Okay, so it’s not an actual release as Arrington predicted last week, but Google will indeed take the wraps off its Chrome OS tomorrow. The company will hold an event tomorrow at its company headquarters in Mountain View, California, where it will unveil its plans for the operating system. Update: An OSNews reader has uncovered possible evidence that Chrome OS uses X, Clutter, and Slim.
So, what can we expect to hear tomorrow from Google? Well, we’ll get technical background on the operating system, some demonstrations, as well as a “complete overview”. The operating system is supposed to launch next year.
Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Google, and Matthew Papakipos, engineering director for Google Chrome will speak during the event. There will be a question and answer session as well.
The big question we will finally see answered tomorrow, then, is what the heck Chrome OS actually is. Chrome OS has been hyped a lot ever since its announcement, but we know absolutely nothing about it. So, what do you think Chrome OS will be like? Are we looking at an operating system built entirely about being online? Or will it be a more traditional operating system?
Personally, I hope for Google to pull everything good from the Linux community together, and do an “Apple” (as in Mac OS X), but how likely that is remains to be seen (estimate: highly unlikely). Be prepared for a barrage of articles on Chrome OS tomorrow in your RSS feed.
I see it as a strategy to gain more time and raise the spectations : “Chrome will do this and that, you just need to waith another year”.
Well, they need to prepare the potential third party developers as well.
It’s basically a web browser. The developers are already ready.
It won’t. It will be a lot more like a traditional operating system than people think.
I think it’ll be in between—more like WebOS. HTML/CSS and a JS API to access local hardware.
Don’t forget “Go”.
I believe Google was being honest about the scope of “Go” at the moment. For one, Go doesn’t provide any form of sandboxing or managed environment (which is what Chrome OS is touted to have). You need browser environment or Java for that (or .NET, but I would be very surprised to see that anywhere near Chrome OS).
You must be joking? Go is a side project, and still very early. It’s for writing systems apps such as you would write for a server, you wouldn’t want to write an OS in it, nor ship it with an OS until it’s suitably developed. If they reveal Chrome OS tomorrow, it’ll certainly not have Go in it. They may ship it with the OS _in a year’s time_, if it has matured enough by then, but trying to write stable apps for an unfinished OS when you have an unstable language is simple bad decision making.
Hey hey hey, I was just saying, ha.
Sorry, my bad, I overreacted.
Guess we know now it’s very much just a little bit more than a web browser
If it is, then it’s not an operating system, it’s a web browser. Google Chrome. Very little to do with just a web browser! This is what I would call “regression”.
Apparently, until late next year: http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/19/live-from-googles-chrome-os-proj…
It looks interesting, but given their services reliability, I think it will be interesting how connected people really are.
The only reasonable thing to do in a thread like this is speculation (as it’s our last chance at it). We can see who is the best guesser tomorrow ;-).
– I bet it has X
– I bet it has a desktop shell written in Javascript, as with “Litl Easel” ( http://litl.com/ )
– I bet it has lots of apps running as “gadgets” on the desktop, also written in Javascript. Of course you can do vanilla web apps as well, but the local Javascript apps can do stuff not yet possible on the web.
– I bet it has Dalvik VM
And I bet it will crash at least 3 times during the demo.
Oh, that’s fine. Chrome OS is likely to stay as “beta” for a thousand years…
It’ll be Android adapted for larger screen real-estate, with a new desktop manager and very tight Google Apps integration via Chrome (the browser).
Where is Chrome for Mac OS X?
If I hear one more person complain about this, I hope Google will just snub the Mac altogether.
Good software takes time. This is not a quick and dirty port – you know, like Firefox on the Mac has been for five years – but a real, native version, well integrated.
Some people are never happy.
Talk about the Pot calling the Kettle Black.
I’m not a Mac guy. But a real native app doesn’t have to be all that hard if you plan it right. The fact that non-Windows “native versions” have been so difficult suggests pretty strongly that the architecture was designed around Windows, and that the other platforms just have to work around that. In other words, native port or not, the non-Windows versions are likely destined always to be second class citizens because the Windows product is just so very important.
Many of us non-Windows folk have had our fill of being treated as second class citizens, and are understandably less tolerant of it than we might have been years ago. (I don’t use Chrome, Chromium, or Firefox, partially for this reason. I use Epiphany with the Webkit backend, because I know I’m a first class citizen in that neighborhood.)
