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.

Comments

Uh huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's GNU/Chrome, thanks.

Re:Uh huh.

[beowulfcluster]

"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.

Re:Uh huh.

[TropicalCoder]

3) Try to get people to download it, install it alongside or replace their current OS (how many of us would really do this except to try it out as a toy and then go back to our other OS?

It has a lot more potential on the desktop than you suggest. Imagine dual booting between Windows and the Google Chrome OS. You could boot nearly instantly into the Google OS to browse the web in complete security. The Google OS could also run from a VM for secure web browsing as well. Windoz users becoming routinely p0wned will be a thing of the past.

Re:Uh huh.

[tverbeek]

They're offering it to OEMs (specifically notebook OEMs). It's the same strategy they're using with Android, which seems to be working OK so far.

Re:Uh huh.

[julian67]

"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.

Re:Uh huh.

[Povno]

Actually the more I think about it the more I am beginning to believe that it might not be so difficult to at least get people to try it.

Google is everywhere; home pages, search bars, browsers, phones (more will come I'm sure) and has even become a synonym for the word "search". Google it and you'll see. :)

Alternatives to Windows do not exist for the average user because they are not common knowledge. If you say Linux to someone they are oblivious. If you explain it you loose them more. "So... it's like Windows then right?" And since they have it... why bother. Same thing with BSD or any other alternative. Google has the resources to put it out there. And if people are willing to try an OS because it is made by Google, then they have opened themselves up for alternatives. Thus becoming aware that they exist. And what's to say, they won't explore more if they feel that Google's Os isn't right for them?

We always say it's a preference. But the majority of average users don't have the luxury of preference. Windows is all they know.

Re:Uh huh.

[postbigbang]

Great. I'm sure current applications will be compatible, nothing will break, all the libs will support the compiles, and so on.

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.

Re:Uh huh.

[zeromorph]

They could have just invested in Canonical and Ubuntu, rather than try to reinvent the wheel.

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.

Another window manager just dilutes the current pool of people trying to do KDE and Gnome.

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.

Re:Uh huh.

[maraist]

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).

Re:Uh huh.

[Serious Callers Only]

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.

Re:Uh huh.

[Raumkraut]

But that's okay, because it'll be a beta.

Re:Uh huh.

[PainKilleR-CE]

The main thing Google has going for them in this is the same one that Microsoft has going for them:
When someone asks 'where do I get an application to write my important documents? spreadsheets? email?', Google can say 'We have that for you', just like Microsoft does, instead of saying 'You can go here, here, there, over there, or somewhere around there to get that'. People like the answers to be simple, and Google is famous for being simple.

Further, since Google claims to be making the browser the focus of the OS, the interface will already be familiar to most of the users, even if the window dressing is a little different from what they're accustomed to (and really, isn't that the case for most users with Microsoft trying to push XP off the side of the road?).

I don't think this will be the end of the road for Microsoft, but I certainly think it has the chance at being more successful in the Netbook space than Linux has been so far.

Re:Uh huh.

[trum4n]

...RTFA

You must be new here.

Re:Uh huh.

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:Uh huh.

[AKAImBatman]

I have a problem where my X-server grows to over a gig of RAM even when all windows have been closed.

You do realize that X memmaps the video memory into its memory space? This gives it some rather crazy numbers for RAM usage even when it's running thin. Especially with modern cards having 512MB of video mem or more.

Otherwise I do not disagree with your general statements. :-)

Re:Uh huh.

[Kadin2048]

I think he means "OK" in that it's currently running on a smartphone that you can go out and buy today, and has sold about a million units so far.

Re:Uh huh.

[MeatBag PussRocket]

Google has one thing that Canonical and Ubuntu even red had doesnt, broad household name recognition

Re:Uh huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm skeptical that Google would be able to get people to try it

They can always do what Microsoft did to get people to use Windows, and what Google already did to get people to use Android on the G1: have it be pre-installed.

You buy the machine, you turn it on, and you're running the software that somebody wants you to. Problem solved.

Re:Uh huh.

[postbigbang]

If it's just a browser drone, then why not use something still slimmer? It doesn't take much in a kernel to run a single application, in fact 64K ought to do it with room to spare-- save rendering jpgs and video.

Bah--- they're not going to support much at a zero cost anyway. It's a community-support ecosystem at best, and trying to teach mom at worst.

This is why it will fail: in reality, it's stupid as you describe it compared to Ubuntu, Xandros, and even wiggy Linux or even Android builds. There is no value as you describe it, unless it's the prospect of throw-away netbooks, and the world has a recycling problem as it is.

Re:Uh huh.

[icannotthinkofaname]

Imagine the stereotypical average user actually having any comprehension of what you're talking about. If the average user was that computer-savvy, Windows users wouldn't get routinely p0wned to begin with.

Re:Uh huh.

[warrior]

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.

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 /. 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.

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.

Re:Uh huh.

[slim]

Google has a particular objective: directing as many as possible users to Google products

That is of course true. But I think the OS will further that aim in a more subtle manner than the obvious.

I think that right now, they're just pushing for mass acceptance of web apps as a mainstream mode of computer use. Even if it's other people's web apps. They can grow the pool so it's big enough for everyone to play.

Of course they'd prefer you to use Google Docs over some competitor's web word processor; and most people probably will do. But if only for regulatory reasons - and not looking evil - they'll coexist with such competitors.

The second way they can win, is that if some startup invents a web app that Google's not doing, they might well choose to host it on Google App Engine.

Re:Uh huh.

[MSG]

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.

You say "single socket" as if all of the X clients were contending for a resource. Every connection accepted by a server (any server) creates a new file descriptor in that process. There's no more a problem with a "single socket" in X11 than there is in any other server.

Moreover, unless all of your applications are running over the network, they're almost certainly using shared memory rather than file IO (through the socket) for display. Your entire characterization of X11 shows how little you know about how it works.

Hell there's dedicated VGA mode for games in existing Linux.

What, you mean framebuffer? Yes, it exists, but it's extremely slow. If there are games that use it, I still wouldn't characterize it as being "for games". OpenGL under X11 is definitely the preferred setup for accelerated video.

Re:Uh huh.

[malevolentjelly]

You say "single socket" as if all of the X clients were contending for a resource. Every connection accepted by a server (any server) creates a new file descriptor in that process. There's no more a problem with a "single socket" in X11 than there is in any other server.

Moreover, unless all of your applications are running over the network, they're almost certainly using shared memory rather than file IO (through the socket) for display. Your entire characterization of X11 shows how little you know about how it works.

