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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.
This is excellent news, because a commercial vendor with *lots* of clout will - finally! - push Linux to OEMs. Like Android, they really want to go after the OEM market with this one. Don't be fooled by the "it's mainly for web browsing" spin - You might not run AutoCAD or Photoshop yet (or ever) on it, but apps (especially HTML5 enabled apps) for home users will follow, targeting the XP/Vista Home Edition user types. And this would be sweet for corporate desktop deployments -- no virus hassles, little to update, most stuff stored on the server (assuming they get offline support sorted out well, of course).
Fingers crossed that Google's "Linux" will have more polish than what's there in distros so far. Microsoft "love our licensing or leave" and Linux distros "we're open source so live with the flaws" will then both be on notice.
Interestingly, Chrome OS is apparently a bare-bones Linux + a "new windowing system" + the Chrome browser.
I can't wait to see what the new windowing system is. I'd really like to see some innovation there, much like OSX created an amazing GUI layer on top what is essentially Mach/BSD. The challenge to Microsoft aside, this will be a wake-up call to Gnome/KDE. The good news is, because this ought to be open source, the OSS community can really get behind this and improve other products.
And oh, anyone else notice the irony that the Chrome _browser_ for Linux seems largely like an afterthought right now? Still, way to go, Google.
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I wonder if they have Google Native Client in mind when they say they're going to re-engineer security from the ground up? Very cool technology.
Chrome OS focusing on speed, simplicity and security does not imply Windows cannot deliver in these areas. It's just an alternative operating system, and has yet to prove itself. The summary sound rather, well, dumb.
Oh, don't beat around the bush. I'll come right out and say it. I think Windows 7 is fast, safe, and simple to use. I have Vista, Win7 and Ubuntu 8 on my machine, each with its own drive, and while Vista is a tad bit better than Ubuntu, Win7 runs rings around both, and is easier to use than either. I do not think I have enjoyed using Windows this much since NT first got the Win95 shell.
This is my sig.
I'm amazed at the amount of negative responses from Linux fans... This is what we have all been waiting for - isn't it ??
No matter how scary google's power is the main things are that:-
1) They are using Linux
2) They WILL make deals with computer manufacturers to get the OS preinstalled.
3) They will opensource the code
The only people who should fear this O.S is MS and existing Linux distros - although the competation and the opensourcing of the code will benifit the entire community.
I'm sure MS will still be the best at saying 'Have a nice day' and flipping CD's.
This is a Linux distro that can't run any non-google-SDK software. No X server wipes out being able to run most of the GUI software in the ecosystem. You locked to google. Why would I want this? Technical Linux people aren't going to want it. Normal users won't dare install any thing called an operating system. And everyone, will want to be able to run the apps they want, not only google approved ones. All this pain just for browser? This seems to be built on the dream of a thin client that runs nothing but a browser and all software is web software. It's an old dream, the world only needs five real computers, etc etc. Thing is, we don't want to be controlled, never have. I want to run what I want, how I want thank you very much Mr mainframe. If I'm right about the web app stance, this is a stupid idea come up with by people who think they can see the future but aren't looking at the past. The best google could have done is done yet another standard Linux distro, with X in some form, so they can tap into the existing software ecosystem. They can quality control the software with a repository. That way they can take advantage of much of the existing Unix software. Then they can use their brand, and Linux speed, security, software base, etc etc, to make it big in the OS world.
Why Canonical and not any other Linux company, I mean (K/X/Ed)Ubuntu is great, (most of my computers run Kubuntu or Xubuntu), but Google has a particular objective: directing as many as possible users to Google products, this is clearly not the goal of Canonical.
And besides, diversity is good, the goal is not to supersede one monoculture with another - Ok, Google is not the first address as far as diversity is concerned, but still.
It's not that the two are the only players in the FLOSS field, and probably they are not even the best for the specific requirements of netbooks. Fluxbox, Enlightment, or even something like Sugar are much more lightweight and might be better for the functions required. Or even Google has something new and exciting to offer. Anyways, I even doubt that the KDE and Gnome guys actually wouldn't appreciate other ideas being tested.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Well, the UI is the most resource intensive aspect Linux from my perspective. Conversely, the java VMs on android are probably it's greatest resource hog. Windows and MAC have more "optimized" UIs, whereas most things on Linux UI are X-based which means most communication is serialized through a single socket and much information is stored redundantly in the app and the X-server. Hell, in recent versions of Fedora I have a problem where my X-server grows to over a gig of RAM even when all windows have been closed. I hate the fact that I have to log-out/in-again because of mem-leaks in either X or gnome (can't determine which). Ironically, I still prefer gnome over Mac/Windows UIs in terms of it's expressiveness / adaptability to my needs.