Look to projects like ID Software’s rendering engines. They have always separated out the platform specific stuff from the start, and typically assign one guy to one or more native app projects for platforms like Linux, Irix, etc. These are not quick and dirty ports. They end up about as native as can be. And game rendering engines are arguably more tightly wedded to a particular platform than is a web browser.
Compare that to the Chrome experience, so far. There is a tremendous contrast. I really think that you are cutting Google more slack on this issue than they deserve. Because true native ports are only rocket science if they are bolted on as afterthoughts.
Edited 2009-11-18 19:57 UTC
Well, each platform has its own graphical toolkit and its own boatload of services to tap into, its own distribution model, and so on. It’s a lot harder than you think – I mean, name one cross-platform browser that isn’t total ass on the ported platform – Firefox is best on Windows, Safari is best on Mac, and both of them suck on other platforms. Apparently, it’s harder than you think.
As for games, it’s either OpenGL or DirectX, probably using a glue layer (I’d guess, no experience). As odd as it may sound, that actually seems simpler to me than properly integrating a browser.
No. What you are presenting here indicates that the authors of those projects picked the platform that they cared about, designed around it, and treated everything else as a second class citizen. Which is exactly the stick that I am tired of being on the short end of.
However, instead of ragging on Google for doing it to me again, I simply choose not to use their product, opting for one which treats me like I actually matter. (And it’s certainly nice to have that choice… finally… in 2009, with the official release of Epiphany with the Webkit back end.)
But I’m not inclined to criticize other people who have noticed the same thing and have decided to complain about it. Because they have a very valid gripe.
Edited 2009-11-18 20:12 UTC
Software doesn’t treat you, people does.
Yeah, we haven’t had enough choices in the past 5 years. Fortunately, with the advent of a standardized web, users now can pick whatever browser they like most and be happy.
Opera. I know that people here don’t really like Opera but you get the same experience in all platforms. They have simultaneous releases for Windows, OS X, Linux. FreeBSD and Solaris even for their alphas/betas and lab previews (pre-alphas).
As for Chrome, I think it is more difficult to port because of the platform specific code for the sandbox. Still, it’s almost a year now.
I find amusing all the platforms Opera supports, that speaks a lot about them. I’m not sure their new integrated server in a browser idea is really useful or secure.
With Chromium, unlike with Firefox, I don’t feel like second class citizen at all. It’s a highly polished Linux app, equally at home on both Gnome and KDE.
If Chromium engine is going to be the heart of the Chrome OS, I imagine it will receive quite a bit of developer attention as time passes.
Also see:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/11/03/1334203/X11-Chrome-Reported…
;-).
Perhaps. I did give it a try. But it just didn’t feel right to me. I prefer Epiphany. That’s why I decided to note specifically that “Second Class Citizen Syndrome” was only part of my reason for choosing something else. Of the bunch, if I couldn’t use Epiphany, I’d probably opt for Chromium.
If they can’t do simultaneous, feature parity releases we don’t want it.
There is no feature parity when you create a browser that deeply integrates into the platform.
Should there be a switch that says “Use GTK+ Theme” in the OS X release too?
If there can be no feature parity, then I don’t want it. I’m tired of applications that do this on platform X and that on platform Y. This is especially true of browsers. If they can’t simultaneously release across platforms what happens when there is a security update? Am I going to have to wait months for it?
It’s lame and with Google’s resources, I am unimpressed.
called Safari. It used to stink but Safari 4 on OSX is slick and beats FF.
I just hope you aren’t expecting a speed boost based on those overhyped Chrome benchmarks that involved crunching local javascript files.
Well then, why could I not upgrade the firmware on my WRT150n router today using the brand new new version of Safari on my brand new Macbook Pro? I had to finally do it with FF.
I’m not in a position to test Safari’s javascript. But you prompted me to test what I do have access to here on my Q6600 running 3.0 GHz, using Sunspider, with somewhat interesting results.
Composite score:
Epiphany (2.28.0) 371 ms
Chromium (4.0.252.0) 409 ms
Firefox (3.5.5) 1897 ms
Epiphany is running the now standard Webkit backend. And blasts past FF with over five times the overall javascript speed. Beats it in every category, too. Chromium is comparable. But like I say, I’m not in a position to comment on Safari.
