Google's new Fuchsia OS is now rolling out to the first-gen Nest Hub

After more than four years of development, Google has finally launched Fuchsia OS, its under-development alternative operating system for its IoT devices, starting with the 2018 Nest Hub.

The first-generation Nest Hub will soon receive the Fuchsia OS update.  (Chris Monroe/CNET)

After more than four years of development, Google on Tuesday finally launched Fuchsia OS, its under-development alternative operating system for its IoT devices, starting with the first-generation Nest Hub that was released back in 2018.

The Mountain View company says that the update to its first-generation Nest Hub was beginning to roll out to users who are enrolled in the Preview Program, bringing Google's new open-source operating system to the smart home device as 9to5Google reports. FuchsiaOS' toolchain team's Technical Lead took to Twitter to announce the launch of the operating system earlier today.

You don't ship a new operating system every day, but today is that day.

— Petr Hosek (@petrh) May 25, 2021

For the uninitiated, Google began working on Fuchsia as an operating system back in 2016. The company's Cast OS operating system which powers its IoT devices and the Android operating system which runs 3 billion smartphones and tablets are based on the Linux kernel. Unlike these two, Fuchsia runs on a new message-passing microkernel called Zircon made by Google.

It's important to note that while you won't notice any modifications to how your Nest Hub looks or functions, the company's new operating system will replace the original operating system. In fact, since the user interface remains the same (at least for the moment) it is likely that users will not even realise that their operating system has been switched out with the update, as 9to5Google notes.

Even though the update may be invisible to most users, the fact remains that moving customers to a completely different operating system is no easy task. Considering that Google will be updating these devices while they're in the field, it says a lot about the company's confidence to update existing devices instead of deploying the OS “out of the box” on future models.