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Google Releases Source To Chromium OS
Kelson writes "Google has released the source to what will eventually become Chrome OS, and will begin developing it as an open source project like Chromium. The OS differs from the usual computing model by (1) making all apps web apps (2) sandboxing everything and (3) removing anything unnecessary, to focus on speed." Reader Barence adds "Google said consumers won't be able to download the operating system — it will only be available on hardware that meets Google's specifications. Hard disks are banned, for instance, while Google said it will also specify factors such as screen sizes and display resolutions. Google said it plans to officially launch Chrome OS by the end of next year."
I think most people will stick with Windows and proper GNU/Linux netbooks.
So basically it sounds like everything will be stored on Google's servers in some way to me. So everything I do they will know.
I don't like it I like to control things that are mine!
Everything runs in the cloud? Hard disks are banned? Wow, they are aggressively pursuing their thirst for all of the world's data. No thank you.
-Chris (aka Lenwood)
How do we reconcile this with slamming Apple for trying to maintain 100% control over the OS/hardware combo?
Norman ... coordinate.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If it's open source, the only enforcement they'll have over things like hard drives being banned, screen size restrictions, only web apps, etc. will be control of their trademarks. If Chrome offers something sufficiently compelling that people want to run it on "noncompliant" hardware, or run non-web-apps, they will fork it.
The OS differs from the usual computing model by (1) making all apps web apps [...]
Well, I guess we were overdue for another well-funded attempt to flog the dead horse of thin clients again. I'd read the press release to see how many lines I have to scan before the first appearance of the word "convergence", but I feel too overwhelmed by indifference...
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
This has always been my concern about cloud computing and moving toward web apps and online content. Honestly I don't think that the idea of turning our desktops into terminals will catch on, and I'm not really sure that advocates have considered the cost. You're really just moving the hardware requirements to the server side as far as I can tell. Plus, the necessity of perpetual highspeed internet connections...
No hard drive, and it's useless without the cloud?
There are many college campuses where this would not work. I can't use it while on the road without tethering (or in a hotspot), and I can't use it for anything work related because it all goes to the cloud.
That fast boot is all for nothing.
Something solid state would be my guess. It makes sense to refer to the new solid state drives as a "hard drive" since that is what its replacing but I feel the term "hard drive" is being used to refer to the drives that use platters and other mechanics.
Hard Disk Drive = HDD = Platters
Solid State Drive = SDD = Not mechanical.
enthusiastic linux base
Something tells me that's the exact opposite of what they're going for. You're delusional in thinking that Linux users have that much weight to throw around in the netbook market. This is the type of thing Jane doe will buy and enjoy it because it runs facebook just fine on cheap, energy efficient, small form factor hardware.
Similes are like metaphors
I assume that by "don't allow people to download 'it'", they mean "don't provide a precompiled installer CD that(implicitly or explicitly) promises to actually work on actual hardware". Obviously, if it is an OSS project, there is nothing stopping people from producing 3rd party builds that do attempt, or even promise, to install on all sorts of hardware. However, those won't be Google's problem, so they have no real reason to care.
I assume that Google either believes they can get money from device makers or, more likely, has absolutely no interest in being on the hook for the fact that your broadcomm wireless running firmware XYZ.123 drops frames and repeatedly disconnects when used with WPA/TKIP, or whatever.
This is being targeted at netbooks and ONLY netbooks. They are expecting customers to be folks who already own a main computer for dedicated application needs.
Please, allow me to fix this for you.
. The reality is that if lots of people use anything cloud, it will not be able to be realtime or respond quickly. Latency and transmission requirements are astronomical for this method. Of course the selling point is less hardware for the end user.
Seen what happens to google wave when you hit about 100 people? Imagine the same for 100 thousand people.
Of course on the flip side, if people do the computations for you (aka owning a computer), you don't need as much server space, and people can actually maintain copies of their stuff, and not be limited by network capacity and network access. Latency is much easier to work on like that.
In order for google to get around that latency issue they will need to be able to have around 50ms everywhere on the planet, which simply isn't feasible because sometimes computing on an app might take more than 50ms to do.
Come on, my old Amiga took about a minute to open a large jpeg. Just a few years ago it was common to use specialised hardware just to watch high quality video. Perhaps we're moving to an age were most PCs will be the spiritual successors to dumb terminals. They'll still be a hell of a lot more powerful than desktops of 15 years ago.
I suppose "they're being word-weasles" is one guess.
Combining the "no hard drives" rule with the "every app is a web app" rule, I'm more inclined to think they really do mean "no local random-access persistant mass storage devices"; they want this to be a client for their cloud services.
It's a lot easier to upgrade a datacenter
And harder to upgrade the last-mile pipe between the datacenter and the terminal, at least until other countries follow the lead of Finland and Spain in mandating a better-than-dial-up level of Internet service. If you're using a web-based operating system, you do not want to be stuck with 0.05 Mbps.
Just like the early days of Linux.
Gmail wins mail.
Google docs provides a position in the office market.
Google Wave provides a shared, collaborative team synchronization system.
Google Voice provides a complete solution replacement for all phones.
Android positions Google in the handheld market.