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
——————————————–
Total: 941.6ms +/- 4.4%
Either they did some massive improvements to Firefox 3.6b3 compared to Firefox 3.5.5 or something is wrong with your set-up as your CPU ic comparable (MacBook Pro’s C2D at 3.06 GHz and 6 MB of L2 cache… this CPU is a dual-core while yours is a quad core, but is the test even multi-threaded to begin with?).
Edited 2009-11-19 13:10 UTC
Why is “blame the user” such a reflex reaction around here, I wonder? Turns out that this is another example of Mozilla Corp shafting Linux. Still(!) no JIT support for Linux x86_64. At any rate, its a reason I can add to my already lengthy “Why I reject Firefox” list.
Edited 2009-11-19 14:48 UTC
I was not blaming you, do not take it personally… I was just curious at the results, that’s all
.
I was not even aware that they provide an official x86_64 build of Firefox on Linux (beside the distro produced version), I thought their official build was still x86 only.
Anyways, sorry for the browsers war segment everyone.
Right here: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_dev.html?dl=mac
I’ve been using it for some time now, and it’s very stable, and very native looking.
http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/browser/reso…
http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/browser/reso…
And to elaborate those links for the illiterate, the interesting parts are:
– It uses X
– Clutter! Does this mean they are foregoing Gtk+ altogether? Perhaps they don’t use the current Chromium UI at all, and just use Clutter directly?
– It will use this login manager:
http://slim.berlios.de/
– Anyone know what “hostpad” is? Any chance this could be the “desktop shell”?
In any case, if that list is what they are using from Linux, it wildly deviates from the run-of-the-mill Linux distros. And it’s not unlike the Litl Easel system.
Edited 2009-11-18 19:35 UTC
Clutter does not replace gtk as a toolkit. Clutter offers a nice canvas-like scene graph but no traditional GUI widgets. So unless google implemented a whole new toolkit in top of clutter chances are they are using gtk with clutter.
I didn’t see Gtk+ in the “Credits” link, that’t where I came up with the conclusion.
IIUC Chromium doesn’t really use Gtk “widgets” either in the rendering area (it’s only used for the menus/decoration/dialogs), possibly Chromium is providing all the “widgets” for the OS.
There is however ‘nbtk'(Netbook Toolkit) which is a toolkit on top of clutter (to be renamed to ‘mx’ iirc).
Very interesting. Great find.
It just seems to be Moblin+Chrome.
Linux, Conman, X, Clutter, GTK etc is just Moblin.
Over at LWN I read that the kernel teams for Android and Chrome OS are very different, so it seems highly unlikely that Dalvik and Android will be part of Chrome OS.(Android depends on a lot of out of tree kernel patches)
This doesn’t “prove” anything. Maybe some of the components are based off of one of these programs. Maybe it contains some of the code. Maybe it it used in a non-standard way.
I’m just saying, this isn’t proof for me.
Well it may be fog of war …
But if you combine these credits with google-chrome-unstable_4.0.222.6-r28902_i386.deb that was on Googles servers for a short time and had a clock/date, battery/network indicator in the title bar and touch pad & network config on a Chrome OS tab in the options the fog starts to go away IMO.
It seems likely now that Chrome OS is LFs Moblin stack + a pimped Linux Chrome.
It will be interesting to see how Google does window management etc. There does not seem to be a dock or a taskbar.
I thought about possible window management and an elegant solution is actually pretty simple. Tabs will be Chrome OS windows. That is simple but also very limiting, but I guess good enough for users.
In the long run I guess Navive Client/O3D apps will run in tabs and will be able to switch to full screen (the leaded .deb already hat a fullscreen mode)
You can already drag out tabs as new windows in chromium. On windows Chrome, you could also create “application launchers” where a slim browser window was launched in a fashion where it behaves like an application (no navigation bar, separate taskbar entry…).
I bet the same features will be utilized in Chrome OS.
I also bet Google just went ahead and implemented a new Window Manager. It’s not that big a job, judging by the huge amount of them already available.
Could be, but from the looks of it Google seems to have a different approach with Chrome OS and that seems to be “Use what is already out there” except for Chrome of course. So my guess is now with mutter. You get development for free and it used in Moblin and Gnome3.