This is just details, the fact of the matter is that Microsoft, Apple, and even Be had much faster methods of accessing video hardware and displaying things on the screen. Whether or not it's constrained to a single socket, it's constrained to a socket model and thus the filesystem IO interface. The network transparency would be wonderful if we still had our graphics hardware in separate boxes from our servers, but Google is making a desktop system. DRI/DRM are not really broad enough for modern graphics hardware, anyway. If Google is clever, they'll use their muscle to start from scratch, providing a sane opengl accelerated driver model, like Apple. X's architecture is probably at the peak performance-wise of what the open source community can make it do.

What, you mean framebuffer? Yes, it exists, but it's extremely slow. If there are games that use it, I still wouldn't characterize it as being "for games". OpenGL under X11 is definitely the preferred setup for accelerated video.

It's better, but it's not WDDM... this is just the best of what's currently available. Any graphical application from video playback to 3d will always perform better on Windows than Linux on the same hardware. It doesn't matter whether you're using OpenGL or Direct X, they just have a proper display model for the desktop. The last thing the linux community needs is people trying to pull X into another decade, making it now almost 30 years out of date.

Re:Uh huh.

[RaymondKurzweil]

** 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.

Understand that extensions are a natural part of the system. The X11 protocol was designed with the support for extensions from day one. A lot of the original X people knew that a lot of core X was woefully inadequate or behind the times from the very beginning. People knew that text handling in X was crap. People knew that core X rendering was extremely limited the day it was released.

The unfortunate story of the X extension system has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with commercial politics. The idea of X from a political standpoint, was a miserable failure.

The fact that text in X wasn't really even improved that much until the turn of the century, nearly 15 years, is a testament to that.

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**.

Thjs comment sounds like you came out of a time warp from 5 years ago.
A lot of this is done. Features like the RENDER extension can be implemented with hardware acceleration in the X server, and in fact they are in many cases. That is what things like EXA and UXA are for. AIGLX was implemented to allow acceleration of eyecandy that requires server support.

Things aren't perfect, mainly due to the realities of non-technical implementation issues including the fact that hardware vendors either can't (NVIDIA) or won't (Via) play ball and that volunteers that aren't employed by Intel or Redhat are mainly interested in scratching their own itches.

I don't see Google changing this fundamental property in any regard, by the way. While they might make some interesting things for certain hardware they're interested in, and I welcome that, they are simply not going to change the status quo for support. A graphics utopia that makes everyone happy is impossible. Who cares?

Re:Uh huh.

[w0mprat]

[fake] Steve Jobs says:

First of all, nobody seems to appreciate how goddamn hard it is to make an operating system. You don't just wake up one day and fall out of bed and make one. Not even the smarty pants kiddies at Google can do that. These things take years. Decades, even. Ours started out 20 years ago, at NeXT. You could say it goes back to 1977, with the BSD guys. Heck, you could even say it goes back to 1969 with Dennis Thompson and Lionel Ritchie. Even Windows is -- what? Twenty years old? Something like that. For that matter, look at Linux. Correct me if I'm wrong -- and I'm sure you fucking freetards will find something to correct -- but I think Linus Tordalv started working on Linux back in 1991 when he was a high school student in his native Denmark. That's nearly twenty years ago, and the shit still doesn't run right.

http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2009/07/lets-all-take-deep-breath-and-get-some.html

Also: see my sig

Competition is good, baby!

[bheer]

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.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[cheetham]

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

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[bheer]

From the horse's mouth:

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple -- Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I remember someone talking about this, citing the lack of standards when it comes to doing anything GUI-wise in linux which is slowing development. If this OS really does ditch X etc then Google have a clean slate on which to design the browser.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[tjstork]

The challenge to Microsoft aside, this will be a wake-up call to Gnome/KDE. The

Well I hear you about Gnome. It seems like they have just run out of gas.

I think the problem with KDE is that they woke up too much. KDE 4 seems like a project where they have genuinely bit off more than they can chew. They got so caught up in the big picture and the big rewrite that they seem to have actually regressed at the details level. I've ripped Gnome and KDE's file dialogs on my own site... way behind the times.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[wisty]

Even with just a browser, you need multiple windows. When an AJAX command tells the browser to pop up a new window, the browser uses the native windowing system to pop up a new window. You also need windows for multiple browser instances, tabs, menus, and other fun stuff. It's not turtles all the way down.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[suso]

So then really this Chrome OS will be a Linux distribution. Technically right?

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[MrHanky]

Who cares whether they care? They will care to make it useful on real hardware, and that means improved hardware support.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[je ne sais quoi]

I can't wait to see what the new windowing system is.

You and me both, but I'm a little confused. What do they mean by "windowing system"? Are they doing a rewrite of X11, or do they mean they are designing new window decorations and widgets (e.g. gtk or qt), or do they mean the whole desktop environment (e.g., kde, gnome)?

If it's a replacement for X11, why are they doing that? I could see that maybe X11 has too much legacy code and really isn't designed to be the most efficient for a single screen laptop where you don't need an X windows server per se, but on the other hand, I can't imagine that they are going to need something that can outperform X11 for gpu intensive applications like gaming development. I'd love to be wrong about that last bit though. Whatever they mean by it though, it'll be nice to see.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[wisty]

Doesn't this sound a lot like iPhone 1.0, when SJ told developers to use "Safari" as the app framework?

Still, I guess nobody does web dev like google.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[larry bagina]

Google has recently been active in directfb.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[jellomizer]

Maybe. But not really.

Most distributions of Linux follow a lot of common standards.
Similar directory structure. Similar Apps installed...

If you just take the Linux Kernel then just build an OS on top of that you would have something dramatically different then a Linux Distribution.

Lets look at OS X. OS X is based off a Unix Kernel. But it isn't much of Unix Distribution. Apple just left Unix compatibility so they can market it.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[jipn4]

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 OS X GUI layer is essentially NeXTStep on a revised Display Postscript. It's slower and more resource intensive than X11, its graphics is targeted primarily at desktop usage. Where is the innovation?

X11 has been innovative from its inception, and it continues to be amazingly innovative today. For example, the kinds of visual effects Compiz delivers effortlessly and cleanly are much harder to achieve in OS X.

this will be a wake-up call to Gnome/KDE

What exactly do you think will be the "wake-up call"? Both Gnome and KDE have non-X11 backends, but people don't use them because there really is no benefit associated with getting rid of X11.

