Dunno, I'm pretty interested in HarmonyOS considering it's a major commercial OS that has come along in a long time, and features a number of technological differences such as a pure microkernel, compared to the existing big 3.
Despite that we (I) know next to nothing about it, neither on the user nor the technical side, so a bunch of deep dives would be welcome.
Okay so it won't run Android apps necessarily or be able to access the regular app stores/Play Store. It will need popular apps to be re-released for HarmonyOS NEXT
There are pushbacks from other Chinese giants like Tencent. No one wants some single company to have a monopoly in the OS business.
But by the look of it, Huawei has a lot of political capital to make it happen, because it is the only company competent enough to push out production OS not entirely based on Linux.
Interesting! From your name I assume you're familiar with the Chinese OS/tech sphere, could you maybe take the time to tell a bit more about what the big Chinese vendors are up to? I've heard that Xiaomi is building their Linux (but not Android) based HyperOS. How is the indigenous OS/platform scene looking nowadays in China?
As for Huawei using their political capital to push their stuff, from what I've seen of the Chinese EV market, the government doesn't really pick winners there, and lets the market figure it out.
Is Huawei making some heavy-handed anticompetitive moves, or are they trying to standardize their OS across the government services?
I can read Chinese but I left China a couple of decades ago, so my source is probably as good as yours.
In general I think the bigger players are definitely more interested in building their own OS, either Linux based on something different. But I'm not really familiar with the scene. For such discussion I recommend V2EX (Google translate works fine).
The government insight is correct. The Chinese government, and especially local governments like the provincial ones, actively welcome competition in hot things such as AI or EV.
The central government encourages over-competition because -- first, over-competition encourages fast iteration, so technology advances very fast, literally in a few years; second, it keeps the price to bare minimum, which also has the benefit of pushing out foreign competitions; third, eventually, a few big players will emerge as the winners, and then they can compete internationally.
The local governments encourage it too, because -- well, if my fellow provinces have something good, I better have one too. It's good for employment and tax.
The downside of over-competition is that eventually most of the smaller players get washed out, and "human capital" depreciates faster (the Chinese jokingly call workers "human minerals"). But I guess they believe the upsides are bigger than the downsides.
Regarding Huawei, it is in a very good position to fulfill the "localize-computer-infra" policy the Chinese government started to implement since maybe 10 years ago (remember the de-IBM, de-Oracle stories in the banking sector?), because it can offer a whole range of solutions from the OS to Database to hardware. No other companies can do the same. I'm sure the Chinese government wants more competition, but the other players simply are not competent enough to challenge Huawei at the moment.
In my opinion, the only realistic change to the current mobile duopoly will be an OS coming from China. Especially, as Google has finally started taking steps to kill Android openness as we know it (reducing contributions to AOSP and disallowing side loading), HarmonyOs has a real chance to shake things up
So you are saying an OS from China will be on the path of openness and privacy as opposed to iOS and Android? I'd say that's a stretch or wishful thinking. I'd say Europe, if at least few major Govts push it and fund it. But no one knows of course.
If you look at who contributes 99+% of aosp patches, nothing has actually changed. The same group of companies are still working on it. There is just less public openness about the process as it happens (eg open source code reviews). A lot of this was already happening but there was a strange duplication of process causing workflow problems depending on which way you were developing. They simplified it to a single process.
I'm not sure I consider this view to be looking back far enough. Android as an OS that people use has been slowly growing more closed and controlled for... well, almost since its inception.
Google has kept an infamously tight leash that OEMs must not stray too far from; the Open Handset Alliance ensures certain Google apps come pre-installed, down to homescreen placement. The OHA mandates OEMs not release "incompatible" versions of Android, or other mobile OS', as well. Should an OEM want to sell Windows Mobile, Amazons FireOS, or Firefox's mobile OS, they will likely lose their license to sell anything with the brand name Android.