Google learned from the kernel that maintaining forks sucks bigtime and I think this time around they wan’t to keep the delta pretty small. Android was and is very different to X and GTK etc. Chrome OS probably not.
But they will need some great features besides fast booting .. at the moment I am really wondering what those might be.
Maybe Native Client versions of some Google apps (Picasa or Google Earth?) Single sign on seems logical. You log in with your Google account.
Maybe they will give you lots of cloud storage or other cloudy extras.
Tomorrow will be an interesting day for sure.
I watched the video and I was pretty much spot on with my prediction
But best feature is: OPEN SOURCE DRIVERS!!!
Noooooo not the X
You are sooo right.
X may well be the main reason why this whole Linux-on-the-desktop thing has not happened after 20 years.
Those Unix based GUI projects that have made it anywhere happen to have skipped X Windows (e.g. Android, OS X).
Argh more X bashing, and yet just last night I set my wife up with openoffice on the craptop when it was really running on the desktop. Whilst I was surfing on the main screen and a video was playing on the second screen (tv), all without issue, and the desktop itself is long in the tooth. And that’s now, before Galluim3D etc etc, and the drivers moved from X into the kernel. No, if Google use X they are wise and all us free Unix users gain from the increase of money in development and number/quality of the software we can run. I feared they would do an Apple and box in their Unix. This is good news. Makes Chrome OS just another distro but with a big grand behind it. My only gripe with X is that it doesn’t do audio, but http://www.chaoticmind.net/~hcb/murx/xaudio/, seams to have died.
Wouldn’t break my heart of some of that budget got pushed over to Alsa to finish support for the newer soundcards. The beta code runs my X-FI very nicely but not having it in the production ready code means an extra step every time I upgrade kernel or alsa through the distro. Granted, it would only have to support the sound chips being put into google tablets or whatever the OS becomes embedded in.
tpm-emulator, interesting
the GUI will not be based on GTK+, I believe the use clutter for building their own stuff. More WebOS like.
…. Android will now be known as Chrome OS.
And I wanted to buy Google stock last week… too late now.
Seriously, hopefully it’s for the best of all and especially for the best of Linux!
Back in the day, we would have called this kind of announcement “vaporware”. Think about it. Microsoft announces production date for Windows Azure cloud computing platform at the PDC. Google announces random details about Chrome OS a day later. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Google is trying to steer the software/hardware ecosystem away from Azure, or at least prevent Microsoft from gaining momentum. So, in my view, this is nothing more than a pissing contest between two software titans. None of us has any idea how significant (or meaningless) these efforts will be. Sun’s former CEO, Scott McNealy, tried selling Network Computers (NCs) over a decade ago — powered by (what else) Sun servers — but nobody bought the idea. You could argue that always-on network infrastructure has become pervasive enough that such an approach could work now, but the value of centralized versus distributed has yet to be determined. Personally, I don’t want Google hosting and/or indexing the private content that I create. That’s simply not a tradeoff that I’m prepared to make, but it is a Faustian bargain that you agree to, when you go with Google’s approach. Time will tell, though, which (if any) approach takes hold.
The old network computer idea was not targeted at consumers, but for corporate use.
If you consider the way average consumer uses a computer, you’ll see that this is a completely different bargain today. Most of the freetime computer use involves internet.
Now, when you factor out the usage where a “real computer” is needed and only consider netbooks, the equation becomes even clearer.
Agreed. The equation with NCs was a lot murkier. Sun wanted corps to move to thin clients and use their servers, but ignored the fact that most corps use MS Exchange, store their docs in MSWord, etc. Much harder to move corps off of these platforms. But, at the same time, customers are still going to want to use their computers to connect to work, do real work, etc. In a Google technology-only ecosystem, that won’t fly.
I’m not sure how a computer running Chrome OS is any better than today’s netbooks running Linux, XP, or Win7. What’s in it for the consumer? They already have networking. They already have apps. They already have streaming media. They already have distributed storage which protects their privacy. They already have access to the Web and social networking. The only one that really gains under Chrome OS is Google. They get to store and index your content on their servers, tie you to their storage infrastructure, feed you ads (you think this is free?), and potentially expose you to God knows what kind of privacy-obliterated data mining operations that they can sell to other companies. How is this better?
Unless you can answer the question above, this question isn’t remotely clear at all.