A non-X11 backend may make sense for Chrome OS because Chrome OS probably needs less functionality than X11 provides and it makes writing drivers easier. But in terms of innovation and functionality, X11 is second to none.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[noundi]

You're wrong. It is a Linux distribution. Distributions can differ from eachother as much as they please. That's the fucking beauty of it so don't even begin to undermine it, troll. And don't compare Unix variants to Linux distributions, that only shows how little you know about the subject.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[Seth Kriticos]

I really don't think they will replace X11. It's a stable and effective windowing system, and it also consumes low amount of resources (my N800 also runs one perfectly fine, and that's a 400MHz ARM with no GPU). It is also really powerful on appropriate hardware (with wine I can perfectly well play games of the newest generation without speed penalties). X11 is also quite uniform between Linux platforms. It also just provides the bare minimum to communicate with the hardware and display graphic primitives on the screen. The problem with X11 is that it is a very old design and an extreme pain to develop with directly because of the API 'aesthetics'.. but it would be much much harder to replace it with something from scratch. My guess is that Google will go on top of X11 and write a window manager (program that manages running windows, adds decorations, bars, icons etc..). Then tightly integrates this with their browser. Well, let's see what happens.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[Anonymous Coward]

No gpu intensive applications involved.

You mean like Flash, playing HD video or Google's own O3D and Google Earth?

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[agentultra]

But in terms of innovation and functionality, X11 is second to none.

Amen.

It does have it's own challenges (being somewhat difficult to configure on its own for non-technical users), but the flexibility it affords is awesome.

... and it's a server too! Maybe if we'd spent the last 15 years working on a standard X11-like network protocol instead of hacking stateless application GUIs out of scripted marked-up text, we'd have a more useful Internet than we do now. But I digress.

Loves me X, I do! :)

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[Hal_Porter]

Google has recently been active in directfb.

http://directfb.org/index.php?path=Projects%2F%2B%2BDFB

++DFB

++DFB is an advanced version of DFB++

It's an incompatible fork with fundamental changes.

Applications no longer deal with interface pointers. The classes wrapping around interfaces are used a container for an interface pointer, providing garbage collection the "direct" way 8-)

Good grief.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[contrapunctus]

Actually I'd be more worried about privacy. Can I assume everthing I do (or browse) will be reported back to Google?

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[suso]

Nope, its a Linux distribution because it uses the Linux kernel. What you are used to is many GNU/Linux distributions. But there are other distrubtions out there. Gentoo is very different from a lot of other Linux distributions, but it still falls into the GNU category because by default it comes with most of the stand GNU utilities.

Someone needs to make a chart or something.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[noundi]

Nobody, but a lot of people opened their mouths and now there's diharrea all over it.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[PopeRatzo]

google dont care about Linux

So?

its only a means to earn more $$$ and gain more 00 (thats eyeballs)

Will someone please explain "capitalism" and "google is a public corporation" to this young man?

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[Fred_A]

The software architecture is simple â" Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel."

This is what the world has been waiting for....

Finally, it's about time we moved on. X is dead, all hail Y !
Or is it finally Berlin ^H^H^H^H^H^H Fresco ??

Oh wait, X works fine after all and is being actively fixed.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[orasio]

Right, but If we call this new OS, the "Google" OS, then we have to go back and call every other Linux distribution, "GNU" OSs. I'm OK with that.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[voidptr]

Considering Leopard on Intel is UNIX certified, the latest version of OS X is as much Unix as AIX, Irix, or Solaris is.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[mwvdlee]

If Chrome OS is essentially a thin client OS build around a webbrowser... how is it any better than any other operating system?
Does it offer anything to make the web experience better than using Firefox on Linux or the Chrome browser on WinXP?

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[Fred_A]

The problem with X11 is that it is a very old design and an extreme pain to develop with directly because of the API 'aesthetics'.. but it would be much much harder to replace it with something from scratch.

But there are dozens, if not hundreds of libraries which address that particular problem. I don't think anyone talks to X directly any more, it would be a bit like programming in assembly.

And an awful lot of the legacy crud of X seems to be replaced nowadays (although that's still work in progress I suppose). So we'll presumably end up with old compatibility stuff and the new standard interfaces.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[rho]

Interestingly, Chrome OS is apparently a bare-bones Linux + a "new windowing system" + the Chrome browser.

The only thing that interests me is how ebullient people are about something that they know nothing about, simply because it's got Google's name on it.

As Ted Dziuba put it, Google's very good at selling ads. Supporting actual customers? Not so much.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[ByOhTek]

I'm guessing it's more about how you said it than what you said. You are not inaccurate, well the "troll" part is an assumption and could be inaccurate, don't assume malice when ignorance is suitable, but the main points are correct. But phrasing something rudely as you did doesn't server to help anyone any better than a more polite phrasing, and in most cases it actually does a worse job.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[tjstork]

You just can't win in the software world

No one escapes. For years Microsoft lead Linux in the driver's department until Linux settled on a driver model and stuck with it. Now, Microsoft redoes their driver model, which honestly needed to be done, but broke compatibility with a bunch of stuff, and now, they are the bad guys for not having enough drivers. So, pretty much, on the same exact issue, compatibility with legacy drivers versus innovation in the kernel, both Linux and Windows have been on both sides.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[beelsebob]

Uh? OS X is *very* UNIX like. So unix like that it's certified as such. It's probably closer to what you might refer to as a "normal" UNIX environment than many others in fact. Open Solaris is *much* further away than OS X is -- it even disposes of the normal UNIX permissioning system, along with many other things.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[gentlemen_loser]

Don't be fooled by the "it's mainly for web browsing spin"? It seemed pretty clear to me. Google's direction all along has been to move applications from the desktop to the web (which in many cases, in my opinion, is a stupid idea).

Google actually states: '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.'

Their comments about giving developers the largest user base of any platform are complete bullshit. Web developers already have that user base and not every application should be ported to run in a browser. At first, I cringed a little when I heard that they were getting pulled into an anti-trust investigation. Now I feel better about it. I have always had an uneasy feeling about an advertising company being able to gather and broker as much information about someone as they do. For Christ's sake, they archive, search, and use your EMAIL to develop more targeted ads. The idea that my entire OS could/would gather everything it could on me scares the crap out of me.

I realize I am sort of rambling, but I have two main points:
1) Not every app belongs on the web. In fact, most do not.
2) I am not comfortable with an advertising company being so in control of all of our private data. An earlier commenter pointed out what a big "win" this would be for corporations looking to deploy thin clients. How much of a "win" will it be to have Google searching, indexing, and archiving all of your company's sensitive documentation, all in the name of building better advertisements?

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[LKM]

While it is technically a Linux distro, it's not what you would expect if somebody told you it was a Linux distro. Typically, if I say "Hey, look at this Linux distro", you expect a Linux kernel, X, and probably KDE or Gnome. People don't typically call Android a Linux distro, either.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[cashman73]

Hate to point this out, but didn't somebody else already come up with an operating system that was tightly integrated with their web browser? That worked out so well for them!