Cell providers cut Google a sweet deal for ad revenue sharing (well documented already)
Cell providers cut Google a deal to resell wireless at their whim. (well documented)
Chromium OS excludes local storage, relies on cloud computing, ties to ubiquitous wireless data access resold by Google.
Screw the future. It's not "still coming." With Chromium OS, Google just implemented ubiquitous, disposable, always-on, wireless computing, collaborating, and calling for the masses, who need never again fear their computer breaking, their hard drive eating their data, or nearly anything else.
...and from this future there will be no escape.
For likely 90% of home users, this will be perfect.
No way. A very large segment of home users need iTunes to sync with their iPod and iPhone, play video games, take photos off their cameras, work from home, etc.
I'd say this is perfect for no more than 50% of home users. Of course that's still a big market, but not the vast majority.
Developers: We can use your help.
Sort of. It'll be more of a dual path(or, in practice, triple path) thing.
If you want it to Just Work, you go to the store, tell the clerk you want a "google box" and go home happy.
If you aren't all that hardcore; but know how to do a linux install and follow other people's fix suggestions in forums, there will presumably be one, or a handful, of third party builds that are broadly understood to work well on particular hardware, and somewhat less well on other hardware. If you own reasonably common hardware with the right chipset, and know how to use bittorrent, it'll pretty much be plug and go, albeit with a few techie steps.
If you are hardcore, it'll basically be LFS with an interesting boot process and Chromium brower in the init script, and best of luck.
This basically opens up multitudes of possibilities for offline apps. If you can plug in a USB flash drive, why not a USB hard drive? If you can store and listen to music offline, why not video? And if everything runs in the browser, it just means that the API is javascript. You can do a lot with javascript.
Also, being open source means that forks can add whatever regular linux functionality they want.
I'm interested in what they're doing with X11. Anyone looked at the code?
"[Netscape will soon reduce Windows to] a poorly debugged set of device drivers." 1995, Marc Andreessen
Atari TOS on ROM-->MSDOS on Floppy-->Windows on HDD-->Chrome OS on SSD --> aLl yOuR bAsE iS bElOnG tO uS.
How quickly does gmail open for you, barring load times?
3-5 seconds, tops.
How quickly are emails sent? Have you ever seen the word "loading"?
1-2 seconds to send an email. Yes, I've seen loading before. It lasts no longer than 5-10 seconds at a time, faster than it takes to load outlook.
The answer is that loadtimes are not instant. How fast does someone else editing a google doc with you see updates? Not instant.
How long does it take to load Outlook, or load Word? Send emails in Outlook? Have it load hundreds of emails? Not instant.
There is an acceptable latency, but lots of things get around it which are also things that don't need good latency.
That's why you build your webapp to handle latency properly. I've used Gmail on an Iridium modem in the middle of the ocean. And it works. Is it snappy fast? Not like a 100Mb/s pipe. But they have all my mail stored redundantly somewhere, which I can search from anywhere with an internet connection, from any device with a web browser. Data stored remotely but cached locally during use is a natural progression for applications, now that storage and data transmission is evolving quicker.
Today users can still get at least *some* work done without being connected. This is another big step towards a single point of failure the likes of which we have never seen in entire human history.
I want my email accessible from multiple locations. I can check it at work, at home, on my phone, on the moon, etc.
Do I trust my ISP? Hell, no.
Do I trust companies like Microsoft, AOL or Yahoo who hand over my data to everyone on the planet? No.
Do I trust Google, who has fought court orders to protect my privacy? Yes.
Name a better alternative.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Welcome to the future, where we abandon decades of established desktop APIs for the web in order to return to the glory days of DOS, where everyone re-implements their own!
By the way, finding out Chrome OS is as reduced in its functionality as I feared is really disappointing. Why would anyone use this if they could install a Linux variant that can run things other than Google-brand web apps? And it can run them at native speeds instead of at JavaScript speeds?
It's just amazing to me how many top players in this industry are so eager to step backwards in progress without realizing it.
>I want my email accessible from multiple locations. I can check it at work, at home, on my phone, on the moon, etc.
>
> Name a better alternative.
Running your own IMAP server at home, accessed via SSL/TLS. Something which I (and many others) have done for over a decade.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
In other words, I should trust them with all my data. And probably be tied in forever. No thanks.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Install my own mail server and tape drive system which I must maintain whitelists and blacklists for, or let Google do the heavy-lifting?
Let me ask a better question. When Bush said he might start asking for search data on every user in the country, and then AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft preemptively was handing that data over, while Google was busy fighting court orders not to have over user data on Orkut users (who were in fact spreading kiddie porn), what has Google ever done once to suggest to me that I shouldn't trust them?
Or are you a member of the permanent tinfoil-hat brigade?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
A dumb terminal with modern parenthood
No sig for the moment.
Because running a software interpreter means having the CPU do between 10x and 1000x as much work compared to running the same logic natively. It wastes battery life and limits the complexity of programs you can implement on the exact same piece of hardware.
A hardware vendor can already put a tiny installation of Linux + X11 + Firefox or Chrome on small flash drive.
Congratulations, you just told us what Chrome is. You didn't think they would write the whole thing from scratch, did you?