Google’s New OS Will Run On Your Raspberry Pi

According to reports from Android Police and ZDNet, you may soon have a new operating system from Google to run on your Raspberry Pi. Details are still extremely sparse, the only description on the GitHub page is “Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System)”. But, here’s what we do know:

The new OS, called Fuchsia, will be based on Magenta, which is in turn built on LittleKernel. That means that, surprisingly, Google will not be using a Linux kernel for the new OS but something more like an embedded RTOS. Although Google is targeting embedded systems, the possibility of being able to run it on a desktop has been mentioned, so it may not be too minimalistic.

Google’s Travis Geiselbrecht has named the Raspberry Pi 3 specifically as one system it will run on, and said that it’ll be available soon. But, it seems Google is aiming to make it run on a variety of ARM devices (both 32 bit and 64 bit), as well as 64 bit PCs. This is a direct effort to compete against other commercial embedded operating systems that are currently available, and especially on IoT devices.

If you’re eager to see what this is all about, you can follow Google’s quick start recipes and see what you can come up with, although details are still sketchy enough that we’re just going to wait a bit.

37 thoughts on “Google’s New OS Will Run On Your Raspberry Pi

        1. Don’t forget the order of precedence for operations. == {logical comparison} is done before addition.
          So, as written, the result of the logical comparison between Purple and Fuchsia will be added to the value of Pink.

          I wonder if the result of the comp can be cast to the type of Pink? Are “TRUE” or “FALSE”, or 1 or 0, type COLOR safe?

          1. eh? what language? addition comes before ==. Long before == in C, C++, Java and = in VB. Also = in R. Almost never does the logical comparison take precedence over addition. But, you sure do look smart making that correction.

    1. exactly. Not like there’s not already a “Google OS” (Android) that runs on Pis.

      Or a general lack of OSes to run on the Pi.

      The selling point here is that this makes the Pi usable for time-critical control. So RTOS is definitely what should be the most important part of the title, not “Google’s new OS”.

  1. There are already so many things on my big list, that I still have to try out, so I think I’ll leave this one out.
    At least until someone comes up with a ready made image for the Raspi, and there’s actually something that this OS can do better than others.

    1. I can see that. I mean posting it on GIT hub and providing source is a great way to make something private and proprietary.
      And they are using the MIT license and look how that crippled the adoption of X windows in the free software space.

      1. You do know how this works, don’t you?

        1. Publish enough to get something barely working.

        2. Make some crucial bits on top of this proprietary.

        3. Deny patches making these crucial bits less crucial or even replacing them.

  2. WIll it have analytics built in from the ground up?

    How about telemetry?

    How about monetization?

    micropayments?

    Data collection?

    these are the important things in an OS, everything else is secondary.

    1. On an RTOS? Telemetry, analytics are not relevant. Most important is the capability to switch tasks quickly, avoid toxic buffer overlead, and nowadays, handle security with minimal overhead. Think Stuxnet and Siemens PLCs.

      1. Nope. Switching tasks is good, but those tasks should be telemetry, analytics, or tasks related to monetization. User tasks are secondary. Security is very important too. All the analytics, monetization and micro payments should be encrypted. User data is not important and can be in the clear to comply with the law.

        The users application should not have too much overhead. Analytics, payments, and telemetry take precedence. Spare cycles can be used for user tasks , running in low priority mode.

  3. This could be interesting but I no longer trust the Google motto “do no evil” as they are (probably unintentionally) trying to get everyone to be dependent on them and their cloud. The long term results of such a concentration of knowledge and control could be very bad indeed for many people. If this is a decent open source RTOS – great. If it is just another way for Google to vacuum up data – beware.

    1. Google’s end game is to get all of us on the internet so we will see they ads. You can see it as their motivation in almost everything they do. I look forward to finding out what their application is for this, but I bet it’s so you can see their ads more.

  4. There will never be a true RTOS–unless ‘real-time’ means ‘glacial’–for the Raspberry Pi. There is no support for machine-level instructions, and particularly not machine-level interrupt instructions.
    144 KHz for the fastest bit-banged square wave using a 1 GHz processor? Give me a break. And some other processor, while you’re at it.

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