So it makes sense to provide OS hooks for an alternate UI mode.. Hell there's dedicated VGA mode for games in existing Linux. Gnome/KDE are not light-weight (though X can be), and I can't imagine how you could retool them to be. Much less how you could to this in a way that supports existing KDE/Gnome/X apps.
Remember, we're talking the slowest possible hardware above cell-phone-grade that we're talking about here. Big screen and keyboard, but essentially a cell-phone/PDA on the backend. I wouldn't be surprised if the browser is required to be full screen like on a cell.
Further, there is a serious argument to be made about low-performance devices and the lack of desire to store sensitive / loosable information on them. Viruses + hardware failure + hardware upgrade means losing your data. While some people avidly setup backup strategies, it's applied with lesser diligence to lower-end devices. And if you're buying on the cheap, than backup solutions cost extra thereby defeating the point. Why buy a $100 netbook then have to buy a $90 external backup hard drive?
I'm not saying this isn't valid, I'm saying that there are massive groups of people that are affected by quality-control issues and migration strategies of software vendors including MS, and google is allegedly attempting to obviate that aspect entirely by making low-cost devices 100% online.
I do see a valid use-case.. 3'rd world, poor US citizens, virtually every high school/elementary school.
Of course google is merely trying to promote it's online dominance and we should take pause. But other than the OS, I'm not sure that this ties your experience to google (though maybe their search engine/user-profile - but anti-trust will eventually kick in).
-Michael
If it's open source and has a unified API, you're overlooking the fact that this is now real competition to Windows. Brand name? Check. R&D budget? Check. Third party support? Check. Linux kernel? Check. Imagine Canonical with billions of dollars.
Hell, if it's actually a brand new WM this will probably take the top distro spot the day after release. Just providing developers with a consistent platform that requires the investment of one working computer and an internet connection is pretty appealing. Even if it sucks for Linux diehards, the competition will change the landscape for Microsoft and perhaps even Apple.
Imagine an advertising campaign: "Is your computer broken? Just stop by your local Starbucks or Staples and pick up your free copy of Google OS. After making room on your hard drive, it will load a new and secure operating system that will allow you to browse the internet, play Solitaire, and write letters with it's included office suite. Once it's loaded, you'll have the option of recovering data and backing it up online for free so you'll never have to worry about data loss again."
Yeah. Some eyebrows were just raised in Redmond and Cupertino.
Great. I'm sure current applications will be compatible, nothing will break, all the libs will support the compiles, and so on.
Why would any of that concern Google?
They'll be offering a cut-down OS, probably with a new windowing system based on Android, which offers opportunities to develop web apps in the future which truly span the gap between connected desktop apps and web apps. They won't be concerned with porting existing Linux apps over, and neither will their users, who will be buying a netbook to use google mail, some sort of IM app and the internet, and not much more.
It's not even clear if you'll be able to write binary apps for the system at all (they mention web apps and nothing else). Supporting Linux apis would just slow them down, and it probably won't be X based anyway.
This is a foundation for a new generation of apps which aren't beholden to binary APIs controlled by the likes of Microsoft. In parallel with Chrome it lets them dictate the future of web/desktop integration, and start really pushing HTML5 features, and online/offline integration, rather than being continually held back by Microsoft's attempts to hobble the web and tie it to Windows.
This is not to put down any effort to get rid of X11, rather, my guess that cross-operating system application porting will once again go to hell, cause conditional compiles, and much Zantac consumption.
All of which matters ... not at all. The whole purpose of the device is to run ONE application, the browser. Everything else is there to support that.
I suppose they'll have to design some other applications, to manage machine-specific configuration (WiFi settings, etc.) but maybe they'll just do that through a localhost web interface as well.
Google doesn't care if it's impossible to build standard applications on it; actually from their perspective it's probably a plus if you can't. (And I expect they'll probably lock it down to make it intentionally hard to do.) Easier to support.