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[Eravnrekaree]

Well, these are myths about X. First X does not have "Legacy" code. Code is not like milk where it goes sour after a certain amount of time. Code that is decades can still be perfectly good and in fact newer attempts to implement the same things implementing by older code can actually result in buggier code of poorer quality. X is actually pretty efficient and does not use a lot of memory compared to other GUIs. The core X engines probably use somewhere in the area of a few megabytes.

X also has an extension mechanism where the protocol can be extended to keep up with new features and developments. X is a pretty capable system, and keeps up with all of the most recent needs of GUIs. It also has assured backwards compatability and has become sort of an API standard, so you could always count on an X application running on any X server without having to worry about compatability issues. The network transparent design allows for things that are unthinkable on windows, like running programs on one computer and displaying to another, and displaying programs from several user to one X server, etc.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[DuckDodgers]

All Linux distributions have a Linux kernel, by definition. Most have X. But there's a decent number that skip without KDE and GNOME. There are at least half a dozen competent window managers that are not nearly as feature-rich as KDE or GNOME but great for running on hardware that would choke on the more resource-intensive pair.

I don't mean to denigrate the hard work done by the KDE and GNOME teams. They were decent a decade ago and are excellent today. But one of the territories where Microsoft's grip is weak is cheaper hardware. I think it's intelligent for Google's OS to tackle this first. I also think it's a place where KDE and GNOME have the least to offer.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[LKM]

My guess would be that they are replacing X with something much simpler. Presumably, they don't really need moving windows, client/server detachement, network transparency and other things. All they need is one huge window with a browser inside, and perhaps a way to show alerts or popups.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[larry bagina]

Look at Core Image Filters and Core Animation.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[slim]

so tivo is a linux distribution?

By any rational definition, yes it is.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[jgostling]

It did work quite well for them. Got them to over 90% browser market share. Now if Google Search starts working slower for the other players we have a new shiny antitrust suit on the works.

Cheers!

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[GargamelSpaceman]

If they open source it, and give it away for free ( as in freedom ), I think that makes them immune from antitrust issues.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[gbjbaanb]

one man's 'clunky' interface is another man's 'horrible, broken, unmaintainable, must-be-rewritten-from-scratch' interface. The reality is that its almost always good enough for its purpose assuming you are prepared to work with it and not assume that everything needs to be 'fixed' by changing them to your preferred programming model.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[ClosedSource]

"But in terms of innovation and functionality, X11 is second to none."

But the main driving force behind network transparency was the particular ecosystem that X was developed for: Centralized processing and relatively dumb terminals. Once computing power is decentralized, you're left with a system that unnecessarily couples networking and windowing.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[DragonWriter]

To me, it sounds a bit like Chrome OS is an operating system where the browser is the OS. It's not yet clear whether Google expect all applications running on Chrome OS to be web applications. Let's suppose the answer is 'yes'...

In that case, perhaps they don't really need a windowing system at all. What if the graphical interface of Chrome OS is to be a web browser that displays itself as a single window in a simple frame buffer?

While I suspect that the assumption that the application model is going to be dominated by browser-rendered apps, I doubt they'll go "single window". I can very easily see something where Chrome is the only user-facing truly native application, but where, just as with desktop Chrome on conventional OS's, they fully support multiple windows, dragging tabs out to do make new windows (or dragging tabs in to collapse multiple windows into one), etc.

For netbooks, single-window might be sufficient, but it seems from the coverage very clear that Google sees netbooks just as a stepping stone, so I doubt very much that they are aiming this in a way that it will be just barely good enough for netbooks, and not suitable for anything else.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[DragonWriter]

Right, but If we call this new OS, the "Google" OS, then we have to go back and call every other Linux distribution, "GNU" OSs.

Why? I would think that if we call a Linux distribution put together by Google that includes components beside the Linux kernel (whether developed in house by Google or open source components from third parties) selected by Google and marketed by them under the Chrome OS brand as a "Google OS" and as "Chrome OS", then we would call an OS with the Linux kernel and other components selected by, say, Canonical and marketed under the Ubuntu brand as a "Canonical OS" and as "Ubuntu". We wouldn't call it a "GNU OS" or a "Ruby OS" or a "MySQL OS", just because it includes open source components from those sources, just as we aren't calling "Google Chrome OS" names based on where it acquired third-party open-source components.

Sure, if GNU created its own Linux distribution (or, say, released the HURD), calling that a "GNU OS" would be analogous to calling Google Chrome OS a "Google OS", but that's a different story altogether.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[Homburg]

When Apple had a chance to start from scratch with their own Unix did they use X11? Of course not. They rewrote a proper windowing system

But Apple didn't start from scratch - they started from Nextstep, Steve Jobs's earlier Unix GUI. Note that Nextstep isn't that much newer than X, and it shares some of the things that often get criticized in X, like the client-server architecture.

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[ClosedSource]

I don't see how MS Windows' windowing system could be described as a "client/server architecture". Could you elaborate?

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[Daengbo]

Except for the "open source" part. (Yes, I know that parts of OS X are open, but Google's going to do the whole stack.)

Re:Competition is good, baby!

[Hal_Porter]

I think I'd be cautious and preserve any interface indefinitely. That being said I'd also be cautious about exposing an interface in the first place for exactly that reason.

The current trend for refactoring, where people spend most of their time rewriting code they've already written once and usally manage break compatibility to boot seems to me to be disasterous.

Please let there be no X!

[A12m0v]

There is no mention of X anywhere, and hopefully there will be no X.

*fingers crossed*

Re:Please let there be no X!

[SpooForBrains]

Re Ken Thompson's quote ... I'd LOVE to see what KDE and GNOME could give me without X present. It's very strange, I removed them from my machine, and none of my desktop environments would run! What's up with that?

Re:Please let there be no X!

[Mad Merlin]

You seem to be one of those people that irrationally hate X without any good reason. Care to elaborate?

Re:Please let there be no X!

[TheRaven64]

How to spot the people who have never done any graphics programming below the level of a high-level widget toolkit: They complain about X11 yet, somehow, never specify what is wrong with it, or if they do then it's with quotes from The UNIX Haters' Handbook which haven't been relevant for 15 years, or by citing a post by the author of Quartz, which hasn't been relevant for 5-10 years. A modern X11 implementation gives you:

• OS-independent remote display (e.g. show a GUI on a Windows machine or a Mac from your *NIX netbook).
• Backwards compatibility with apps written in the '80s.
• Off-screen rendering and caching.
• Accelerated compositing (e.g. for fast antialiased text drawing and for translucency effects).
• Fast partial-redraws of windows (very important when compositing over a network).
• Good OpenGL integration (including network transparency).
• A standard mechanism for adding extensions, so new features can be added without breaking backwards compatibility (most of the features of X11 that you use today are implemented as extensions).

