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Google Working on Desktop Linux

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the what-you-guys-are-surprised dept.

paulmac84 writes "The Register reports that Google is working on a version of Ubuntu, known internally as Goobuntu. Google has confirmed it is working on a desktop linux project, but declined to supply further details, including what the project is for. Is Google about to release this as an alternative to Windows?" Update: 02/01 00:11 GMT by SM: chrisd is the first among many to point out that this is just more fodder from the Google rumor mill and isn't something they are currently planning to release.

18 of 785 comments (clear)

  1. hmmm by Fusen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This has been talked about for quite a long time and even supposedly seen but what can Google do that would make this more special then any other ubuntu release/spin off?
    Also a more worrying question,would you see ads incorporated?

    1. Re:hmmm by Threni · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > How would creating a Linux distribution even come *close* to being a Windows killer?

      Linux has been good enough as a replacement for Windows for a while now. It just needs a marketing push. A Linux with google behind it might give it a chance, and perhaps would encourage games developers - a segment sorely needed if non-business people are to be seriously persuaded to kick the Windows habit.

    2. Re:hmmm by el_womble · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Google can do Linux the biggest favour it can: branding.

      Look at the big players in Linux:

      • RedHat
      • Novel/SuSE
      • Ubuntu
      • Gentoo


      Say any of those names in a pub/bar and people will look at you like an alien has jumped out of your mouth.

      Lets look at the identifiable brands in computing:

      • Microsoft: They're the problem
      • Apple: They've already gone BSD
      • Dell/Sony: Are hardware not software, and would inevitably make their Distro proprietary (see Apple)
      • Google: Its so crazy it could just work


      Google are so huge, that googling is almost as accepted as a verb as hoovering or xeroxing. Just by mentioning that they might be releasing a competitor to Windows they will hit every business newspaper in the world.

      To a certain extent it doesn't matter how good their distro is. If its based on Ubuntu its 95% there. If its pacakged with Google Earth, Picassa, gMail branded Evolution, a Blogger front end and Google Talk its up there with the big boys. If they can perform the ultimate trick and get Wine working as well as Rossetta does, then its an OS X beater.

      Better than all of that, a home brand name supporting linux gives hardware and software developers something to target. If they can focus on one platform rather than all of them, and know that it will be hitting consumers not geeks, that can only be good for Linux.

      Why is this good for Google?

      Providing a distro that connects, by default, to their web services means that the penetration of their advertising is increase.

      A web based company needs as many people on the web as possible. People who are polluted by viruses and malware arn't happy web consumers.

      Share holders. If I was a major share holder of Google, I'd want to know why we weren't competing head on with Microsoft. Whilst Microsoft are the dominant OS, they control peoples initial perceptions of the web: Internet Explorer, MSN Messenger, Hotmail and Outlook.

      Do no harm. Its in their mission statement. Supporting Windows doesn't exactly fit into that category ;)
      --
      Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
    3. Re:hmmm by michrech · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I dispute this claim.

      You would have to have a company behind a distro that would set it up to be as simple to install software/hardware as possible.

      Yes, we have a few of those. Here is the problem. Most hardware makers absoloutly refuse to create drivers for linux (I can understand why) and, since they won't release their own drivers, they also will not release info for 3rd parties to MAKE drivers (for various reasons).

      It may be "good enough" to you, myself, and others who are already familiar with linux, but the vast majority of the public who might actually try it once would run into one piece of hardware that didn't work and give up on it for good (this has already been seen on MANY occasions, even complained about here on slashdot!)

      --
      bork bork bork!
    4. Re:hmmm by OOGG_THE_CAVEMAN · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Um, I think you forgot

      3. Running all the applications, some of which are critical to business processes, which only run on Windows, like, um, MS Office, for one?

      If you believe Open Office, or some other knockoff, or half-assed open source replacement for any other Windows-only application I might think of, is enough to cause people to totally change their Windows-buying habits, you are out of touch with reality.

      Firefox, from what I hear, is an eminently usable Web browser, and Internet Explorer is hardly critical to most Web applications. Yet, only a relatively small fraction of users make the effort to switch.

