Google's Fuchsia OS is open-source and can run on everything from routers to PCs, but what's it for?

Google has lifted the veil on a new operating system that they’ve been working on and they’ve called it Fuchsia. What is Fuchsia? Nobody really knows. Neither, it seems, does Google. The project’s GitHub page just reads, “Pink + Purple == Fuchsia (a new Operating System).” Cryptic. Very cryptic. Here’s what we know about the OS:

• It exists
• It’s open source
• It can run on everything from embedded devices to smartphones and PCs

What’s it for? We have no clue. Delving a little deeper into the code, Android Police tells us that the OS is based on Magenta Kernel, which is in-turn based on the LittleKernel project. Both these kernels were designed to run on embedded devices. The UI is based on Flutter, which is “a heavily optimized, mobile-first 2D rendering engine (with excellent support for text)” and a little more than that. Apparently, Google decided to go with Dart as the programming language. Android Police also points out that the OS uses Escher, a rendering engine with full OpenGL and Vulkan support. Brian Swetland, one of the developers working on Fuchsia only said that “The decision was made to build it open source, so might as well start there from the beginning,” when asked what Fuchsia is and why it exists. There is a lot of speculation as to what the OS will actually do. Is it a replacement for ChromeOS? Is this a new platform for IoT devices? Is it an AR platform? Is this the new Android? Your guess is as good as ours.