The only serious improvement I've seen suggested over the X model is to provide a vector scene-graph API so that you can store the entire sequence of drawing commands in things like OpenGL vertex arrays in the GPU's memory. While this is a nice idea, it would require a radical redesign of all existing GUI toolkits and applications to be used to its full capability.

Re:Please let there be no X!

[MrMr]

Yes let's replace X11 and C with a proprietary layer on top of java.
That'll make everything work.

Re:Please let there be no X!

[Sir_Lewk]

Yeah. I'm beginning to get the feeling that all of these people railling against X11 have very little clue what they are really talking about.

Re:Please let there be no X!

[Sir_Lewk]

Wow. That has absolutely nothing to do with X and everything to do with what you are asking X to display. Should I call MacOSX ugly because one time I opened up goatse on a mac?

Thanks for proving the GP's point.

Re:Please let there be no X!

[Coryoth]

Actually the network transparency is what I really don't like in X. I don't get why it is in there. I would argue most people don't need it. Either because they are running servers without any X or simple desktops. While there certainly are cases where remote desktop access is useful, I really think other solutions like VNC are far superior to X there.

The network transparency costs practically nothing when running local apps (it uses shared memory) and, despite your apparent inability to have ever used X11's network transparency, a lot of us, do, all the time. I use it every single day. Right now I am sitting in front of a machine that has windows from applications running on four different machines, all of which seamlessly integrate into the desktop so that, unless you happen to know which applications are running where, you'd think they were all local apps. I've used VNC. It's not a good solution compared to X11's elegant network transparency. Just because you don't happen to use it doesn't mean there aren't a great many people who do use it regularly.

Re:Please let there be no X!

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:Please let there be no X!

[malevolentjelly]

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!

Re:Please let there be no X!

[Anonymous Coward]

[X11 is] still constrained through the filesystem socket layer...

I hardly know anything about the internals of X11, and even I know that this is completely false and has been for years. Even back in the 90's, X11 had no such limitation.

When you are remoting X11 over the network, it goes through a network socket. Fair enough.

When running on the same computer, X11 can run though a *NIX domain socket, not the same thing at all and much lighter weight. But, X11 usually just uses shared memory. No performance hit for the remote networking stuff when you are not using it.

I'll say it again: no performance hit for remote networking stuff when you aren't using it.

And, these days, Windows drivers have similar functional decomposition, where there are various parts to the driver and they communicate through shared memory.

Given that you are so wrong about this, I mistrust your expertise on all your other claims.

And your insulting ad-hominem tone was pretty special there too. You were wrong on the facts, but hey, at least you were obnoxious too.

By the way, I love how the original post mentioned that he runs modern games at full speed on Linux using Wine, and you used gaming as an example of how Windows spanks Linux.

The icing on the cake is that I have read many posts by TheRaven64 and the man knows what he's about.

Native Client

[Fzz]

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.

Hold on a sec...

[mc moss]

Buying stocks in companies that make chairs.

Re:Hold on a sec...

[L4t3r4lu5]

Beat you to it. I bought stock in the company which affixes pub furniture to the ground.

Huh?

[GF678]

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!

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.

Re:Huh?

[tjstork]

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.

Re:Huh?

[Fred_A]

its main selling points are speed, simplicity and security

- Our chief selling point is speed... speed and security. Our two selling points are speed and security. And simplicity. Our *three* selling points are speed, simplicity and security... and openness...
Our *four*, no, *Amongst* our selling points are such diverse elements as, speed, simplicity...
Wait, I'll do this again. (exits)

- I didn't expect yet another Google Beta

Fear

[chord.wav]

I wouldn't run an OS from a company who's business is knowing your consumer preferences, but suit for yourself. I'm sure there's a positive side of this story too, but I let that to another user.

Re:Fear

[MadFarmAnimalz]

I'm sure there's a positive side of this story too, but I let that to another user.

I'm looking forward to leaked Microsoft emails about deliveries of fresh pants to Ballmer's office.

Chrome is the new Emacs?

[deadbeefcafe]

Chrome is a nice operating system, but it could do with a decent web browser.

Re:Chrome is the new Emacs?

[Marcika]

Chrome is a nice operating system, but it could do with a decent web browser.

I'm sure Firefox will be one of the first big applications ported onto this "new windowing system" in ChromeOS... They wouldn't want ot miss this marketing opportunity!

(And it would be a good idea, actually - having a decent web browser that blocks all the ads that Chrome won't.)

Re:Chrome is the new Emacs?

[elrous0]

Ironically, Google all but owns Firefox. Google's contributions account for almost 90% of Mozilla's revenue. Excellent article on it here.

Re:Chrome is the new Emacs?

[Rocketship Underpant]

That's okay; "ironically" doesn't mean what he thinks it does either. ;)

The web is NOT the OS

[syousef]

The web is not the OS. The web is...the web. I do NOT want everything to be a goddamn web app. Web apps work very well for certain applications, and Google has shown that they can push the limits with dynamic content, but that does not mean the web application is an appropriate model for every damned application. I don't like the Chrome browser and I don't need an OS named Chrome that is actually Linux with a lame web browser bolted on as the front end. Google does search very well, but I've hated most of their other stuff. (Google Earth is one exception) I expect no different from this.

Re:The web is NOT the OS

[bgarcia]

You forgot to tell us to "get off your lawn".

Re:The web is NOT the OS

[VJ42]

I don't like the Chrome browser and I don't need an OS named Chrome that is actually Linux with a lame web browser bolted on as the front end.

So then don't use it.

Re:The web is NOT the OS

[Ephemeriis]

The web is not the OS. The web is...the web.

The web isn't what it used to be. The days when the web was mostly a collection of static pages are long gone. The web is dynamic, interactive, and user-driven. The web is email, ftp, live video, instant messaging, word processing, photo galleries, forums, flash, games, television... You get the idea.

I do NOT want everything to be a goddamn web app.

I'm not certain that's really something you get a choice in.

Web apps work very well for certain applications, and Google has shown that they can push the limits with dynamic content, but that does not mean the web application is an appropriate model for every damned application.

Technology grows, changes, advances - this is especially true in IT. If you go back a dozen years or so there was no way in hell you'd be able to run a word processor through a web page. Just plain was not going to happen. Now we've got Google Docs, which has some issues, but mostly works.

These days it seems absurd to talk about running Photoshop or AutoCAD through a web browser... But in another dozen years it may make perfect sense.

I don't like the Chrome browser and I don't need an OS named Chrome that is actually Linux with a lame web browser bolted on as the front end.

Would you feel better if it was Apple announcing the Safari OS? Or Mozilla announcing the Firefox OS? Or Microsoft announcing the Internet Explorer OS?

