Slashdot Mirror
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."
Anything but Acrobat, king of the bloatware!
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."
I am thinking more among the lines of Adobe AIR and seamlessly linking the Google OS platform with the AIR API.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
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.
Just today, I gave a presentation created with Google Docs. WIth the right background and font colors, it was virtually indistinguisable from our usual company its PowerPoint template. Combining all the Google stuff together and you have a situation where you hardly need local storage. So, I'd give the Chrome OS a hearty welcome, even though it might offer too much limitations for others. I've given up my office suite, my IMAP and SMTP server and my webmail. For me personally, it's perfectly usable in business.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
all the press coverage yesterday characterized google's OS ambitions as an attack on MicroSoft or a counter attack in light of Bing. But to me, an open source OS enhanced for web-top uses sounds mighty like an attack on Intel/Moblin. After all, ARM processors are to be supported too from the little I have read of google's plans.
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.
So Google's doing their own OS and partnering with Adobe, the purveyors of the biggest, buggiest and least secure bloatware on your computer. Great. Given the business Google is in - advertising, and the more of it the better - they're likely to take steps to make sure that all those slippery users out there do their patriotic duty and view all ads sent their way, no matter how obnoxious. Is there even an Adblock for Chrome?
...as compared to this? If not then Google will have a hard time convincing me to switch.
The G$$GLE-borg wants to take away our freedom with their shitty corporate crapware. Thank goodness for Microsoft, I support the feisty Microsoft freedomware guerillas against the evil G$$GLE empire!
Dell's netbooks are overpriced anyway. Seriously, I went shopping for one recently and their netbooks seemed crazy expensive compared to asus, acer, et. al.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
These are partners that make computers sold to consumers. Intel and AMD make CPUs that go into those computers and (AFAIK) don't make computers themselves, which is why they are not on this list. Also, they have already announced that they will support both x86 and ARM processors.
Yes
Umm, no. Flash.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
For how many years will the Chrome OS stay in beta? Place your bets.
Reply to That ||
One just has to look at the silly posts back when Android was announced and all the inane and irrelevant garbage spewed about the goddamn iPhone and if Android was an 'iPhone killer'.
With every major cellphone maker coming out with Android phones and demoing their custom interfaces and software built on top of Android and Windows Mobile virtually forgotten about, you would think people would wise up and grasp how huge this move by Google is into the netbook market.
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.
First off, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if anyone is teaming up with Adobe to include Adobe web stuff that it's not going to focus on Acrobat but on Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, and that whole ecosystem.
That out of the way, what the Flippety Friggery, Google?
You're building a new OS based on the Linux kernel + Chrome Browser, which is cool because these are both high-quality Free Software projects. But then you wander off and sidle up to Adobe instead of working with Free Software such as Gnash.
This seems like a repeat of the situation with the ARM folks. Gnash has had ARM support for several years, but instead of the ARM people collaborating with Gnash to get full Flash support on their processors, the ARM people worked with Adobe to make a whole new port to ARM, instead.
Now Google is working on a slick new OS and has an amazing opportunity to have the whole thing be Free Software. Gnash is getting very mature, and with support from a organization like Google it could easily become the best Flash player on Free OSes, if not on all OSes.
C'mon Google: Team up with Gnash and other Free Software projects and make Chrome OS one for the history books.
coding is life
on the browser.
From the perspective of the user, what is worse than being dependent on non-free software such as Flash?
Answer - being dependent on non-free software that only runs on someone else's machine as a remote service. The goal of Chrome is to replace customer lock-in to Windows and Office with lock-in to Google's "software as a service". Since customer data will be held hostage by Google, along with the only applications that can read it, no "Openoffice" or "Linux" will be coming to rescue the user from this lock-in. But hey, it's Google, they won't "be evil", right? (hollow laughter).
I am unsure why other free software advocates are supporting this idea, unless the enemy of Microsoft is automatically our friend.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
Don't worry - in a year or two, Apple will finally release a netbook, and then we can hear people branding Google OS as being "An Apple nEtbOok [or whatever it'll be called] killer".
Just like OSX is nothing more then a distro of BSD? If someone (say Google) makes "just another distro" that actually brings Linux out into the mainstream, then I'm all for it. What's the harm of it, anyways? Google's releasing the source code so can't really understand how this may be evil. I must be missing the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt angle.
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!
There is _no_ news here about who the partners will be. It's just a day-late write-up of the original Google Chrome announcement. This should never have been published as 'news' this late in the game much less Slashdotted.
Steven
Which language is this? I would love to translate such seemingly insightful post to English and enrich my life with this knowledge.
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
While TFS fails to mention it, a major part of TFA is that they are partnering with the likes of Freescale, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments. These 3 companies are all semiconductor manufacturers, like AMD and Intel, and produce some of the most exciting and leading edge ARM based mobile multimedia solutions out there. You can't deny that it's odd the x86 architecture goes completely unrepresented.
IMO, ChromeOS is probably going to be geared more for cheap 'internet appliances' where ARM is much better suited. If you don't need to worry about platform compatibility, why would you even consider a legacy ISA like x86 that consumes more power and runs hotter? I'm sure they're going to support x86 simply because it currently dominates the available hardware, but I'd bet COTS ChromeOS devices will mostly come packing ARMs.
What really excites me about the new Google Chrome OS is the security aspect. As Google said on their official blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html:
The Chrome web browser has been a complete revelation in terms of security with a track record of no security problems whatsoever. Since they are building Chrome OS on top of Linux then "completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS" presumably means redesigning the security architecture of Linux. Since Linux is GPL then clearly Linus will be able to accept all of Google's changes and redesigns and then Linux will have no security flaws ever again. I'm quite sure Linus will be delighted to do so.
It would be such a joy to have an OS that never needs a security update and I'm delighted that Google will implement one.
Google really are ever so kind and generous in doing this for the world.
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!)
Because "Dell recommends Windows Vista Professional". I know that to be true, because it's always printed on EVERY D*MN PAGE of every one of their catalogs.
I wonder how much they get paid for doing that?
#DeleteChrome
Uh, Google did?
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html
"Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. "
" and we'll soon be working with the open source community, "
http://chrome.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-chrome-os-faq.html
"Later this year, the Google Chrome OS code will be open sourced. "
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...