsia, actually looks like. The live preview of what Armadillo on Fuchsia looks like is thanks to a compiled build from Hotfix.net.
From the video you can see it’s very card-centric the OS similar to the current design language that Google is going for with Material Design. There seems to be a card which is all about the user as a starting point and from there you can scroll up and down to various information cards, or perhaps in the future access widgets or applications. It’s very responsive, or at least seems to be. The design of the keyboard is very much Android-y, though as the video shows, it could use some work.
If you want to check out Armadillo, then you can actually download a pre-compiled APK from Hotfix, or build your own with Hotfix supplying all the information on how to do so.
Fuchsia is basically a new Google built OS that’s being built right in front of everyone. It’s available on the Fuchsia Git repository for anyone to look at, and if you’re a little more technically inclined there’s plenty there to sift through.
Fuchsia is interesting, but until Google comes out and announces what their intent is, we’ll just have to watch what it’s doing over the coming weeks, months and years – or maybe we’ll see a session at Google I/O next week on exactly what Fuchsia is for after all.
Horrible. Everything wrong with material design, and more.
There no fuchsia in it …..
(Oh, and BTW, get rid of the captcha – annoying and ineffective, thanks to AI)
You’ll be pleased to know the CAPTCHA is fixed.
What little it shows it shows badly and if it is going to be like that I hope there are alternatives as it does not look very efficient to navigate.
sys ui stuff is written in flutter, I’ve had a play via qemu on my linux desktop. It’s a bit hard navigating it with a mouse, but it does look interesting. You start typing and it shows up apps and web search that you can select to open. If you want to access the cmd line just type moterm to open a the terminal app. Pulling down on the circle show all apps, dragging an app to the side closes it. There this old flutter demo app that you can try out https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.flutter.gallery&rdid=io.flutter.gallery Also if you want a close look… Read more »