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Google Announces Chrome OS, For Release Mid-2010
Zaiff Urgulbunger writes "After years of speculation, Google has announced Google Chrome OS, which should be available mid-2010. Initially targeting netbooks, its main selling points are speed, simplicity and security — which kind of implies that the current No.1 OS doesn't deliver in these areas! The Chrome OS will run on both x86 and ARM architectures, uses a Linux kernel with a new windowing system. According to Google, 'For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.' Google says that this new OS is separate from Android, as the latter was designed for mobile phones and set-top boxes, whereas Chrome OS is designed 'for people who spend most of their time on the web.'" The New York Times' coverage is worth reading, and there are stories popping up all over the web.
While there is no mention of a kernal, it does appear to use a Linux kernel:
"The Chrome OS will run on both x86 and ARM architectures, uses a Linux kernel with a new windowing system." :-P
From the horse's mouth:
Go somewhere random
"Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code." Funny what you can learn from TFA.
Google has recently been active in directfb.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
"Another window manager just dilutes the current pool....."
It isn't 'another window manager', it's a new windowing system. Don't think X11+KDE/Gnome, think Apple CGL+Quartz.
Tell me, what kind of backwards logic makes the X server be the display and the X client be the application?
Logic that accounts for two facts; that computers can have multiple users, and that they can be networked. SSH lets you run arbitrary command-line applications on remote machines. To do that with arbitrary graphical applications - emphasis on "arbitrary", i.e. not re-writing every graphical app as a GUI client & back-end server - you need something on the local machine to which the remote machine can send display commands, and for proper integration with graphical apps running on the local machine, ideally that same something should be catering for both. So.. you run a display server, and anything that wants to display graphics - locally or otherwise - connects to it. Simple.
Like a lot of things in the *NIX world, it stops seeming backwards when you discard a few assumptions: that a computer is only used by one person (or that everyone who uses it is happy to share the same account), and that a keyboard, monitor and mouse will always be plugged in. These assumptions have kept Windows out of many a server room for years.
However, the difficulties of writing user-friendly software outside the "comfort zone" these assumptions provide have kept Linux out of many a living room for just as long. It's not impossible, though, and the situation is improving rapidly.