Google has also been moving away from the 'O' in AOSP for some time as well. Running many AOSP apps means dealing with what Google treats as abandonware, such as the eMail app, Contacts, and the open launcher (replaced with Google's proprietary launcher).
I'm certain I don't have to tell this crowd about the death of bootloader unlocking and the ROM scene. Telling me this isn't pushed by Google (which I agree with), and following up with "And Google has no way to prevent this" isn't something I see as believable. Google mandates where the YouTube and Chrome apps get placed on the homescreen; you're telling me that, in order to be licensed as Android, Google can't similarly mandate bootloader unlocking?
Nothing changed last week, or even the week before, but the direction isn't terribly difficult to see, IMO.
This is like responding to someone calling for an open alternative to Facebook by saying we have kubernetes. Linux is a helpful head start to solving the problems needed but it is not the full picture. And depending on what you need to build it might get in the way and require adjustment/fine tuning which is non trivial. There is just so much that goes into an OS in terms of polish beyond just getting some pixels on the screen and responding to input.
Remember that Android/NDK has the same 3D and audio APIs available on regular GNU/Linux, Swift does Vulkan, Playstation has a POSIX like OS based on FreeBSD.
Yet Valve needs to offer Win32/DirectX support via Proton.
Essential reading for anyone curious about the microkernel architecture in recent versions of HarmonyOS: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/osdi24-chen-haibo.pdf
Tldw: A guy narrating an advertorial video
Dunno, I'm pretty interested in HarmonyOS considering it's a major commercial OS that has come along in a long time, and features a number of technological differences such as a pure microkernel, compared to the existing big 3.
Despite that we (I) know next to nothing about it, neither on the user nor the technical side, so a bunch of deep dives would be welcome.
Additionally while much has improved on Harmony documentation it is still not that much available in English.
Is this the one that is still based on Android or is the new "next" version of Harmony?
According to wikipedia, they moved to their own kernel in the 5.0 release last year:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_version_history
Okay so it won't run Android apps necessarily or be able to access the regular app stores/Play Store. It will need popular apps to be re-released for HarmonyOS NEXT
Considering Huawei has hundreds of millions of users in China alone, I don't think getting big companies onboard will be difficult.
There are pushbacks from other Chinese giants like Tencent. No one wants some single company to have a monopoly in the OS business.
But by the look of it, Huawei has a lot of political capital to make it happen, because it is the only company competent enough to push out production OS not entirely based on Linux.
Interesting! From your name I assume you're familiar with the Chinese OS/tech sphere, could you maybe take the time to tell a bit more about what the big Chinese vendors are up to? I've heard that Xiaomi is building their Linux (but not Android) based HyperOS. How is the indigenous OS/platform scene looking nowadays in China?
As for Huawei using their political capital to push their stuff, from what I've seen of the Chinese EV market, the government doesn't really pick winners there, and lets the market figure it out.
Is Huawei making some heavy-handed anticompetitive moves, or are they trying to standardize their OS across the government services?
I can read Chinese but I left China a couple of decades ago, so my source is probably as good as yours.
In general I think the bigger players are definitely more interested in building their own OS, either Linux based on something different. But I'm not really familiar with the scene. For such discussion I recommend V2EX (Google translate works fine).
The government insight is correct. The Chinese government, and especially local governments like the provincial ones, actively welcome competition in hot things such as AI or EV.
The central government encourages over-competition because -- first, over-competition encourages fast iteration, so technology advances very fast, literally in a few years; second, it keeps the price to bare minimum, which also has the benefit of pushing out foreign competitions; third, eventually, a few big players will emerge as the winners, and then they can compete internationally.
The local governments encourage it too, because -- well, if my fellow provinces have something good, I better have one too. It's good for employment and tax.
The downside of over-competition is that eventually most of the smaller players get washed out, and "human capital" depreciates faster (the Chinese jokingly call workers "human minerals"). But I guess they believe the upsides are bigger than the downsides.
