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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.
Just web apps? I guess I can take my old 8bit computer out of the closet, because we're returning to purely interpreted programs now. Hey look ma! That program that compiled occupied about 512K of RAM now takes 150MB, YAY FUTURE!!!!!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
... to divers attention away from their Androids platform. When google merging voice, blog, mail, video, and talk all into wave, it will become the real OS.
So what, does my computer boot up to magic, or are they building a BIOS or LiveCD specific to Chrome?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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)
Of course, if they keep releasing the source it may not stay limited.
I wonder if this is going to stay a genuine Open Source OS or if Google will pull an Apple and gradually go back on the openness.
C - the footgun of programming languages
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...
I wonder if this is doomed to become a niche operating system that doesn't even scratch the surface of the market. Preventing your most enthusiastic linux base from trying out your software unless they purchase a new computer will prevent a large majority of people from playing with Chrome. The main thing I'm afraid of is that we're brewing a new Apple. At least they're not going for the single mouse button (yet).
This looks a bit like the OS used on the litl webbooks. It's an interesting idea, to choose a specific niche with specific constraints, and really target it. I'm still unsure whether this precise niche (almost-always online, only apps that can be delivered via the browser) is a large enough niche to be useful.
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.
If it's open source and available... couldn't interested parties compile it themselves. How are they going to ensure that it's not available for actual use?
Yeah, it really sucks.
I'm really hopeful that one day they will increase the size of hard drives, memory density, etc..
I know you Linux folks are ultra cheap and seem to think no new hardware has ben produced in ages, and thats cool. But really, if you ask anyone you know if they recently bought a new computer I'm sure they could give you a hell of a deal on that old P133 Packard Bell.
Can I play Nethack in the cloud?
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
This is the infamous network appliance made real. The OS is a simplified kernel with a specific set of supported hardware with a simple interface and no on-system storage for data. All apps and settings are "in the cloud" i.e., on google's servers.
For likely 90% of home users, this will be perfect. A relatively dumb device that only runs a web browser to use web apps (googles or anyone else's provided their signed by google) to do their work.
It takes user-friendly to an extreme and makes everything just part of the web browser experience.
The root OS partition is read only and the selection of hardware is prescribed by google. You can download the source to hack it, but you can't make an installable image as you can't cryptographically sign it for their okay. They're only planning this to be a bought with hardware purchase.
Sound familiar? It should, it's basically the Apple experience made into a net appliance.
... in order for you to use the software when you aren't plugged into the net, you'll have to download some bloated piece of kludge like Gears, which won't actually give you the seamless experience you crave, but will make you wish for the days of Windows 3.1.
I'm pretty sure there is going to be a rather small permanent storage capability for the offline (but still in browser functionality) that Chrome allows for. Currently this functionality is provided by Google Gears, but once HTML 5 has matured they will be using that. All I know is that I can open up and use Gmail in the browser offline, and Chrome OS is supposed to provide this functionality. I can't wait to see what the open source community does with the Chromium OS. Either way, MS needs to fix IE. It is horrible. Comparing it to Firefox makes it look bad. Comparing to Chrome makes it look completely irrelevant and obsolete. Now they're going to be eating it in the Netbooks market too.
Perhaps they are trying to be a bit like Apple... you can get their software in conjunction with their approved hardware for a seamless experience.
Of course, since it's open source there will inevitably be a fork of some kind so it can be adapted for other hardware, get new features, etc.
Maybe they want an unsupported fork where the community develops features (and possibly rearchitects the system) without affecting their polished user experience. Any desirable changes can be ported to the official release.
They get free development; you get another open OS---one that is designed for desktop use from the ground up.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
The hypothetical "user" will never have a chance to download Google's OS and find it doesn't work well. Google has stated their intention of only providing it with approved hardware.
Now, because they have also announced that it will be OSS(except, presumably, a blob of trademarked logos and stuff), there will most likely be third party builds available; but the sort of people who download third party builds of OSS code can either RTFM beforehand to make sure that their stuff is supported, or deal with it like adults when their unsupported hardware turns out to be problematic.
It's a lot easier to upgrade a datacenter, since you typically do it anyone by getting better hardware each year, instead of having tens of thousands of people upgrade. At least, from Google's perspective.
I don't see myself using this type of "OS" anytime soon, and I imagine a lot of other people are in the same boat. Who would use this? I guess schools would be a good candidate. It seems like they could use lower quality hardware, and most schools have awesome internet connections.