Edited 2009-11-18 23:11 UTC
X! what a BFM! They should make there own GUI or it will just be another Linux! e.g. never have a large user base.
KRR
I think you should read more on the subject of X and window managers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_window_manager
“X provides the basic framework, or primitives, for building such GUI environments: drawing and moving windows on the screen and interacting with a mouse and/or keyboard. X does not mandate the user interface — individual client programs handle this.”
This is true, and I am glad you mentioned that. I felt myself getting both irritated and deflated thinking this would be JALD with some fancy front-end. But just because X is involved doesn’t mean the UI is driven by it. It is a very extensive library of tools. In a way they would be crazy NOT to use it.
I know what X is bloody for! I reiterate! It’s a mistake to use X!
FGG
Perhaps you were thinking of something like directfb or SDL? Unfortunately, the various kernel framebuffer drivers are not in very good shape, and the maintainer of one very important one, intelfb, recently hid it in the kernel build options (to avoid further bug reports) so that it is only built, in his words “for specialty applications like embedded devices”. The framebuffer driver that does work, vesafb (for example, with vga=791 in lilo/grub), is unaccelerated and one needs a fast CPU to watch video without frame dropping or the audio/video becoming unsynchronized. Examples of machines that would use the intelfb driver (if it worked) are Dell laptops, Sony laptops, and many desktop machines.
Indeed. Their chances of taking over the market will be much better if they start with a new windowing system, a clock applet, a google_eyes applet, and a google_edit applet. And Chrome, I guess.
Edited 2009-11-18 22:59 UTC
You do realize that it would take many, many years, even for a company like Google, to write a good, full graphics stack, including drivers? If it really were that easy, people would have done it years ago…
Besides, do you really think users will care or notice if it uses X? It’s not like they’re using all of GNOME, or anything; it will be nothing like any Linux distro you have ever seen.
Edited 2009-11-18 23:28 UTC
[quote]it will be nothing like any Linux distro you have ever seen.[/quote]
Just the opposite I presume! It will be exactly like every other Linux distribution. Every distro has said “they will be different” BS. I’ll BIWISI.
FGG
Just about every distro uses GNOME or KDE. Chrome OS definitely will not use either. That alone makes it quite different. I personally don’t think Chrome OS will be all that great, but it certainly will be different.
Besides, does it really matter if it’s different or not? If it works, and users like it, they won’t care. “Innovation” seems to be a buzzword. Many people have spent years coming up with good ideas. You would have to be stupid not to use some of them. Most extremely radical, “innovative” products are bound to fail. What’s out there already works plenty well enough, otherwise we wouldn’t be using it.
That’s one of a number of reasons why Linux will never be for the masses! It’s fine for the geek but in the long term it’s unusable for the general public. The Linux world needs to take a clue from Apple and start producing stuff “that just works!” because that is not the case for Linux and especially X. And until they can do that, Linux will be just where it is now, on the fringe and mostly for the geek.
I can’t tell you how many Linux apps I’ve used that were 95% usable and great apps but that last 5% never go attended to and that last 5% is what made the app unusable in the long term. It’s very frustrating and the main reason I use Macs exclusively at home. They just work!
KRR
There’s really nothing wrong with X itself.
It shares the same basic design as the windowing systems of Mac OS X and Windows Vista (and, for that matter, the original Windows NT windowing system). It’s the only design that makes any sense on a modern operating system, so any potential replacement would share the same design as X.
The problem with replacing X outright is backward compatibility. Any replacement would have to support absolutely everything that X can do – drivers, input devices, networking, 3D acceleration, and so on. That’s a huge amount of work right there.
In addition, it would have to support all existing Linux applications. In practice, that means it would have to be able to accept connections from X11 clients. That’s even more work – X is kind of tricky to implement properly, and a modern X server can still run applications from the ’80s.
Once you’d done all that (give it a decade or so), you’ll have basically re-implemented X.
It would be far simpler to fix the implementation problems with the existing X server. This is being done. It’s just taking a while.
Except that G has indicated that the development for this Linux will be web based so the only Linux app that is native is the browser (chrome on chrome)(with some minor exceptions). There is no need (intention?) of supporting every other Linux application in fact I gather that they will support almost no other Linux application besides Chrome.