Regarding Huawei, it is in a very good position to fulfill the "localize-computer-infra" policy the Chinese government started to implement since maybe 10 years ago (remember the de-IBM, de-Oracle stories in the banking sector?), because it can offer a whole range of solutions from the OS to Database to hardware. No other companies can do the same. I'm sure the Chinese government wants more competition, but the other players simply are not competent enough to challenge Huawei at the moment.
BTW recommending Bunnie Huang's video for some of the points ^
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hniOumjymI8
> Okay so it won't run Android apps necessarily
It does, they implemented a Linux-compatible API and ABI. They claim that apps run unmodified.
Which is kind of easy on their home turf, most relevant apps on the Chinese market are available.
In my opinion, the only realistic change to the current mobile duopoly will be an OS coming from China. Especially, as Google has finally started taking steps to kill Android openness as we know it (reducing contributions to AOSP and disallowing side loading), HarmonyOs has a real chance to shake things up
So you are saying an OS from China will be on the path of openness and privacy as opposed to iOS and Android? I'd say that's a stretch or wishful thinking. I'd say Europe, if at least few major Govts push it and fund it. But no one knows of course.
They said nothing about China pursuing openness and privacy but you're just so eager to present your own wishful thinking as better than theirs
If you look at who contributes 99+% of aosp patches, nothing has actually changed. The same group of companies are still working on it. There is just less public openness about the process as it happens (eg open source code reviews). A lot of this was already happening but there was a strange duplication of process causing workflow problems depending on which way you were developing. They simplified it to a single process.
I'm not sure I consider this view to be looking back far enough. Android as an OS that people use has been slowly growing more closed and controlled for... well, almost since its inception.
Google has kept an infamously tight leash that OEMs must not stray too far from; the Open Handset Alliance ensures certain Google apps come pre-installed, down to homescreen placement. The OHA mandates OEMs not release "incompatible" versions of Android, or other mobile OS', as well. Should an OEM want to sell Windows Mobile, Amazons FireOS, or Firefox's mobile OS, they will likely lose their license to sell anything with the brand name Android.
Google has also been moving away from the 'O' in AOSP for some time as well. Running many AOSP apps means dealing with what Google treats as abandonware, such as the eMail app, Contacts, and the open launcher (replaced with Google's proprietary launcher).
I'm certain I don't have to tell this crowd about the death of bootloader unlocking and the ROM scene. Telling me this isn't pushed by Google (which I agree with), and following up with "And Google has no way to prevent this" isn't something I see as believable. Google mandates where the YouTube and Chrome apps get placed on the homescreen; you're telling me that, in order to be licensed as Android, Google can't similarly mandate bootloader unlocking?
Nothing changed last week, or even the week before, but the direction isn't terribly difficult to see, IMO.
> kill Android openness
Some initial versions of HarmonyOS was partially open source, the "NEXT" version isn't.
"Privacy"
end-to-end encrypted, but both ends (can be) remote controlled
Please Huawei, save us from this damned iOS-Android duopoly!
We’ve got Linux.
This is like responding to someone calling for an open alternative to Facebook by saying we have kubernetes. Linux is a helpful head start to solving the problems needed but it is not the full picture. And depending on what you need to build it might get in the way and require adjustment/fine tuning which is non trivial. There is just so much that goes into an OS in terms of polish beyond just getting some pixels on the screen and responding to input.
Without massive corporate funding for mobile apps, it doesn't have much chance on phones.
Must Valve do everything to bring Linux to the masses?
(I would love a Steam phone, though that’s never gonna happen)
Still having issues to bring Linux to game devs.
Remember that Android/NDK has the same 3D and audio APIs available on regular GNU/Linux, Swift does Vulkan, Playstation has a POSIX like OS based on FreeBSD.
Yet Valve needs to offer Win32/DirectX support via Proton.
Linux is a kernel. We don’t have a usable operating system to go with it besides Android.
Point of order: We have several usable OS to go with it, just not that target phones and have good hardware support.