I plan to move our company to a "dumb terminal" model over the next couple of years. You say that the cost of hardware just gets "shifted", but this is not entirely accurate. I have roughly 60 users. Each machine must be spec'd to handle the biggest workload, even if that only gets hit during some small fraction of the day. For 99%+ of the day, I have a powerful machine doing very little. With a centralized model, I can smooth that out.
But that isn't the biggest reason I am going to this model. I have folks who can be working in our central office, satellite office, on the road, or at home. I need ways to give my workforce the flexibility they need to work anywhere.
From a cost standpoint, PCs are awful. Maintenance is generally more than the hardware costs. Software installation and configuration alone costs us about 1/4 of a FTE. By centralizing, I am expecting that number to drop by 2/3.
Now, granted, my network is either local, or connected by dedicated T-1's except for our road folks. So, while I think this is a great idea for my workplace, I don't think it makes a lot of sense for me at home.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Honestly I don't think that the idea of turning our desktops into terminals will catch on
Is that the point of Chrome OS? I had the impression that it was targeted at small, portable, communications devices--somewhere at the intersection of smart phones and netbooks. There are many kinds of applications that just won't ever run in the cloud, and we'll always need powerful desktop-ish machines with full-featured OSes
What I'm more confused about is why they need both Chrome OS and Android.
/...
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.
Hard disks banned? I can't decide if this is a bad thing, it could be interesting model of computing outside the cloud. For example, an offline desktop experience could be provided by a local or lan server that uses web protocols. I'm sure the community will do some really intesting things with this freshly opened source.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
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.
...are belongs to us!!
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.
Can I still run IE in a Chrome frame?
consumers won't be able to download the operating system for long
TFTFY
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
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.
If you use x86, you've been running all interpreted code since the mid 90s - all x86 processors since the Pentium Pro are RISC processors with an on-chip virtual machine for the x86 instructions. This objection to interpreted code seems to be based on, well, nothing - why should we care what implementation strategy our software happens to be using?
Hard disks are banned
But not floppies!!
I new sticking with the Amiga all these years would pay off!! I finally have a use for all these "Floppy" disks!!
If the OS can't be downloaded, it's attached to the hardware 1-to-1.
The hardware can't cost a penny more than a netbook ($250-300) or we'd just get a netbook.
Removing the harddrive, or putting a small 4gb SD drive, will put it around $200.
$200: Meh.
$150: I'd rush the doors like a Walmart on Black Friday.
After finding this link: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/security-overview
I'm impressed. I wasn't expecting that much in the way of security in this offering, but I'm actually pleasantly surprised by how much thought Google has put into this, both from remote attacks and local (stolen computer/device).
Three notable things:
I like is the fact that items that log on and use Google's authentication mechanism work online, and offline by using a local cached hash table.
The segmenting of the Web browser. This is something every Web browser should do, so one buggy plugin doesn't mean a completely rooted system.
Very well thought out boot path with initial key values stored in an unalterable chip. Next to a TPM boot, this is a good way to protect against corrupted boot attacks.
My only wish is that the device didn't use an Owner/user priv model. This is just fine for devices and home computers, but when you get to the enterprise where you have to have machines have a "master-root" user (usually an Active Directory) admin, there will be issues.
"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."
So I cannot even store my favorite pictures on the device because everything had to be stored in the "cloud?" What if I am to go upcountry?
I would like to see opinions of coders on Google's product. Any ideas?
dumb terminals? You mean computers using Windows?
But only Google's cloud.
Say what you will about Windows, but I can install Chrome, Gears, and bam -- I can use Google's 'cloud' infrastructure.
ChromeOS? I can only use Google.
I'll stick with Windows for now.
On a related note, this is one of the most underwhelming releases I've ever seen. Way to blow the hype.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
I suspect when they say consumers won't be able to download the operating system they mean google won't be providing a package for end users, nor will it support installation.
As for the os itself, I wonder if it'll support native client or not...i suspect so, it might not be half bad at the low end of the netbook market, which seems to be where they are aiming.
expecting : reality :: vaporware : release
What I'm more confused about is why they need both Chrome OS and Android.
Consider that Microsoft needs both Windows CE (basis for Windows Mobile) and Windows NT (basis for Windows XP/Vista/7). NT needs more hardware than CE.
Android is necessary as-is for what it is.
But I think you've almost hit it on the nose with the rest. This OS/platform is the underlying architecture for a Google branded wave platform on which most (if not all) of their software applications will eventually reside. But Wave is available now, without Google's 'OS' and is a generic real time data sharing platform. Google OS is (near as I can tell) a business solution for those that want Google's tools and complete control of their data in-house.
They go together like PB & J but they are distinct.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
While I extensively use Google's products, I find that GMail is still wanting in terms of searching for email.