If G was going to make a fully compatible Linux distro they would not have qualified their development system as being web based. The idea is to not require anything on the local machine except the browser. They could adapt the Android GUI for this very easy.
If they are going to make a complete Linux distro… Whats the point? Everybody and their brother already has a distro to call their own. Too many cooks writing the menus and not enough cooks making the food!
KRR
I would have thought that they’d use GNUStep to have some application source code compatibility with Mac OS X but figure out a more consumer-oriented look to it.
Without XWindows, though, there isn’t enough time to re-create the wheel but you’re partly right; it could be lost in the crowd of Linux distributions.
Speculation is fun, but given what Google has already said, and their business model, some assumptions can be made.
Two parts of the original announcement are worth considering:
(source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os… )
So here’s my theory:
Chrome OS will not be anything resembling a desktop OS. It will be a minimal kernel and userland existing solely to provide the most effective and secure platform for a web browser.
The fact that they said application development will be via web, and that Chrome OS apps will run in any standards-based browser, would indicate that there is no native-API they will be providing for apps. And why would they? Everything Google does is about liberating applications from desktop lock-in, why would they invest in creating yet another desktop API? If you want to run an app while not online, it will probably be done via Google Gears.
Furthermore, they’ve stressed “security” both in the official announcement, and in other articles I’ve read. My guess is that they’re virtualizing or sandboxing the userland to make sure that the “desktop” can’t touch the underlying system. And why not? If you’re only running a browser, you don’t need to touch system resources. Supporting a native application API would add complexity to the security model, not that it couldn’t be done, mind you.
I suppose it’s possible they might try and implement Android applications, but that doesn’t really make sense. They’d risk fragmenting Android by creating yet another different hardware platform for developers to support.
I think the blogosphere’s expectations are maybe a little too high for this project. Google’s roadmap here isn’t about Chrome OS, it’s about Chrome. And Chrome OS is just about providing the best possible optimized platform for running Chrome, and making that platform more accessible for mobile users.
Making it open source and freely available is a nice move, but not part of their real delivery strategy. For the average user, you’d have a much more flexible platform running the OS of your choice, with Chrome, and not lose access to anything Chrome OS will provide.
I can see this being a smart idea for netbooks. Chrome OS running on something like a small, cheap nVidia Tegra-based laptop could be viable, as long as it was positioned properly as a web-appliance and not a “real” computer. Decent performance, decent battery-life, and much better support for full-motion video et al. than an Atom-based system can offer could make it a desirable accessory for someone that wants their web on the go. But not as a replacement for a conventional system. And I couldn’t see this flying in the consumer space on anything more than a low-cost platform.
This is interesting, but not game changing.
That’s my theory, anyways. Take it for what it’s worth.
I agree with your take, with one exception: I do think there’s a good possibility that Google may provide a way to run Android apps because, frankly, they’re primarily about cloud computing, as well. Additionally, Web apps alone aren’t going to cut it, in my opinion. They will need to provide some kind of rich client capability.
I guess you are mostly right. I think Native Client will eventually be the native API. It is fairly secure and sandboxed.
So it will be Chrome running on GNU/Linux/X/Clutter/Mutter, but if that is true then a lot of geeks will be disappointed, because essentially it is just another distro. More focused and light weight maybe, but nothing revolutionary.
Google is probably in this for the long run and want to provide a stable platform, not this 6 month churn that other distro adhere to.
I really wonder what the big features will be. Maybe it will be the hardware .. a OLPC-like screen that works without backlight in bright sunlight maybe, that would be good for Google Books.
Why is everyone so obsessed over whether “it will be just another distro” !?
It really doesn’t matter what’s under the hood. It’s obviously going to be very different on the surface. You won’t be able to tell that it uses Linux or X. As long as it works and they put a nice, shiny GUI on top of it, nobody will care.
Please GOOGLE do the Linux revolution. Slap KDE guys in the face for not creating a well-sensed desktop, punish the GNOME guys for choosing Nautilus and treating us like the dumbiest beings on earth! Please! Dump those geeky unnecessary stupid tools we find cluttering KDE menus. Kill Nautilus and innovate file management in Linux. And with that, sweep off all those “perhaps-one-day-will-be-a-functional-working-desktop” projects… Wash them away with your glory. Kill’em. Destroy’em. Make Ubuntu and Fedora regret for making so many mistakes… so many unforgiving mistakes, so many perfect-theories-but-none-really-pratical-and-easy-to-use.