Google does search very well, but I've hated most of their other stuff. (Google Earth is one exception) I expect no different from this.

Other people, obviously, disagree.

I'm not a big fan of Google Earth. It doesn't seem to have much of a point to me. I do enjoy Gmail though, and I make use Google Docs from time to time. Enough people out there are unimpressed with Google's search to keep folks like Yahoo and Ask in business.

The fact of the matter is that an awful lot of work is done through a web UI these days. And if you can replace a full-blown computer with some kind of thin client you can, potentially, save a lot of time and money on maintenance. This is just a web-based thin client, nothing more or less.

And if Google sees success with its Chrome OS you can certainly expect to see competition appear. There's nothing preventing you from rolling out your own Linux+Firefox/Opera/whatever thin client.

Re:The web is NOT the OS

[schon]

That reminds me, who is going to sue Google for distributing their OS without choice of browser... United States vs Microsoft

Yeah, because that case wasn't really about a monopolist illegally leveraging their monopoly in one market to gain a monopoly in a second market, right? It was solely because of the US law stating that you have to provide an alternative browser with your OS!

Re:The web is NOT the OS

[Larryish]

Get off his lawn you damned kids!

Re:The web is NOT the OS

[Artifakt]

The web is not the OS, but for a product aimed first at netbooks, the web is more important than for a product aimed at stand alone PCs.

The web is not the OS. but the less a person plans on running workware, bulk data storage, or games, the more the web apps are all that they need.

Re:The web is NOT the OS

[agentultra]

The web is not the OS. The web is...the web. I do NOT want everything to be a goddamn web app. Web apps work very well for certain applications, and Google has shown that they can push the limits with dynamic content, but that does not mean the web application is an appropriate model for every damned application. I don't like the Chrome browser and I don't need an OS named Chrome that is actually Linux with a lame web browser bolted on as the front end. Google does search very well, but I've hated most of their other stuff. (Google Earth is one exception) I expect no different from this.

But.. but... I don't know how to program anything else! The web is the future! FUTURE!

In all seriousness, I basically feel exactly the same way. I've been building 'web applications' for companies for years because that's all they're hiring people for. It sometimes surprises me that it ever works at all. The sheer number of brittle components all hobbled together... there are so many weak points where something can go wrong. It just makes for one big headache after another. X11 is a server and has been delivering stateful GUIs across the network since the early nineties at least! It amazes me, the amount of technology we have today, and what we've chosen to do with it. It could have been so much more, but instead the worst possible solution won out the day... and now a whole generation of developers have no exposure to anything else.

Is everyone seriously impressed that we're creating stateless GUIs to remote applications by scripting marked-up text inside increasingly bloated and resource-hogging third-party applications? Is this the future? Really?

I'm with you on this one.

Re:The web is NOT the OS

[stuntpope]

And now you can do it in Python with Pyjamas.

Re:The web is NOT the OS

[norminator]

These days it seems absurd to talk about running Photoshop or AutoCAD through a web browser... But in another dozen years it may make perfect sense.

I don't think you have to wait a dozen years... I'm sure that none of these options are equal to the full power of Photoshop right now, but with the direction things are going, it could happen before too many years go by: http://lifehacker.com/5307419/five-best-online-image-editors

Re:The web is NOT the OS

[powerlord]

Allow me:

"GET OFF OUR LAN!

Darn kids with their Meta-This, and their Web X-dot-Oh that!

What's wrong with tables? And Notepad! THAT was the height of web development!

Been downhill every since!"

Better?

Automatically or automagically?

[denzacar]

"All Web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite Web technologies," the company said.

Depends on your definition of "automatically". From what I hear, there is this little prerequisite called "internet access".

 
Also, while it appears that many are finding the news of the new Google Chrome Linux OS a cause to celebrate, I would advise quiet optimism at best.
They are yet to release Chrome for anything other than Windows.

A complete Chrome OS may still be somewhere in the (rather) far future.

Re:Automatically or automagically?

[jrothwell97]

What's to stop them bundling an Apache and MySQL server, denying access to everyone but 127.0.0.1, and running the apps locally from that server?

Should be an easier platform to write for

[tjstork]

I wonder if Google will allow native development on Chrome OS? It should be easier to write for than Linux itself is. First off, they have their own windowing system, and that probably means they have done something with sound as well. I wonder if the windowing system is based on a drawing stack that is hardware accelerated? I wonder if you will be able to print?

I really hope they don't force you into writing in Java for it.

And I wonder if they will offer Chrome OS as a VM type of solution that you can buy for Windows?

Re:"its main selling points"...

[CountBrass]

It's main selling points are speed, simplicity, security and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

There... fixed that for you...

[denzacar]

Chrome OS focusing on speed, simplicity and security does not imply Windows cannot deliver in these areas. It's just a still non existent operating system, and has yet to show anything other than a blog post about its future. The summary sound rather, well, dumb.

Yawn, another distro?

[KE1LR]

How is this going to be different from other Linux distros and associated GUI revamp projects that have sprung up promising "we're going to be better than Windows! Really!" over the years?

Re:Yawn, another distro?

[Marcika]

How is this going to be different from other Linux distros and associated GUI revamp projects that have sprung up promising "we're going to be better than Windows! Really!" over the years?

Because this one will be a distro backed by the marketing clout and the manpower of a 125-billion-dollar corporation. Who have clout with OEMs and governments. Who have enough drones for programming a decent printer driver or providing non-snarky support. Who have a halo shinier than Apple in the eyes of most consumers.

This will be for Linux what MacOS X was for BSD (but with more code contributed back, hopefully).

Re:Yawn, another distro?

[Xtravar]

I'm feeling lucky.

Fast web OS needed!

[thijsh]

Computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them.

They are trying to fill a niche of an OS that boots fast and is basically just a browser. This OS will have a desktop with some online favourites... and that might be just what you need on a NETbook..!
Gmail already looks like a standalone app on Windows with Google Chrome and Offline enabled, you get a nice icon on the desktop. And when you click it it loads in a second, instead of the several minutes my Outlook used to take to even be barely useable. The choice is clear, sluggish native apps are becoming obsolete, and lightweight online apps are becoming more and more reliable. And when you only use these kind of netapps, why bother installing a bloated OS. This might just be the next revolution in the netbook industry.

On a side note: I can't wait until a new OS finally achieves the startup times of the good old trusy Commodore 64. :-)

Re:Fast web OS needed!

[smallshot]

I haven't tested it, but moblin seems to be close to what you want already, you just need a netbook...

http://moblin.org/

Re:Fast web OS needed!

[prcko]

And when you click it it loads in a second, instead of the several minutes my Outlook used to take to even be barely useable. The choice is clear, sluggish native apps are becoming obsolete, and lightweight online apps are becoming more and more reliable. And when you only use these kind of netapps, why bother installing a bloated OS.