Here's why: You search for all mails containing some word...Gmail returns all mails having such a word with no obvious categorization. It would be better if it can return emails categorized as follows:
Those with attachments and what type of attachment it is, those sent last week, last month, last year, 2 years ago etc...those sent by who...and so on.
Right now, the interface sucks big time. Anyone agree? Yahoo does a better job at this.
Chrome[OS] will support NativeClient that allows you to securely execute native code. I guess the GUIs will still be interpreted though.
I haven't seen latency issues with Gmail, since it runs locally in Firefox and only moves data when I'm sending or receiving email (not composing). Same thing with Google Docs. Remember, the app runs locally on the box, and the data moves back and forth. Email, docs, they don't take much bandwidth. Wave is a different story, but your typical business user could get by with email, docs, IM client, etc all done through a browser. Heck, I'm using Gmail right now in one tab, this slashdot page in a tab, Google Voice in another, etc.
consumers won't be able to download the operating system
What kind of open source is this if you can't download it?
It's the kind of open source where you download the source and compile it. I believe that the Chromium license allows redistribution.
Do you download binary kernels from Kernel.org, for example? No, you probably download and compile the source from kernel.org, or you wait for someone else to provide binaries for you.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Unlike traditional operating systems, Chrome OS doesn't trust the applications you run. Each app is contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and viruses to infect your computer. Furthermore, Chrome OS barely trusts itself. Every time you restart your computer the operating system verifies the integrity of its code.
The developers barely trust themselves to write secure code so they decided code will not be writen at all. Not trusting themselves with this even they have scrambled their passwords and erased their door access cards. Security has been further enhanced by all staffers being locked up in the basement behind a externally locked door. 6 weeks later the only issue is now is the smell.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Just like the early days of Linux.
Perhaps they are trying to be a bit like Apple... you can get their software in conjunction with their approved hardware for a seamless experience.
Let's hope seamless means reamless. Unlike the Apple experience.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Why on Earth would I use this with a portable device? A lot of the times I'm on my notebook I don't have a network connection, but I can still use my applications and be productive until I get around to a net connection and waste my time on the web.
PEBCAK?
http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/archives/chromiumos-0.4.22.8.tar.gz
I do not like this, Sam I Am. I do not like green eggs and ham.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
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.
Open source means just that; open source. The source code is readily available to anyone. It does not necessarily follow that configured, built, regression tested binary images are available for download. Of course Chrome OS is open source; it's based on GPL 2 Linux kernel, GNU libraries, Google's open source Chromium browser, which is in turn based on webkit, etc.; Google is obligated to make the source available for most of that and even the parts for which they are not obligated (it's not all GPL) they're providing anyhow. None of this means that the built binary images for any particular device must also be provided by Google.
If you have the wit to obtain the source, and configure, build and install the resulting images then you're free to do so.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
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?
Thanks for your brilliant retort without any supporting facts. I will throw out the whole strategy now.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
And once they've released the source, they will enforce these no hard drive / approved hardware only rules... how?
Is this some MS-esque definition of "releasing the source"?
Currently, you can run Google's web apps offline if you have Google Gears(Chrome Browser has it built in). According to them, this is a temporary move until HTML 5 matures. The difference is that the apps, whether you are online or not, will run in the browser.
"[Netscape will soon reduce Windows to] a poorly debugged set of device drivers." 1995, Marc Andreessen
How quickly does gmail open for you, barring load times? How quickly are emails sent? Have you ever seen the word "loading"? what do you think that means? (hint: it's not referring to just processing).
The answer is that loadtimes are not instant. How fast does someone else editing a google doc with you see updates? Not instant. There is an acceptable latency, but lots of things get around it which are also things that don't need good latency.
It's also not about quantity of bandwidth. Latency is not bandwidth capacity. You can have 1TB/s but if your latency is >300ms, there are things it will not work for.
Also, please quit the "Typical use" phrase that comes about all the time. There is no definition of typical use that you can specifically define for anyone other than yourself, as everyone has different definitions of that phrase. "typical use" is entirely subjective. You can try your best to generalize it but there's a limit to how realistic and accurate it will be.
I think you're missing the kind of apps that will also have an issue. There are apps that are latency sensitive, and there are ones that are not. As an example, someone will notice packetloss/latency trying to load the slashdot homepage, but they don't notice the latency between when they hit submit on a comment and/or preview. The difference is whether what you are doing requires attention or not. In the case of "all apps to be online only", that will inadvertently catch a ton of applications.
Atari TOS on ROM-->MSDOS on Floppy-->Windows on HDD-->Chrome OS on SSD --> aLl yOuR bAsE iS bElOnG tO uS.