And please, say that X is only used as a start off. Promise that you will modify and improve this stupid graphic stack that had blown away Thom’s workspace and mine too. We just can’t take it anymore X, so we will forgive you GOOGLE… for using X, but just as a start off. Once things get really going, make X something else because we can’t take it anymore.
And last but not least, bown down to him, and thank him every morning… Mr. Torvalds – the man who would be the foundations of your very deep heart.
You forgot a few things:
Use our data as you will! Mine our emails for information which is useful to you! (Chunk or archive the rest.) Perform statistical analyses upon our most personal diaries, love letters, and financial spreadsheets! Forward what you deem fit to the NSA and the IRS! Even if we deleted it immediately after writing it.
Sure you can’t handle a little Gnome or KDE, Jason?
Edited 2009-11-19 03:03 UTC
But uhm, wait a second here.. Google never stated they are targeting desktop applications or anything like that. I don’t see why they would need to ‘teach the other guys (KDE and GNOME)’ anything. Google want’s to integrate the internet experience with the desktop on mainly netbooks. It’s up to the Open Source Community to do what you ask.
I don’t know.. Google isn’t the savior you want them to be in this respect. I think you’ll be disappointed… or not! We just don’t know yet.
… but it looks like they’re going to be using X.
CRAP!
I think ChromeOS will use:
– Xorg (kind of a disappointing thought, but o well..)
– I think all of their services will be integrated, including Google Wave and possibly see something with SPDY.
– I think most of the code they used by the open source community has been highly modified and probably won’t be recognizable for the most part.
– I also think they may introduce some other new things they haven’t talked about yet.
– I think the UI may be very, very limited and light weight with some fancy features (fading in and out of certain text and stuff)
Meh, that’s all I got. Beer == holding me back.
The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.
Well, Google said it wouldn’t use X. Did they change their minds? Why? They could have lifted the windowing system from Android and modified it for desktop use. If it is X I will be really disappointed. They got so many things right with Android, I was hoping they would do the same with Chrome.
I guess we’ll learn more today.
Edited 2009-11-19 12:26 UTC
Actually, you do have a point about them stating they’d be using a new windowing system. And something tells me deep within my gut that 2 years or over of development on this OS shows that they may have actually done exactly what they stated. HOWEVER, we’ll see what they did.
If you nitpick “windowing system” should mean something different from the “X window system”, but I think they used the term a bit more vaguely and a clutter/mutter based system on top of Xorg could also be described as a new “windowing system”
We will see in a few hours.
I remember back in June/July they said exactly what it was, so I don’t understand the big mystery here…
Google Chrome running on top of some new windowing system on top of linux. They have deals with OEMs to provide instant-on netbooks. Open lid-there’s your browser.
Reminds me a lot of the palm foleo.
I do like the idea of it running on ARM. From what I understand that should give awesome battery life.
It will be streamed.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/20091119_chrome_os_webcast…
Thanks. I’ve been kinda wearing my reload button out here on OSNews.com this morning waiting for some word. 🙂
Edited 2009-11-19 18:03 UTC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QRO3gKj3qw
…meh. Express Gate http://apcmag.com/asus_laptops_get_instanton_linux.htm Do people really use that instead of their OS?
Did anyone else watching the webcast notice the strange speech impediment which seems to have gripped Google employees? It seems difficult, even painful, for them to speak the word “Linux”. Very strange, considering that ChomeOS is exactly:
Linux Kernel + Absolute Minimum of Support Libraries + Chrome + Some Chrome Enhancements
I think the proper term is “Goo/Linux”
;}
Goonix. Then again, it would be difficult for me to speak that without a twinge of pain.
Edited 2009-11-19 19:38 UTC
It seems that any OS which can manage a fast boot and automatic updates, plus provide a rich thick clinet experience in addition to running a browser will have one up on ChromeOS. Except for the mega-marketing dollars, of course.
Don’t forget the dollars for bugfixing and development either.
Biggest thing setting Chrome OS apart are the security features. The rest can be ported/deployed to “normal” Linux netbooks as well (and I don’t think Google would mind that either).
Well, my prediction about Dalvik VM was wrong, there are no immediate plans for it.
Interesting facet was the repeated mention of Google Native Client – it seemed like a very experimental project from the blog posts I read.