Lately, this confuses me a lot. NATIVE, LOCAL applications are actually slower and more sluggish then networked, script-based apps. I mean, shouldn't the native, local apps be far more superior to scripted Internet-based apps when it comes to speed and response time; no matter how much you can optimise the rendering and script engines? It doesn't seem logical to me, anyways...

Re:Fast web OS needed!

[RiotingPacifist]

how can a local application compete with powerful servers, it takes my pings 20ms to get to google and back, on old computer (42,000rpm drive) can take a similar amount of time to read its disks (14ms worst-case 7avg), but the processing by google can be nearly instant. Say i want to do 4 things at once that all require small amounts of disk access e.g listen to music,browse the web, im friends, have my email client running, on my computer the disk will spend 7*4=28ms running around touching these files, if i throw this all to google they probably have what i want stored in ram and the whole thing will take 20ms.

Obviously this isn't entirely fair as most OSs will cache files and unless your using fsync too much (stares at firefox) you don't have to wait for the disk read/writes, but this is basically why internet-based apps can compete.

This recession is a good time to strike

[MarkEst1973]

Deep pockets versus deeper pockets. Google's market cap is $125b and Microsoft's is $200b. Not long ago, the gap was larger. Falling PC sales have taken a bite out of Microsoft's revenue. They recently had their first down quarter in their history.

Microsoft still makes 4X the money Google does, though. In 2008, Microsoft earned $17b in net income compared to Google's $4b. Now, $4b is nothing to dismiss, especially when you're using and writing entirely free and open source software, but still, if Google has deep pockets, Microsoft's are even deeper.

See: MSFT and GOOG

.

Google is probably the only company in the world that can generate excitement about a new OS, and making an open platform will encourage software developers to write apps for it. Hasn't that been one of the big complaints, the lack of software for Linux?

Many have tried taking down Microsoft. All have failed. Perhaps Google is finally the David to slay Microsoft's Goliath. Perhaps not. Exciting times, these are.

Mcdonaldsoft rival at last!

[yossarianuk]

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.

A (rushed) move to counter bing.com?

[levicivita]

Typically Google tends to announce out of the blue a completed new innovative service or product. Google Chrome for example was announced and released in a matter of 1-2 days. I suspect that because of MSFTs heavy investment and advertising of Bing, Google might feel the need to retaliate. They may have been planning a Google OS for a while - I personally have been expecting this move for years - but they may be rushing to get some attention and to curtail MSFTs momentum.

Why would I want this?

[jabjoe]

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.

Re:Why would I want this?

[nloop]

I think making Yet Another Linux Distro would be a death sentence for it. Who was the first to try that? Corel? Many have, all have failed. It would be relegated to the niche Ubuntu already has.

The one company to really take a unixish kernel and succeed with it? Apple. Many of your arguments could have been made about OS X and the BSD kernel it is based on. I suspect this will be similarly non recognizable to the other OS's using its kernel, and probably have a similar port ability. Taking all the obvious unix-like parts out of it really is required to get your grandmother to use it on her netbook. Think about explaining /usr /lib /etc to grandma. It requires a complete rewrite.

I also think this is going to take the concept of an "app store" to the desktop, which you could certainly argue against, but google is not going to pigeonhole the OS into only web apps. I'd bet body parts this will support Java and some form of native code.

I think it will be an interesting blur between smartphone and laptop functionality, for netbooks. Them saying it is for netbooks is admitting it will not replace a full fledged OS, don't be afraid, other options will always be there. They aren't even aiming at replacing them.

But surely...

[curmi]

...this means the OS will be forever in "beta"...

Re:"its main selling points"...

[bgarcia]

Judging by Google's vague statements, it doesn't appear to be meant as a bare metal OS, but something you add on top of what you have. ICBW.

What were you reading that made you jump to that conclusion?

It seems pretty obvious that this will be Chrome on a new windowing system on a linux kernel, developed for use on netbooks. There's no need for a VM, and they don't plan on having people download this - it will be the preinstalled software for low-end netbooks.

This should have dramatically lower memory requirements than Windows XP, and it will run on non-x86 processors. This will allow for the development of much cheaper netbooks!

Web Is (not) The Platform

[TheNinjaroach]

Speaking as a web developer, I think it sucks as a platform. HTML is not a very efficient way to generate output, supporting various DOM and Javascript implementations is a real pain and there are so many cases where a web application is not the best tool for the job.

That being said, I certainly do believe it's the best way to deliver information and applications to our customers, but most of our internal business processes and applications would be better to do without.

Re:Huh? (Double HUH?)

[Anomylous Howard]

MS bought NCSA Mosaic? -- I don't think so! They bought Spyglass and renamed it IE after. Mozilla and Fire Fox are the direct descendants of Mosaic via Netscape.

Will it support Internet Explorer?

[Chrisq]

Will it support Internet Explorer? Seriously this could be a propaganda coup for Microsoft. The layman who does not understand open source or the fact that Microsoft would be free to produce a version for explorer for any open OS . I can imagine some M$ lawyer saying "why do you complain about Windows coming bundled with explorer and not Chrome when you can't even run explorer in the Chrome OS".

Re:Will it support Internet Explorer?

[microbee]

Microsoft is welcome to port IE to Linux.

Does this mean

[Moabz]

2010 is finally the year of the linux desktop ?

OS == Browser

[MobyDisk]

For years, we have been hearing about how you don't even need an OS any longer, and how a browser is enough. There is a queue of usual objections to this idea:

• Where are my files stored?
• How do I edit documents
• What if I don't have internet access where I am?
• Web mail clients just aren't as good

Well, for the first time, I believe that an internet-only OS is now possible. Most of these objections are dwindling. Peopel backup their files online anyway, so the fear of having someone else in control is going away. How many people have all their bills, passwords, etc. stored on a gmail server somewhere? 3G has made internet access almost ubiquitous, and web apps are getting a lot more sophisticated - enough that webmail is powerful enough for almost the most hard-core email users.

This may actually work now, whereas, even 2 years ago this would have seemed absurd.

No vision

[copponex]

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.

Re:Stop Google before the damage is too serious

[slim]

Just note how they take the kernel, but avoid to contribute to the GUi arena.

Sounds to me like they're contributing a whole new lightweight OSS GUI layer.

I do agree that their model is all about promoting their non-free software (the proprietary stuff they run on their servers). But on the other hand they're doing nothing to prevent people from writing competing web apps.

The Linux kernel and basic related utilities should be set under the Afero GPL v3 license ASAP!

