Google's futuristic Fuchsia OS will run Android apps
Google's in-development Fuchsia OS and potential replacement for Android will support Android apps if and when it's released for devices.
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A new update to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), spotted by 9to5Google, suggests Fuchsia will use a special version of the Android Runtime (ART) to run Android apps.
This feature would enable devices with Fuchsia -- which could be anything from PCs to smart speakers -- to take advantage of the abundance of Android apps in the Google Play Store.
In a note on the AOSP site regarding Fuchsia device targets, Google explains that "these targets are used to build ART for Fuchsia".
"They differ from usual Android devices as they do not target specific hardware. They will produce a fuchsia package (.far file)."
This means the special version of ART can be installed on a Fuchsia device using a .far file.
The comment fills in some blanks about recently added Fuchsia repositories in AOSP, which included a Fuchsia SDK for creating Fuchsia apps, and one for a Fuchsia "device".
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Although Google is thought to be looking to replace Android and Chrome OS with Fuchsia within five years, the company told CNET it has no timeline for this event to occur and still deems it "one of many experimental open-source projects".
Even though Fuchsia remains a work in progress, it has caught the interest of engineers at the National Security Agency (NSA) who've probed the state of the OS's security.
The NSA's analysis focused on Fuchsia and its micro-kernel, Zirkon. As of last summer, the OS had numerous security flaws but had enough to boot a system, talk to hardware, load userspace processes and run them.
The modular operating system is designed to run on machines ranging from low-powered, minimal-resource devices all the way up to PCs.
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