Quote from: Kyubey on March 09, 2021, 12:34:29Quote from: Wonder Egg Plant on March 07, 2021, 12:52:21
I want an opinion from a Linux developer on this matter. I'm tired of Huawei fanboys and haters endlessly arguing over a topic neither of them have any clue what they are talking about and echo chambering their respective opinions without taking in knowledges from neutral outsiders. So someone, who has a real experience with developing an OS, please tell me, how does Harmony exactly work? Is it different from Android, and if so, how different are they? Is Ars Technica's report valid or is it inaccurate in some ways? How correct is Huawei's claim? Thanks in advance.
All right, I might be the person you're looking for. The biggest problem lying here is that Huawei gave us such vague descriptions about this OS that we ended up thinking what they are planning to provide their customers in the future is what they can provide them now, causing misconceptions and a lot of criticisms. In my opinion they definitely deserve it because they really did poorly document it and avoid any kind of detailed explanations just to keep up the hype.
Before further reading, take a look at this slide they used during the presentation.
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So what is Harmony OS? It's a microkernel based distributed OS... except it's not, depending on how you implement it, at least for now. Surprised, right?
Harmony OS is capable of running on different kernels, and Huawei's marketing slide indeed shows Linux kernel, LiteOS kernel and HarmonyOS kernel placed alongside each other at the bottom left of the diagram. But as one person already mentioned below, Linux uses a monolithic kernel, hence if you use Linux kernel then the OS can no longer be called microkernel-based. What is happening here?
The answer is simple. HarmonyOS is only microkernel based when you choose to use HarmonyOS kernel, which is not Linux based.
Right under the system service layer, they use the abstraction layer to provide the service layer kernel capabilities, while shielding a difference in kernel implementation. This ensures that the upper layer of the OS will not be affected by whether the kernel is monolithic (Linux, LiteOS) or micro (HarmonyOS), but at the same time it indicates they made the "box" in the way that *Linux/LiteOS kernel* and *HarmonyOS microkernel + basic service layer that runs on top of it* would behave in a very similar way, effectively negating the advantage of microkernel architecture. The reason why they are forced to do this might be to attract people - not all parties interested in trying it out have a capability to develop the entirely different system optimised for the brand new kernel, so most probably Huawei included an option for them to use conventional Linux kernel that can run their old system without changing up its code significantly, just in a different container, then make a slow transition to HarmonyOS kernel whenever they feel ready for it.
The right hand side of the diagram shows Huawei's future visions on their new OS. There's no Linux nor LiteOS kernels at the bottom this time around, only HarmonyOS microkernel sitting there alone. Above it there are separate components that says "File system", "Power management", "RAM management", "Device driver". This is what Huawei wants Harmony to become - no Linux kernel, no KAL, just their own microkernel being the base of the OS and everything above being freely configurable by the system developers at their own wills. But they are clearly not there yet at this point of time.
Now let's return to the Ars Technica article. Is HarmonyOS Android? Well, no, obviously. But is Huawei's own specific implementation of HarmonyOS for mobile phones significantly different from AndroidOS? Actually we don't know because there is no way for you to tell from that article that the HarmonyOS beta emulator they used runs on Android kernel or HarmonyOS kernel. If the former is the case then the answer would be no because it's essentially Android but in a differently shaped box with a different compiler and a runtime library, otherwise it would be yes. If Anbox or WSL exist, then of course there's a possibility that Android subsystem could run on HarmonyOS as well.
Finally remember, nothing is factually proved, including Huawei's own claims, until Huawei seeds the stable version of the HarmonyOS to their existing phones and devs take it apart on their real devices. All we can do, for now, is to wait until that happens. Probably xda will find out something if there is anything interesting, but we never know if it would be a good news or a bad one.
Quote from: Wonder Egg Plant on March 07, 2021, 12:52:21
I want an opinion from a Linux developer on this matter. I'm tired of Huawei fanboys and haters endlessly arguing over a topic neither of them have any clue what they are talking about and echo chambering their respective opinions without taking in knowledges from neutral outsiders. So someone, who has a real experience with developing an OS, please tell me, how does Harmony exactly work? Is it different from Android, and if so, how different are they? Is Ars Technica's report valid or is it inaccurate in some ways? How correct is Huawei's claim? Thanks in advance.
Quote from: JZVR on March 07, 2021, 06:48:07Quote from: Jon Smyth on March 06, 2021, 20:40:59Quote from: MARKHOR on March 06, 2021, 15:45:55
All I would say is that the West wants to be Hypocritical about anything that The Great Dragon does, But the Actual Problem is that the West doesn't and will NEVER APPRECIATE CHINESE ADVANCEMENT IN TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER THING IS THAT THE WESTERN WORLD 🌎 WORLD 🌎 NEVER ACCEPT THAT THE CHINESE DRAGON HAS OVER TAKEN THE WEST OF WHICH THEY WILL ALWAYS BE OF DENIALS
I type in all caps because I angry about Chinese stuff!