      Take a case where something like Microsoft Excel VBA macros or Microsoft Project is playing a daily role in a company's actual function of making money, and how eager will people be to switch to something else, just for the warm feeling they can get from using the Linux distribution du jour?

    5. Re:hmmm by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Your assumption seems to be that this GoogleOS would be targetted at business.

      From the screenshots I have seen I would say that Google is targetting mostly the home user.

      As surprising as it may seem to you, not everyone needs compatibility with existing Windows apps. Furthermore, the addition of another OS to the marketplace probably won't, nor does it necessarily have to, spell the end of Windows.

      It's not the like there needs to be just one OS for everyone. That line of thinking is reserved for Microsoft employees.

      --
      My blog
    6. Re:hmmm by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Realistically, and I say this as a desktop Linux developer myself, Linux is missing a metric fuckton of things that I'd class as absolutely central to being a workable desktop (note; we're not even talking competitive here, we're talking workable). For instance:

      • Driver API. Centralised driver development doesn't work - period. Assume the existance of a totally awesome vendor who is happy to release GPLd drivers with their new widget. They put a penguin on the side of the box. They immediately get their ass sued off by people who buy the widget, plug it into Goobuntu or whatever, nothing happens and for some reason they aren't satisfied by the explanation of "Well it'll Just Work in 12 months when the driver has been accepted upstream, been merged with your distros kernel patches, and you upgrade your OS". They want it to work now damnit, and Windows/MacOS can do this so why can't Linux?

      • More driver stupidity. Not every program people run on Linux is GPLd today, and nobody tries to force them to be so. It's obvious to many people involved with Free software that the victories come when developers see why open sourcing their work is beneficial and choose to do it of their own free will, not when their arms are twisted into it. Yet the kernel developers do exactly this for drivers, and threaten (or actually do) sue random vendors who distribute binary drivers (except not nVidia, as that'd cause mass civil war). Worse, the kernel developers are getting more militant not less. This is simply not a tenable situation for desktops which deal with far wider variety of hardware than servers. In its current state Linux can never be a desktop kernel, unless you redefine "desktop" so far it loses all meaning.

      • C++ support. It doesn't work. It's unbelievably slow, the glibc developers refuse patches to fix it, and is only reliable as long as you use "pure" binaries built with the same compiler that everything else is. This makes robust binary distribution of C++ apps impossible and as nearly every large desktop app is written in C++ this is a problem. Just try distributing a C++ application on Linux without getting all N^2 distros involved or requiring the user to know what a compiler is. Hell, try distributing any application at all without getting distros involved. And for all kinds of reasons centralized software distribution is a big usability and political nono.

      • No easy install/uninstall - if you're comfortable with partitioning etc then you can get Fedora installed without too much bother, but Ubuntu doesn't even have a graphical installer, and as far as I'm aware no distro today offers an easy way to remove it and put Windows back to 100% disk usage. Who in their right mind would try a program that ate 10gigs of disk space and didn't come with a way to uninstall it?

      • No credible DRM support. Every major company that deals with media uses it, Microsoft and Apple support it and Linux sucks at it. This effectively freezes Linux out from the upcoming world of legal online media (music/video stores etc).

      I could go on ... unfortunately there's a general attitude of "who cares" in the community with regards to most of these issues so they aren't getting fixed or even talked about. Without these fundamental things I don't see how Linux can ever be a credible general purpose consumer desktop OS. The best you might get is a closed-box, unupgradable "console" type machine. But I wouldn't class that as a competitor to Windows or the Mac.

  2. Not to sound cynical by Spazntwich · · Score: 5, Interesting

    because Google has a great track record, but I don't think Google is the right company to get all excited about when we find they're working on Linux. IBM, yes, as they have extensive knowledge and experience working with both hardware and OSes.

    Google is good at... gathering and indexing information. I don't see a Google Ubuntu being much more than Ubuntu with bundled linux versions of their various apps.

  3. Another Google lets-see-if-it-sticks project by Viol8 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Google has many fingers in many pies right now, presumably trying the
    chuck-it-and-see-if-it-sticks approach. No doubt this is another of
    those types of projects. If it works they'll hail it as a true MS rival,
    if it doesn't it'll quietly get put down in a back room a year from now
    and forgotten about.

