Developers get Fuchsia running in the Android Studio Emulator

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Google is well-known for its Android and Chrome OS operating systems. They’re used in hundreds of millions of devices worldwide. Both are famous for being open-source, meaning we know everything there is to know about them. But Google is working on a third operating system, called Fuchsia, which we know far less about. It first appeared on GitHub back in August of 2016, with no official announcement.

Admittedly, Fuchsia is open-source as well, so we can clearly see what’s going on inside. But what’s far less clear is what Google intends to do with Fuchsia. It’s clearly an operating system of some kind, but whether or not it’s intended as a future replacement for Android or Chrome OS, we don’t know. Inspection of the code suggests that the OS can run on universal devices, so it’s entirely possible that Fuchsia could be an all-in-one system intended to run across all Google devices.

Fuchsia’s lack of installation guides – and indeed lack of extensive documentation in general – has meant that it’s hard to get it running on many devices. But now, developers r3pwn and Horus125 have managed to get it running in the Android Studio Emulator. In a blog post, r3pwn said that they don’t expect it to remain relevant for too long but hope that it can help some people. The process isn’t as bad as you might expect, it’s just cherry-picking a few specific builds of Fuchsia and building those. For those interested, full instructions can be found in the blog post.

Screenshots provided by r3pwn show that Fuchsia is still pretty barebones, though it has come a long way since it first appeared as a single terminal window back in 2016. We now have some apps, such as Settings, with a graphical interface. The general feel of Fuchsia is still reminiscent of Android, with features such as a Recent Apps screen, the Settings menu, and a split-screen view for multiple apps all seeming to be heavily influenced by Android.