Chinese overtaken the west? More like accepted it willingly and claimed AOSP as their own. The whole facade of China's technological rise is built on borrowing from the west, including forced intellectual property transfers through joint ventures, stealing technologies and reverse engineering other people's designs. I actually don't think any of this is totally wrong, because it is cultural to China, but you shouting from the top of the hill while standing on western technology and science makes you sound like an idiot. If it wasn't for open source, this OS wouldn't even exist. So think about that concept, a WESTERN concept of open data, open information and so on. The eastern concept is the complete opposite. Open source was invented in the 80s to 90s by a bunch of non-Chinese people. At least appreciate western ideals like transparency before you shout loudly about China's technological progress. Whatever happened to respecting your elders? In terms of digital technology, your elders are all in the west.
Does that give them the right to spread lies and claim the base is AOSP when it's not? If Windows can run Android apps using an emulator then are you going to tell me Windows is based on Android too? Remember the digital technology you're talking about, computers were invented using a Chinese invention, paper. Without relying on Chinese inventions the West wouldn't be where it is today, when it comes to inventions the Chinese are your elders. Respect them or not but at least have some basic understanding of the topic at hand and don't spread blatant lies.
Quote from: Mai on March 06, 2021, 23:51:58Quote from: Mark Twain on March 06, 2021, 22:59:16
Osx is based on linux. Linux has some commercial distros so i don't see a problem in using an open source code to create something proprietary.
The problem isn't one of practice, but is one of principle. OSX is derived from BSD but Apple proudly states this so, and makes explicit mentions and tributes to the nix community.
Huawei at best acknowledges their roots "implicitly". That's a huge difference. If you use open source, you have to state so, and for a large company to scrub this as a secondary concern or even as an implicit matter is a huge issue. That's not how open source works and that's destructive to the spirit of open source. It is just dishonest and deceitful.
Quote from: Jon Smyth on March 06, 2021, 20:40:59Quote from: MARKHOR on March 06, 2021, 15:45:55
All I would say is that the West wants to be Hypocritical about anything that The Great Dragon does, But the Actual Problem is that the West doesn't and will NEVER APPRECIATE CHINESE ADVANCEMENT IN TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER THING IS THAT THE WESTERN WORLD 🌎 WORLD 🌎 NEVER ACCEPT THAT THE CHINESE DRAGON HAS OVER TAKEN THE WEST OF WHICH THEY WILL ALWAYS BE OF DENIALS
I type in all caps because I angry about Chinese stuff!
Chinese overtaken the west? More like accepted it willingly and claimed AOSP as their own. The whole facade of China's technological rise is built on borrowing from the west, including forced intellectual property transfers through joint ventures, stealing technologies and reverse engineering other people's designs. I actually don't think any of this is totally wrong, because it is cultural to China, but you shouting from the top of the hill while standing on western technology and science makes you sound like an idiot. If it wasn't for open source, this OS wouldn't even exist. So think about that concept, a WESTERN concept of open data, open information and so on. The eastern concept is the complete opposite. Open source was invented in the 80s to 90s by a bunch of non-Chinese people. At least appreciate western ideals like transparency before you shout loudly about China's technological progress. Whatever happened to respecting your elders? In terms of digital technology, your elders are all in the west.
Quote from: S.Yu on March 06, 2021, 20:22:54Quote from: Valentinez Keiser on March 06, 2021, 05:46:27Yeah there's less than a handful of real comments here, the rest are anonymous trolls, just like what Huawei attempted at Best Buy back in 2018. Most articles here don't even have a single comment yet when it comes to exposing Huawei suddenly dozens of unregistered comments pop up bashing the author, and none of them is actually interpreting the confusing Huawei statement in the article just repeating the empty claims from the comments in the last article, yeah not suspicious at all.
I read through like... 3 comments before I was like "Huawei pays people to bash articles that bash them. Fact." Lol
I know nothing of this new OS, but if it's BASE is AOSP... you didn't produce a new OS. It's like saying Fedora and Ubuntu are different (yet, both are a LINUX flavor, if you will)
If I wanted to produce a new OS, it would have to, at it's BASE and CORE, NOT run on DOS, UNIX, or Linux... It would have to be something else entirely. So if I used a Linux kernel, and said NEW OS! Yeah... I'd be full of S#!t! Just another flavor of Linux.
Just a hint: (you need to develop your own code, to create your own new OS!)
NOT based on Java, or C, or anything. Reinvent the wheel before you try to reinvent transportation. Otherwise, you just have another fancy car.
Quote from: Paul Dodd on March 06, 2021, 15:04:00
Huawei's marketing department wrote the press release without clearing it with the developers. Happens everywhere. Firms (not only Chinese, also but U.S. and European) need to adopt a healthy failure culture and admit mistakes and mis-communication. Perhaps the message should be that it's a brand new OS based on Android.