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Google Reveals Chrome Hardware Partners
nk497 writes "Google has announced the hardware partners for the Chrome OS — so we can expect to see netbooks running the operating system next year from the likes of Asus, Acer, and HP, as well as Toshiba. Dell didn't seem to make the list, at least yet. Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way."
Is this just smoke and mirrors. From what I have read this is Linux with a custom GUI on the front end. Depending on how they market it and which distro it is built from will probably dictate how far it goes. I use the *buntu and Suse variants of Linux on a daily basis. Unless this offers any real advantage I won't move to it even it I purchase a netbook with it I would probably format and load Ubuntu on it.
I'm guessing this has more to do with flash than anything else. Maybe we'll finally get a flash plugin that doesn't suck on linux
...as compared to this? If not then Google will have a hard time convincing me to switch.
btw, I should have linked the Moblin pages...there is a LOT of activity on their email feed for independent developers. http://moblin.org/
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
How does your company feel about you keeping the presentation data on Google servers?
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
My presentations are usually outside my office. Relying on a working internet connection for them sounds like a a major PITA to me, considering how much effort is usually involved for accessing a corporate LAN.
The chrome OS is all well and good but I'm not even gonna bother with it unless there is an easy way to get playback for all media formats. Since its a product from google that is targeting the mainstream I doubt they are gonna leave the codecs in the repository.. Hopefully it comes with media playback capability as standard. This probably will be a very crucial factor in determining if users stick with it or not.
What I see it as is a commercial developer friendly version of Linux.
Odds are that it will.
1. Have an app store for people to sell apps. Yea the web based apps is all cool but I think that side of it is being over blown.
2. Will have Flash and codec support without having to get it from a none US repository. Google will pay for the rights.
3. It will come pre-installed for aunt Tilly.
The one thing I wonder about is will Google fork the Kernel and add a stable driver binary interface? If so will we soon see a lot more hardware support for Google Linux than traditional Linux.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Why does everybody act like Chrome OS will somehow be locked down to just running Chrome and using webapps into it? Just because the original blog post emphasised on the webapps part doesn't mean it will be any less functional than your favourite distro. They're not stupid, they'll do what the market wants to eat Microsoft's yummy marketshare, they won't give you a half-assed OS, they'll give you a fully featured OS that has the advantage of having an OS designed around performance, security, usability and more importantly (according to them) designed around the use of web apps in mind. That means you can beat your ass you'll have all the offline apps you want and have an OS just as functional as your favourite distro.
As for partnering with Adobe, what do you know, maybe they're out to get Adobe Photoshop on Chrome OS ;-).
You just got troll'd!
I'm weary allready. First Android, then a completely differently branded second Linux knockoff. I know Google isn't dependant on making money with their software and OSes projects, but the last thing we need is further market confusion due to Google joining the fray of alternative OSes and distros. I beg that they manage to string Android and this Chrome OS thing into one OS ecosystem and that it will be well standardised and documented.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
This is the company that left VisualBasic background processes running from their install, looking for all the world like VB script viruses or trojans! Soaking up an appreciable amount of memory and CPU, just so their functionality would pop-up quickly. Any company where the marketdroids can have their way and do something that most geeks would know is inadvisable -- they are too infested to salvage.
Try Foxit or Sumatra readers for PDFs!
(Not associated with either company!)
Any 'web book' is gonna need Flash. It's too ubiquitous to ignore, but at least it's more cross-platform than Silverlight. If Google were to buy it and 'make it free' (one way or another), that might be good for us all. Maybe that's why they're hedging about supporting Ogg video in HTML5.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Y'know not all off the netbook retreat to XP was driven by Microsoft's pressure (though I'm sure there was plenty of that too).
The various netbook Linux'es were not great. Just read Slashdot, etc. Everyone was happy, happy, happy that Linux netbooks were being sold... and then they went on to say that the distros on the netbooks were crap - you should replace them with distro X. Is it any wonder that once the price advantage was gone, the netbook OEM's went with XP? Linux may well have worked better on their netbooks... but which Linux?
(pauses to dodge incoming bombs)
Anyway, notice that now that Google's in the mix, Asus, etc are coming back. It's not because Google's a sure thing. It's not even because it'll be better than what they were using before (though Google's no slouch - their stuff's pretty great). It's because the OEM's want a single alternative OS, and Google's name recognition guarantees that people will have heard of it.
Linux distros are great. I use Mandriva, when I'm not using Fedora or Ubuntu. That's right. I'm part of the 'problem'. And if I don't like Chrome OS, I'll replace it with what I want. But I'm not Joe Consumer. And Asus is selling to good old Joe. I'm ready to stop blaming Asus for their timidity or their lack of software development savvy. It's not their job to be great OS developers (or even supporters). And if Google's willing to take on that job, that's great news.
The only problem I see with this is that Google's conceding the desktop application market to Microsoft. Making this a 'web-only' device is very limiting. Limiting to what Google is happy to have you limited to, but limiting nonetheless. If there were a 'standard' Linux distro that had enough mindshare (and was good enough) for the OEMs to annoint it the standard, that might have produced something we Linux fans would've liked better. ...and then we could have junked it and put on our distros of choice. That's CHOICE as in 'always good, no matter what, no matter where'. Except when it's not.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
That part made me wonder what on earth they are going to do?
The only way to achieve an OS that cannot be affected by any kind of malware is to have one with absolutely no persistent state and no ability to run any kind of user installed program. So is that code for, "we're going to cripple it so bad it'll be useless for anything except running Chrome"? Or is there some fundamental way around this that I'm not seeing?