- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
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wonder if they use riscv chips
This leak is really scetchy, tbh. If it’s real then it’s probably happening because of the HarmonyOS NEXT that came out late last year. With that they basically dropped the previously used custom android/linux kernel for their own totally own proprietary HarmonyOS kernel. However with that they also lost support for android and linux code sideloading in the process and replaced it with some linux translation layer.
I always thought that HarmonyOS was meant to be more of a Android replacement that also had it’s place in stuff like TVs, cars, IoT and smart devices, but they still tried PCs with it, but it was more like chromebook-like toy computer for web browsing and text editing than a full pc. It seemed like a competent product android and android smart device replacement, but I never saw it as a serious competitor for Windows, MacOS or Linux desktop. If them plan is just be self sufficient and ditch US code, then you can do more in the linux ecosystem and get more app support right out of the gate and not have to ask everybody to rewrite their code for your custom OS. With linux-laptops they will have global markets for their computers, when as Harmony OS and it’s still are best in China’s own ‘software lagoon’ where third parties care more about developing for Huawei app store.
Yeah, it seems counterproductive to ditch FOSS in the name of self-sufficiency. If it were about that, assembling an army of software people to learn and contribute to important FOSS codebases would be much more productive in my opinion. It feels like Harmony Next is about something else. Perhaps some wholesale insurance. Or someone’s plans grandeur.
what’s harmony OS?
Huawei’s android skin/variant, akin to OneUI for samsung, OxygenOS for Oneplus, HyperOS for Xiaomi.
It was a skin, now its a completely different OS. The initial version, HarmonyOS, was based on Android/Linux, the new HarmonyOS Next, is a proprietary version (or successor) of HarmonyOS based on an open source project/OS, OpenHarmony. It uses a new microkernel instead of the linux kernel.
OpenHarmony is essentially an open source base for making an operating system on top. Its not like the Linux kernel, in the sense that its not just a kernel (in fact you can use the linux kernel with it), but rather a bunch of components people can build upon. And since it uses a permissive license, you can build a proprietary OS on top of it (like the HarmonyOS Next).
Huawei actually launched OpenHarmony many years back but it was not ready for phone usage yet. It was only with the launch of the 5th version that Huawei was confident enough in it to start using it on their own phones.
Do you know where to find the HongMeng kernel? I couldn’t find in OpenHarmony gitee.
Unfortunately it seems to be a completely proprietary kernel. I did find a paper on it (presented by Huawei in a conference): https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-haibo
The first line of the abstract reads
This paper presents the design and implementation of HongMeng kernel (HM), a commercialized general-purpose microkernel that preserves most of the virtues of microkernels while addressing the above challenges.
Another interesting tidbit from the paper:
We started the HongMeng kernel (HM) project over 7 years ago to re-examine and retrofit the microkernel into a general OS kernel for emerging scenarios. To be practical for production deployment, HM achieves full Linux API/ABI compatibility and is capable of reusing the Linux applications and driver ecosystems such that it can run complex frameworks like AOSP [42] and OpenHarmony [35] with rich peripherals.
Huawei’s android skin/variant
No, it’s not anymore, never really was. They dropped even the last android parts from it with HarmonyOS NEXT last year.
I think it is more of a hard fork after the embargo
A Huawei version of Android.
Important clarification: it’s much more than this. HarmonyOS is not any more a skin or a version of Android. It’s its own OS.
HarmonyOS is IMO going to do to Android what BYD has done to Tesla and VW. This is another chapter in China declaring independence from the West.
So their laptops were running Android?
Reading the article it was a closed source OS, with their own closed-source Linux-based kernel.
Their laptops were running Windows / Linux, and this article is saying that while they initially planned to shift to HarmonyOS Next, they are now likely to stay with Linux.
Also, while HarmonyOS Next is proprietary, the kernel (Hongmeng, a microkernel optimised for arm64 and with a Linux compatibility layer) and large parts of the underlying code (OpenHarmony) are open-source. Sort of like Android and AOSP. The ‘optimised for arm64’ thing might be why they are sticking with Linux - the laptops mostly use Intel x86 chips.
They should offer fydeOS too
