What I don’t understand us why they had to go and write a totally new OS instead using Linux. They might be able to sell it to a bunch of Chinese, but how will it fare globally? Now there’ll be yet another platform to develop apps for. It’s like that xkcd comic about standards: there are now X competing standards
I think it is exciting that they came up with their own stack from the kernel up to the programming environment. Plus, we all saw Russian developers being locked away from contributing to the Linux kernel, who says something similar won’t happen to Chinese developers?
Linux isn’t very efficient, since it needs to run on everything from IoT devices to supercomputers. HarmonyOS can run on the Linux kernel for laptops and PCs, but can also be used with a dedicated microkernel that is optimised for smaller devices such as smartphones and wearables.
Looking at smart TVs, we’re also stuck with several incompatible systems (Samsung’s Tizen, LG’s webOS, Amazon FireTV’s new non-android crap, …). In my experience, most users don’t care, except for some power users. If people can’t install a Lemmy app on their BrandNewOS, they wouldn’t even notice, because all the “common ones” like Facebook are there and they didn’t even consider looking for more niche options. And even the more popular niche options sometimes get community apps, like TizenTube (adfree YouTube) or Switchfin (Jellyfin on the freaking Nintendo Switch).
Also, whether we like it or not, “hey Claude port this android app to harmony” is a thing.
What I don’t understand us why they had to go and write a totally new OS instead using Linux. They might be able to sell it to a bunch of Chinese, but how will it fare globally? Now there’ll be yet another platform to develop apps for. It’s like that xkcd comic about standards: there are now X competing standards
I think it is exciting that they came up with their own stack from the kernel up to the programming environment. Plus, we all saw Russian developers being locked away from contributing to the Linux kernel, who says something similar won’t happen to Chinese developers?
the only problem is its proprietary codebase.
It is mixed source. It is based on OpenHarmony but with proprietary extensions.
Linux isn’t very efficient, since it needs to run on everything from IoT devices to supercomputers. HarmonyOS can run on the Linux kernel for laptops and PCs, but can also be used with a dedicated microkernel that is optimised for smaller devices such as smartphones and wearables.
Looking at smart TVs, we’re also stuck with several incompatible systems (Samsung’s Tizen, LG’s webOS, Amazon FireTV’s new non-android crap, …). In my experience, most users don’t care, except for some power users. If people can’t install a Lemmy app on their BrandNewOS, they wouldn’t even notice, because all the “common ones” like Facebook are there and they didn’t even consider looking for more niche options. And even the more popular niche options sometimes get community apps, like TizenTube (adfree YouTube) or Switchfin (Jellyfin on the freaking Nintendo Switch).
Also, whether we like it or not, “hey Claude port this android app to harmony” is a thing.