14 DAY TRIAL // Google has been quietly working on a new project called Fuchsia, a standalone operating system that has nothing in common with Android and Chrome OS, the company's own operating systems, or with Linux, from where Google previously borrowed some parts of the kernel and used them in the Android project.
Before you go googling for the word, fuchsia is a flower, which also gives the name of a color. This is important because the Fuchsia project itself is described like this: "Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System)."
Fuchsia is most likely destined for the IoT market
As for technical details, the project uses a custom kernel called Magenta, based on LK (LittleKernel), a project designed for usage on embedded systems, usually IoT devices.
Google has IoT products on the market like OnHub and Google Home, for which no doubt it will be looking to run an uniformized firmware platform via its new Fuchsia project.
But Fuchsia is not meant for IoT devices alone, and the project can run on other types of platforms as well, like smartphones, tablets, and regular PCs.
Even if a US judge has ruled in favor of Google in its lawsuit with Oracle over the usage of Java in Android, it's good to know that Google has a backup project, just in case the company doesn't agree with the idea of paying royalties for Java (more accurately, Java's APIs).
Based on discussions in Fuchsia's IRC channel, the company will soon add Raspberry Pi 3 support as well.
Fuchsia is open source
Some of the big names working on the project include Travis Geiselbrecht (NewOS, Danger and BeOS) and Brian Swetland (BeOS).
Just like Android, the project has been open-sourced in its entirety. Despite some rumors having Fuchsia running on Dart, the project is written in C and C++.
There are currently two repositories for the Fuchsia OS, hosted on GitHub and Google Source. We'll be covering this topic in future stories. Stay tuned!