As said before, Chrome OS is just the bare minimum of functionality that can bring up browser, with pretty solid platform security (with automatic re-imaging on “corrupted” / owned system). The “window manager” they provide is just a fancy alt-tab view (task switcher).
If you are running chromium nightlies, you can get a preview of their “app tabs” by right clicking on a tab and choosing “pin tab”.
It seems to miss GTK, though. So you were right on that one.
I am glad that I was right about the upstream friendlyness and really excited about the FOSS drivers, but when you think about it Google can only update the OS in the long run if drivers are FOSS.
Kinda sad to see no Xorg competition .. would have been nice to have a competing system, but Google wants to use upstream wherever possible I guess and Xorg is a lot of code that would have to be reimplemented.
They didn’t talk about storage. Do you get unlimited cloud storage??
I would have hoped for more native client apps. But I guess Google wants to have a few more Aces in their sleeves for further demos. A native client Picasa client would be nice.
Does this remind anyone of the old “internet PC’s” from the mid 90’s?
KRR
The term “netbook” is misleading, to say the least. I’ve been doing a lot of traveling by car, with my “netbook”, and so I am painfully familiar with that vast majority of the USA that does not have wireless broadband coverage, at least with my provider. (Pull up your provider’s coverage map and objectively, and dispassionately, compare the covered land area of your country with the noncovered area.) Even the Interstates don’t have complete coverage. If I were depending upon the “cloud”, and drove from Santa Fe to Colorado Springs, my “netbook” would be essentially a brick most of the way from Santa Fe to Pueblo. Well over 100 miles of the trip. Traveling from my home in Oklahoma City to Denver Colorado is even worse. For 7 hours of the trip, my “netbook” would be useless. Fortunately, I use Ubuntu, and it remains a real computer over that stretch. Yeah, I know, the Google sales-droid on the webcast emphasized that I could still play music locally. Wonderful. My car stereo already does that.
And even where there is coverage… the speed and reliability is very often most painful.
I would be more comfortable depending upon “the cloud” on my home desktop machine. The “webtone” there is good. My “netbook” is the *very last* place that I would find “the cloud” to have acceptable reliability, availability, and speed. So maybe we shouldn’t really be calling these things “netbooks”. It’s misleading. And Google appears ready to capitalize on that bit of confusion, for their own purposes. And at the expense of consumers.
Edited 2009-11-19 20:31 UTC
I’m quite concerned that you are using your netbook while driving – I sure hope interstate highways specifically don’t have wireless broadband for this reason.
Trivial Example: Stop for gas. Go to update MPG spreadsheet. Oops! Netbook’s a brick.
Or what if I want to stop at a rest area and verify the wording of a document sent to a client, because I can’t quite remember whether I included or left out a point? Lot’s of little things.
I’m about ready to head out the door and will be staying in a town that does not have broadband coverage. My netbook would be a brick from tonight through tomorrow morning if I were running Chromium OS.
And no. There is no way to use a netbook and drive at the same time.
The point is that being so completely dependent on “The Cloud” is a disadvantage, and not an advantage for common netbook use patterns. Google is trying to claim it is an advantage. A real OS with a browser gives you *more* than their thin client OS does.
This post by user “drag” on LWN.net hits the nail on the head:
http://lwn.net/Articles/362890/
Edited 2009-11-20 15:16 UTC
Google gears or HTML5 will provide offline support.
Anyways I think these devices will be dirt cheap .. 100 to 300 dollars (with ARM and a small battery) and be slim and slick.
At the moment they are intended to be care free IAs and I guess a lot of geeks that now tell family to buy Mac or install Linux will tell people to get a Chrome OS machine. With a full size keyboard and a big screen they will do about 95% of users need. Sure no video editing or Itunes, but also no backup-, malware-, upgrade-worry.
And we are looking at this from a first world angle. Cheap Chrome OS netbooks will be a heaven send for people in poorer countries. They get a great web experience without the steep learning curve.
Most people still are not on the internet.
Wait, you’re trying to tell me that in a country where they are not on the internet, a WEB OS will be heaven? ffffffffffffffffffffffff
??
Most people don’t have a computer yet and they , like everybody else, only need a connected machine that is why Chrome OS will rock. And it will be “Less than free”(tm) for OEMs.