this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] Inf_V@kbin.earth 2 points 2 days ago (13 children)
[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Huawei's android skin/variant, akin to OneUI for samsung, OxygenOS for Oneplus, HyperOS for Xiaomi.

[–] notanapple@lemm.ee 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] serenissi@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Do you know where to find the HongMeng kernel? I couldn't find in OpenHarmony gitee.

[–] notanapple@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] serenissi@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Yeah I only find this which is bit technical. Anything else seems marketing bs. Seems like they're making something similar to fuchsia by google but with linux abi compatibility.

Having linux shim alone makes it effectively monolithic like xnu.They even claim this by saying linux shim will hold global state in this otherwise microkernel.

[–] Korkki@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

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.

[–] alteredEnvoy@sopuli.xyz 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think it is more of a hard fork after the embargo

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

Not even a fork. New code.

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