operating system

Google is not one to shy away from throwing anything and everything at a wall to see which ones stick. It has admittedly given birth to some highly successful products but has also resulted in a few false positives. But as big as Google may be, it doesn't have an infinite amount of resources, especially human ones. And as a skunkworks project becomes more and more official, more and more resources might be diverted away from those that need them even more. That might soon be the case with Fuchsia OS, the third Google operating system it doesn't really need.

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Google is known, even notorious, for having so many overlapping projects and moonshots on its plate. Even while both Android and Chrome OS fight for consumers’ affection (and wallets), it is believed to be working on a third wheel. At one point it was nicknamed “Andromeda”, a fusion of the two. Now that third OS is believed to be Fuchsia, which already has a number of code and assets available for developers to pick apart. But if you’re a simple end user, you can use this web-based third-party demo to see what all the fuss is about.

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To consumers, and probably even to some businesses, there are really only a handful of operating systems in the world. There’s Windows, Mac, and Linux for desktops and Android and iOS for mobile. Of course, the reality isn’t as simple as that and there are a lot more than you can count, like Google’s Chrome OS, the Linux Foundation’s (really Samsung’s) Tizen, Jolla’s Sailfish, the discontinued Mozilla Firefox OS, and LG’s webOS. That last one is trying to grow out of its niche status and become a serious contender, and LG is open sourcing part of it in order to help it become a global platform.

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Yesterday Google released their first public software builds for Android P, for developers. The software looks pretty great - if users can appreciate the tiny detail changes as such. But there's something that's not entirely obvious up front, as its presented by Android blogs aplenty. Non-developer users shouldn't download Android P at all - not yet, at least. Developers of Android apps, by all means download and utilize - everyone else: now's the time to let bloggers do all the hard work for you.

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Today Google released the first Android P developer preview, and with it a whole new collection of next-gen features. In this preview for the next major operating system from Google, Android prepared itself for the next generation in mobile hardware. As such, it includes oddities like support for two OR MORE physical cameras, HDR VP9 Video, HEIF image compression, and display cutout support - that's support for a notch, a split, or even a set of extra-curved corners (like in Pixel 2.)

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While average, every day tasks like internet browsing and streaming video don't require that you squeeze the most out of your PC's hardware, there are just as many tasks that need unrestrained power. Microsoft, it would seem, recognizes that, and it'll soon be rolling out a new power profile for Windows 10 Pro that should help bolster performance beyond what's currently allowed by the OS.

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Google is known, in fact notorious, from casting its net wide to catch as many fish. A more appropriate metaphor, however, might be throwing as many things on a wall and seeing which ones stick. It already had an Android operating system when it suddenly launched Chrome OS. Despite what many naysayers said, Chrome OS stuck. Now Google has two operating systems to worry about. Google was once rumored to be working on a unified Andromeda OS that combines these two finally into one. That effort is pretty much dead but that doesn’t mean there’s no need for it. Here’s what Andromeda could have brought to the table had it actually been born.

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Windows 10 was launched in July 2015. It was off to a rocky start, but not as rocky as Windows 8 or even Windows 8.1. And definitely a lot, lot better than the now ridiculed Windows Vista. But while Microsoft might want to sing praises of Windows 10, because what else could it do, the fact remains that it still hasn’t overtaken the most popular Windows version there is. At least until now, because according to StatCounter, Windows 10 is just a tiny bit more popular than Windows 7.

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Google is not one to sit still on anything, be it a design language, product, or platform. It’s almost a miracle that Android, let alone Chrome OS, has lasted this long, though both have undergone deep surgery repeatedly. So it isn’t exactly shocking to learn that Google was, and still is, working on yet another operating system, the so-called Fuchsia OS. While it’s still mostly under wraps, it’s possible to actually test it on the latest Google PixelBook. It’s not an easy journey though, and one that might be worth it just for curiosity’s sake.

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Back when Windows 10 first launched, Microsoft made a huge push to get those on Windows 7 and 8.1 to upgrade. Most notably, this included a promotion that offered Windows 10 upgrades for free for a year, along with the sometimes infuriating desktop pop-ups that came with it. That promotion ended some time ago, but as it turns out, there's still a way to get a free Windows 10 upgrade if you're currently on Windows 8.1.

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It's time to talk about Google's software called Fuchsia again. Today it's become apparent that Fuchsia is running on the Google Pixelbook. Fuchsia is a new(ish) operating system Google's been working on for many months. The Google Pixelbook is the notebook equivalent of a Google Pixel smartphone, instead running Chrome OS right out the box.

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The Apple Lisa operating system will be made open source next year, it has been announced, giving anyone the opportunity to download the code. Though Lisa was never popular, the OS lives on in the hearts and minds of dedicated fans and enthusiasts. According to a post made in a Google Group dedicated to those enthusiasts, the Computer History Museum will be releasing the code with a statement of its own in the near future.

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