"All your data are belong to us"
Will it have Java? I'm wondering because it's still the only way to do decent architecture-independent games without 100% CPU usage 100% of the time.
Or does it support the Native client stuff?
Instructions on creating (downloading and building) your own chrome os are available here & http://www.chromium.org/. You can build a disk image and mess around with it. Right now they recommend building on Ubuntu 8.04 or higher 9.10 recommended. It seems well explained and shouldn't be a problem.
I might give it a try on my Acer Aspire One netbook tonight or this weekend...
Just because they open source it doesn't mean they don't prohibit you from modifying, distributing, or otherwise using it as you wish.
Allow me to quote the Open Source Definition (from http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php)
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software [...] The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software [...] The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
If they truly Open Source it, then in fact it does mean they allow you to modify, redistribute and use it for whatever you want.
(and people complain that "free software" is easy to misunderstand...)
"Hard disks are banned" seems like it would be a show-stopper for many folks.
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.
You're fired if you're my IT guy
Proposing a Wyse terminal equivalent in this day and age is cause for immediate termination with extreme predudice
Depends entirely on what the job role is that you're replacing. SunRay 1 machines were more than capable of handling most folks' email, word processing, and web surfing needs in a thinclient form factor back in 1999-2000 (main issue was, as usual, that it wasn't running "Windows"). Thinclient tech is perfect in a lot of non-development situations.
Really, what does an OS need to do? It needs to manage the network, talk to devices and launch applications. That's it, isn't it? By specifying "no hard disk" Google is cutting out a major part of the device chat. Displaying a folder hierarchy is essentially a search, format and display application. They're good at that.
A large part of the Windows code is managing a large variety of devices, from displays to USB devices. If Google specifies the display format, then there's another large chunk of code dropped. The UI is an application, pointing devices are - devices.
Add an IP stack for the network and stick a security layer in somewhere, if you still need it.
By limiting configuration choices to those that have a broad appeal a *huge* amount of OS can simply go away. You have less local IO, less device chat, and no local disk latency to worry about.
People know how long their network takes to react, and will accommodate that. In contrast, a very thin OS will be very quick and will compare very favourably to a thick OS in response. And if most of the IO is server-side in the cloud, you won't see a lot of IO delays (source of most hangs) and response should be smoother overall, because servers tend to have the best IO controllers and enough spindles to stripe (not that Google would resort to actual hard drives!) Where's the beef?
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Who said anything about my using Google? Actually I am looking at Citrix in a virtualized environment. The testing I have done shows it is a very viable alternative to what we are currently using.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Google isn't pointing this at desktops or workstation. They've said specifically it's for netbooks and smartbooks.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
The biggest issue I have with terminal servers stem from their concurrency.
If a reboot will fix someone's problem or make your software installation easier.... Not to mention, while Microsoft's Terminal Services capabilities are markedly better than they were with Server 2003, Citrix is still king of the hill, and quite frankly, I dislike their software paradigm, but I realize that's my opinion.
Unless you mean VDI, which, in that case, Citrix isn't so bad, but licensing it properly is a pain in the ass.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
If the source is available today, what is the time until someone throws up a virtual image that I can run?
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
some google vaporware?
you use that word a lot. i do not think it means what you think it means.
by the way the GP isnt off his rocker for considering a "dumb terminal" solution. theres another buzzword for it these days, called virtualization, and in many medium to large size businesses its fairly popular precisely because it is cost effective. Chrome OS would serve only to further reduce the cost of virtualization. the initial cost of virtualizing is prohibitive for most small organizations (including one the size of the GPs) Something like Chrome could be a catalyst to make that shift.
people do talk about the "dumb-client shit [sic] on the market" its just arranged differently that it was in the days of mainframes.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
"All applications will be web apps, all data will be stored in the cloud and the operating system will be booted from Flash - no hard disks will be supported." "Google will also allow some data and applications to be accessed offline. Users will be able to listen to music and read eBooks without an internet connection," Since apparently there is no problem accessing music that is stored in the cloud while offline, I can only assume that they are referring to some other form of 'cloud,' such as a cloud of gnats that follows you around your head. It wouldn't be the first time biology inspired swarm techniques have been used in computer science.
To slightly reword a quote by The Great One (that's Wayne Gretzky to everyone else :)... a quote that also happens to be one of Jobs' favorite.
Looks like Google is building an operating system in anticipation of the ubiquitous Internet and optimizing it for that purpose alone. That's to say, wireless available everywhere and hopefully dirt cheap. Maybe they believe that's gonna happen just about late 2010.