I'm not sure how that would help. We don't hear of many modifications to the kernel or basic utils, being hoarded by the people who write them and run them on their servers.

Re:Don't focus on installing the OS

[slim]

Lots of comments here are (rightly) skeptical that individuals will download a new OS.

And yet...

My dad has a Windows laptop that's suffering from inexplicable slowdown syndrome -- my meagre Windows skills couldn't fix it (full defrag, adware and virus scan) and the only solution I can think of is a full Windows reinstall.

He might be wary of a live USB drive of an ordinary Linux distro (even though it would be perfect).
But something with the warm and fuzzy feeling of Google's blessing, even if all it gives him is a fast boot and a browser; that might be enough.

Crunchpad, anyone?

[iperkins]

This sounds like a perfect fit for the Crunchpad

Why I like Win7 better than XP

[tjstork]

(I am curious. I do not mean to challenge your statement. I have used neither Vista nor Windows 7.)

I've been in so many flamewars that it wouldn't matter to me if you were... :-) One of the good things about getting older is learning to take online stuff less personally. When I get to the point that I can read anything without getting ticked off or angered by it, I feel I will have accomplished something in life.

Ok, as to why I like Win7 better than XP. These are not in any order...

1) I've never actually been a great XP fan. XP was always a bit too cute for me. So, for me, a Windows that looks more professional and not so cute, but still feature rich, is nice to see.

2) Improvements in common dialogs are huge. I'm a developer. I work with files a lot. Having a good common set of file dialogs in all applications is a really nice touch. I think Vista's dialogs were better than XP because the search was nice and the left hand side of "important" stuff was welcome. For Windows 7, the addition of the library feature, basically, allowing you to put your own sets of folders onto the common file dialog is an absolute godsend. It allows me to organize files by work activity, so, I can have whatever paint program, development software, ftp software, whatever, all have a common entry on the file dialog for my website, for example. I love it so much that I dread even using XP or Linux for not having this feature.

3) The explorer.exe doesn't lock up as much in Vista or Win7 as it did in XP. Like, when the PC wakes up, or gets busy, Explorer.exe on my machine can go out to lunch. I've not noticed this as much as in Win7.

4) I love the inclusion of the Office 2007 Ribbon Bars into the Windows 7 distribution. I'm reading a lot about how it works in the SDK and I'm excited about using it in an application that I'm working on.

5) Native 64 bit Windows in the mainstream. Yeah, I know there was a 64 bit Windows XP out there. I had it. But it was so rare that you really couldn't write for it. Since most vendors are now defaulting to 64 bit Vistas and will probably default to 64 bit Win7, I think we will thankfully be able to write for 64 bit native mode and that to me is a wonderful thing. I know high level languages are in vogue but for a tinkering thing, to me, I like getting in there and doing a bit of assembly language stuff.

6) Reading ISOs out of the box. Linux has had this feature now for, geez, it seems like a decade, but Windows never put it together. Now Win7 has. It's just nice to be able to do it without digging around for some cheesy utility.

7) The Windows 7 taskbar. I like the way window are stacked up. I like the inclusion of Gnome style rearranging of icons. I like the way they have pushed off all the dozens of icon notifications into the shell tray onto their own little land. I like the OS/2-esque Workplace shell ability to make your own folders off of the task bar.

8) Native API enhancements. There's Direct2D, DirectWrite, DirectX stuff. There's stuff in there for user space threads that I was used to making fun of Linux for back in the day but suddenly it appears the Linux people had a point. There's NUMA awareness in threading. Some of this stuff has dribbled out but having it all in one Windows distribution makes me more confident that I can use that feature.

That's what I can think of, off the top of my head.

Re:Web apps should be treated like desktop apps

[slim]

I would like to use Gmail just like I'm using any dekstop application.

Use the Chrome browser.
Go to GMail.
Click the page menu (top right)
"Create application shortcuts..."

Google wants you to use web apps as if they're normal desktop apps. When you launch these shortcuts, Chrome will skin the window to look more like an app and less like a browser.

X is pretty dang good

[GargamelSpaceman]

I can't fathom why apple chose to create another windowing system rather than use X. I can't fathom why Chrome OS would not use X. X is frikken awesome. Nothing else does what it does and it does everything others do. And it's free. Why the hell not use it? Just to be less featureful?

Re:X is pretty dang good

[julian67]

"I can't fathom why apple chose to create another windowing system rather than use X....." Because they prefer to drive and manage their own development as far as possible, and not be subject to the success or otherwise of yet another 3rd party, especially one that doesn't regard Apple as any more important than all the other contributors and distributors? Because if they used a free windowing system on top of a free base they wouldn't have much of a proprietary product?

Re:X is pretty dang good

[jamstar7]

I can't fathom why apple chose to create another windowing system rather than use X.

Cause it's getting old and dodgy, and with the newer video cards, a lot of X can be dumped off into the card?

Re:X is pretty dang good

[mangobrain]

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.

Computers are *communication* devices

[Geof]

Back when telephones were new, no-one quite knew what they were for. One company came up with a music service. This was before radio, so the idea of piping music to your home was radical. This may seem absurd to us now, but it isn't: radio went the other way. It is entirely possible that we could have built a world where we listened to high-fidelity music by phone, and spoke to our friends by radio. Even in the early 20th century the phone companies didn't get it: they ran campaigns trying dissuade housewives from chatting over the phone, believing that the technology was for Important business use (a few brief, high-cost calls instead of lots of cheap long ones).

I remember when people though computers were giant calculators. Then the computer became personal: it could do your books, teach the kids arithmetic, and keep track of your recipes. (Though why anyone you would want to keep their recipes in a computer was never clear). The hardware companies tried to sell to everyone, but they weren't quite sure how to do it: the truth is, most people had no real need for a computer.

Computer technology isn't personal anymore. It's social. The PC is a phone, not a calculator. That's why everyone needs one. That's what driving development of the technology. Ours is not the only possible path: computers could have remained high-cost devices for use by individuals to produce things or do business. But that was the path not taken. This changes what computers are.

To you, desktop applications may seem superior on the basis of their technical merits. Fair enough. Hollywood seems to see computers and the net as a new broadcast medium, like television, for which the current infrastructure has significant technical failings (privacy, QoS). In their case I hope their vision is never realized. But for many people, these visions are irrelevant. No matter the quality or polish of the applications, no matter the convenience of video-on-demand, for them the technology is technically inferior if it does not fully support communication and social activity. For them - and for me - the cobbled together infrastructure of the Web is far superior - technically superior - because for us it is above all a medium for communication.

Look at GWT. You won't code HTML and Javascript

[egghat]

Really. Take a look at it.

GWT DatePicker

See the example and the code.

No HTML or Javascript whatsoever. Only CSS needed for styling.