  4. virtualization? by vijayiyer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What if Google is planning on combining this with a virtualization product so that it can be installed under Windows? Your average user is not going to be able to replace Windows. However, Google could release this as a "security zone" which people would install on top of Windows. That, combined with perhaps an improved UI and a suite of desktop software may get a more typical user to install it.

  5. Killer app? by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Google Linux Live CD/DVD.

    Includes:
    OpenOffice.org
    Firefox
    Flash
    Xine (with *licensed* DVD support)
    Evolution
    Opera
    GNOME
    Google Earth for Linux
    Picassa for Linux
    Hello for Linux
    Google Desktop for Linux
    Google Talk for Linux

    Free!

    Optionally avaliable for $25, with a combination USB flash drive/802.11g wireless card. Free access to Google Wi-Fi.

    Run the live CD, it tests all your hardware, if everything is determined to be compatible (wireless, etc. . .) it'll install directly to your drive.

    That addresses 80% of users right there, while "saving" them from all the security hassles of Windows. Google can run an update service, and dump newer versions of these apps right on to people's systems.

    Then Google can become one of the world's largest software stores, too; (like Linspire) think iTunes for Software, only have it all served by Google, and be designed to work on the Google Linux distribution.

    Sure; it won't be slick as OS X. But it'll be way, way slicker than XP. And think about Google's expertise; Google is good at serving lots of customized data. No one will run a better network package management system that Google, especially if Google only has to contend with ONE "stable" version of OS. They could permit other users to access their software, but it would be unsupported; if you wanted it to guaranteed work, you'll be restricted to the Google distribution, which will be tamper resistant (think root account disabled by default, administrator only enabled for power users, requirining a specific interaction with Google (please submit a request to poweruser@gmail.com if you want your system to be unlocked).

    --
    WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
  6. Calm down dear, it's just an internal distro by RossyB · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So Google are producing a Ubuntu-based distribution. This isn't news as most large companies do this (hell, my last job had 10 staff and we were about to produce a Debian customisation). Google used to use a Red Hat distribution but are have been switching since at least November last year according to https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/dulug/2005- November/016656.html.

    I'll eat my dog if this ever is released to the world as a "consumer" distribution, designed to take Windows marketshare.

  7. Why would Google want to offer an OS ? by farzadb82 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well... I think the answer is simpler than it looks. I would think that revenue from Ad Sense, etc. is all secondary to this project. My thought would be that Google wants to create an OS that it will distribute for free, on the basis that unused CPU cycles are "donated" back to Google to use for its own internal processes (ie. indexing, crawling, etc.). Think about it, Google would have the worlds largest distributed parallel computer crawling and indexing away at their command all for a cost of near peanuts to what it would cost to build by purchasing all the necessary hardware.

  8. A softer, kinder Linux... by RyoShin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If Google is working on an actual OS, and not just something to work in the background of, say, a cybercafe computer, then this may be the push Linux needs to become a major Desktop player.

    Not that many people know about Linux. A lot of people know about Google, to the point that "google" has become a verb ("search for"). If someone suggests putting a Linux OS on a computer, the common man will be unsure and wary of it, knowing little about Linux, despite how much it's used regularly. However, say you want to put a new OS from Google on it, and a lot of people will open up. After all, they're used to the Google web search interface, a well made, easy-to-use thing. Surely they can make an OS, too.

    If Google does it right, a lot of people will migrate. "Goobuntu" (which is a stupid name) will be a gateway drug, as it were. Those who are fine with what Google offers in its OS will stay there, while those more interested in digging deeper will move on to other distros.

    Google's main hurdle is being user-friendly. Yes, yes, I'm sure you can get exactly the same result for $X_COMPONENT in Linux as you do in Windows by putting $REALLY_COMPLICATED_STRING in at the command line/terminal, but regular users will be easily confused by that. Hell, most won't even want to know about the command line/terminal. A sleek interface where most common tasks are either easy to do by the user, or done automatically, is what will push this forward.

    And, if the user just has to go into the terminal line, make the commands easier to understand and more intuitive. Move instead of mv, delete instead of whatever is there now, list instead of ls, find instead of grep, help instead of man, etc. With the processing power we have these days, short (and unintuitive) commands really aren't necessary, and if anyone wants the Linux desktop to experience growth, they need to go.