Based on what's been made available so far, the device is squarely targeted at people who do all their work in the browser, or could start doing it. It's essentially a thin client to Google's web apps.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It doesn't cost anything. Every modern windowing system is a client-server design. Clients send drawing commands to the server and the server controls the display hardware. X11 lets you select the IPC mechanism, you can either use shared memory and local sockets / pipes (like any other display server) or you can use a network socket. A few examples of when I've found network transparency useful: When only one machine in the lab had a CD burner, I could run the CD-R software on that machine while someone else was using it and displaying the GUI on my machine. I also use it when I play music on the machine connected to my amplifier, so I can display the GUI on my laptop. There are lots of cases where network transparency is useful, and this is only going to increase as people have more computers and better network access. VNC has worse performance than X - particularly when you add something like NX in as a cache - and doesn't let you forward a single application easily.
It is just that I think programs with limited set of features are easier to modify. And ability to change is essential for future proof software.
So you're in favour of X11 then? It separates out policy and mechanism, so you can easily replace the window management or compositing strategy without modifying the core protocol. It has a simple extension mechanism, so you can add support for new features easily. Examples of features added via this mechanism include shared memory support, OpenGL, compositing, shaped windows, and so on. X11 lets you add new features easily without breaking backwards compatibility.
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Not all of us like KDE and Gnome. Although they have innovated in some areas, they're otherwise both just attempts to make an MS clone. While this might be the right thing to make "Linux on the desktop" succeed, it's not what some of envision as the future of computing or even how we'd like the current state of computing.
/. crowd has changed from the attitude of "these MS clones are crap, desktop Linux should be something better" to "ho hum, this is how it should be, why innovate"? Back when this was just "Rob's page" you would've been flamed into oblivion for that public show of affection for KDE/Gnome.
I've been a Linux user since 1996 and I've watched the entire "Linux on the desktop" debacle unfold. It's sad to see that the
Who are you to tell Google what they can and cannot build? It's about time someone put a face on the Linux desktop other than that of an MS clone. Hopefully it's not just a new window manager but a new window system. X, while great in its day, has run its course. I'd like to something fresh that builds on the concept of using modern graphics hardware to do all the heavy lifting for the GUI instead of clever CPU-intensive hacks on top of Xlib**.
You don't like Google's vision for Linux on netbooks. What's your alternative vision?
** I've written many apps with Xlib. The underlying ideas/primitives that X uses for graphics ops are obsolete so doing anything "cool" (and sometimes useful!) requires using crufty extensions rather than calling routines that are a "natural" part of the system.
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
Oh my god, dude. Do not read the documentation on the modern WDDM... it will break your heart. You're like a child whose puppy died at the vet and no one has broken the news to you... you're still.. just thinking that he lives on a farm somewhere.
I can't believe you think these features are advanced enough to brag about.
Do yourself a favor and boot up Windows on your box and watch a video... enjoy the effortless sound support, and smooth video acceleration. Or activate DWM and move your windows around, watch them not tear... watch the compositing layer not crash. Start up a game and be entranced by what modern graphics hardware is capable of!
Why, you've just listed off a bunch of really basic implementations of hardware acceleration, really life support for X to make it not seem ancient, and yet they're just words. When it all comes down to it, it underperforms in almost any metric of display performance... you can't port games to it, you can't easily accelerate flash on it. It's the reason JavaFX came out on Windows and Mac first, despite the fact that Sun is a major UNIX vendor.
What else is there to say that hasn't been said? It's still constrained through the filesystem socket layer... so you'll always be making more syscalls when performing basic drawing commands. DRI is not broad or extensible enough to take advantage of advanced features on modern graphics hardware, and DRM is fundamentally flawed. It will have to be redesigned if you are ever to get the entirety of OpenGL working.
If you think X is "impressive" because you are able to fire cryptic commands into the CLI and get windows to pop up on different machines, then you need to stay away from discussions on linux for the destkop and restrain yourself. Your corner case is irrelevant on modern hardware, it's difficult to use, and it's people like you who are keeping UNIX from ever having modern display capabilities with your antiquarian usage habits and loud activism thereof. Just keep using X and let regular users have an at least comparable or competitive display system on the linux platform. Let go!