    I know that I, in my limited knowledge and use of Linux, routinely get frusturated having to search (I mean, man -k) again and again for a simple command.

    Only time will tell, however.

  9. GOOG to exhibit at SCALE 4x by irabinovitch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Google's Dan Kegel will be speaking at SCALE 4x on the subject of Linux on the Desktop. Google will also be exhibiting at the show.

  10. Re:What can Google do by sootman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The companies you mention either did Linux as a dying gasp but didn't have enough resources (Corel*) or because it was the only way they could deal with the threat to their proprietary offerings (Novell, Sun) but their hearts really weren't in it. (Besides, none of those three had/have one-tenth the name recognition among the public that Google does.)

    I think a Google Linux for the masses would be the greatest thing ever. They have the resources to make software packaging and delivery easy, they've got lots of cool apps & services they could deploy and integrate, they're smart enough to know how to make a good, clean, easy-to-use UI, they've got the resources to extensively test and then certify application compatibility (i.e., MS Office under Wine or CrossOver) and most importantly, it's a brand that everyone from a CEO to a PHB to a mail room guy knows and trusts.

    What's holding back Linux adoption now? Fragmentation, and the main support options are from companies that techs swear are great but that PHBs have never heard of. Even if a manager did listen to his techs and investigate Linux, what would he see--a bunch of distros with odd names and support from a bunch of companies that come and go, none of which he's ever heard of. Google could change all that.

    Ubuntu is a great distro--pretty, simple, works on lots of hardware. But it has a weird name and no particularly compelling features that would draw most Windows user. For every huge plus (no viruses!) there is an equally huge minus (my favorite old game doesn't work!). Google could change all that, too.

    Basically it comes down to this: if there's one company that a) could make Linux work, b) has a compelling reason to want Linux to be a success among the masses, and c) has a name people respond positively to, Google is it. They could become a major force in both the home and the office. Google can pull it off. I really hope this rumor is true.

    * Corel really could have been great. If they could have made a clean desktop and bundled NATIVE versions of Draw, PhotoPaint, and WordPerfect, it would have been awesome.

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  11. Re:If I were google... by chundo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yeah, that's the only thing that really makes sense. Google's strength is its network computing infrastructure. It's in the position to do what Oracle mistakenly thought they could do years ago - "the network is the computer". Bandwidth is cheap now; the only smart business decision for them in this area would be to provide a standards-based, thin client OS to connect to their online services (Google.com, Gmail, GTalk, Blogger, Maps, etc).

    Think about it. What software has Google released? With the exception of software obtained through acquisitions (Picasa, Earth), it only releases web-based software (Gmail, etc) or lightweight clients to more effectively use its internet-based services (Google bar, Google talk, Google desktop).

    So assuming this rumor has any merit, you'll probably see:

    • A much-simplified version of Ubuntu
    • Possibly a new filesystem
    • Lots of development focus on Firefox

    And hopefully:

    • Increased attention to Vorbis and Theora

    In the short term that may mean they are targeting the internet kiosk market, but I think in the future Google expects all computers to effectively be "internet kiosks".

  12. What would you want in it? by DdJ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm dreaming I know, but here's what I'd want in it:

    1) PAM module to authenticate against GMail's account database.

    2) The backing store for GMail is made available via WebDAV, much like Apple does with DotMac.

    3a) When you log by booting a Goobuntu Live CD, your WebDAV folder is mounted as your home directory.

    3b) When you log on to a system that's installed on a hard drive, it syncs it with a local disk image instead. When you log out, the synced disk image is encrypted immediately, and deleted after enough time without use.

    4) I want a browser interface for some of the stuff in there, for when I can't get to a Goobuntu box. Much of this is already covered (bookmarks, mail), but I'd like more (contact list, documents).

    Then, I could have a desktop machine at home, a laptop, and a Live CD. I could log in to any of them and have the same environment, with all my content ultimately stored on (and indexed by, sure) Google's servers. A buddy could come over and just use it. I could go to a buddy's house and just use his system. And so on. And if I'm at a kiosk at a conference, I can still just bring up a web interface and get some things done.

    (While I'm at it, can I have SyncML too?)