Wouldn't be surprising given competition by upcoming networks like Clearwire WiMax.
No desktop apps. Less hard drive space than an iPod. Lame.
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.
In reference to people being concerned that they'd lose access to data if their internet connection were down:
'"If your cloud is down it affects any computer you're on," he said. "I'd like to see a comparison of the cloud with what you have today. I think the cloud will compare very, very favourably[sic]."'
Um, no. If my "cloud" is down, i.e., my internet connection, my laptop or desktop can still run everything. I can still work on my visio diagram, I can still listen to music, I can still do my taxes.
I can do all of that because the bleeding data that I need is on the damn machine.
Not to mention, why would I EVER entrust any corporation to safeguard or ethically use any data that I store on their "cloud"?
Can I create my own 'local' "cloud"? What will the EULA terms be? Can Google decide to start digging through your data to send advertisers your way?
Does Google now own the data?
Pressing questions.
You're comparing LOADING Outlook with SENDING an email on a web page? Sorry, loading outlook is a one time thing (which is a few seconds anyway). After hitting send, outlook sends pretty much instantly.
The OP is clearlying talking about response time, whenever you click New Email or Send email, how long does the browser take to get back to you. Outlook if much faster opening a new window than a webserver is serving content.
I hearby announce the very first fork of ChromeOS.
I have replaced the entire source with:
#include
main()
{
for(;;)
{
printf ("Natalie Portman and hot grits, oh my!\n");
}
}
I will be providing a full patch shortly.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
You're really just moving the hardware requirements to the server side as far as I can tell.
I get you, but it is more efficient - your local hardware requirements have to meet your peak demands, but are mostly underused; the datacenter is averaging out over a bunch of users.
I would personally like them to explain how they put together (all apps run through a web browser model) and (removing all unnecessary elements to focus on speed).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Fail: "All your base are belong to us"
Please hand in your geek card at the next turnstile.
My Babylon
With the OS effectively being a thin client and both applications and data on the server, the question is "who controls the server?"
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Google's been pushing offline support pretty strongly on a number of devices. It would be a real waste if my computer were inoperable if the network were down. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to play chess, or write a document or take notes when I'm on a plane or far away from civilization. Even phones have airplane modes these days. I wonder if there is any sort of a file system at all on the Chrome OS. If not, it will be raise the bar for writing apps (even with offline mode support) since you simply have to write code to sync data as well.
I don't want to read
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.
What the fuck is a smartbook?
I just tested Gmail, to see if your point had any water. From when I clicked Send to when the browser returned my main Gmail window took just under 2 seconds. You're saying it's unreasonable to compare that to Outlook? Bullshit.
Are there more web-browser-based operating systems yet other than Palm webOS and Google Chrome OS? I am not going to look through the architecture right now but I expect it to be quite similar; certain applications will be built upon browser plug-ins, but fundamentally still be "web apps", and there will be numerous non-web-app services running natively on the Unix part of the platform, along with special extension objects in the JavaScript engine to allow access to these services via a message bus.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
The Palm Pre philosophy is similar to ChromeOS. Google has stated that they love the Pre and no wonder: Palm Pre launching with Google Search, Google Maps, and YouTube
I wonder if Android's browser will start taking on some ChromeOS functions. The Pre and Android could become more and more similar over time.
Oh look, they've re-invented the X Terminal yet again. So thin-clients are up for another go-round, are they? How long before they go out of fashion *this* time?
---dragoness
So you're focused on speed, but dont allow native code? Not allowing trusted code is not the same as not allowing native code. See Native Client. Was it really necessary to accuse the people involved of being unqualified and lazy to ask your question?
It doesn't matter that storage and data are going *faster* in any fininte or infinite form. I wish you understood this. Faster is not latency. Bandwidth is not latency. Network capacity by itself is not latency.
You also answered my exact question just as I asked it: all of these functions are not instant, but they are all installed locally. This means the delay can be improved by multiple types of bandwidth depending on application: processing bandwidth, latency bandwidth, and networking speed. Think of it that way. Imagine when they are network hosted? Those times will multiply and also can get worse based on the load requirements of the users.
5-10 seconds of load time is 5 *thousand* milliseconds. You know computers and how big that is. Do you have any idea how hard it would be to get that down to consistently under 70 milliseconds? That 5 thousand range is like a hundredfold improvement over years past, but we're still nowheres near 70. To go from 5 thousand to 4900 is an enormous milestone on it's own. In terms of complexity I would compare going from 5000 to 4900 ms latency equivalent to going from 250 MPG to 500 MPG in an engine, including all current technology. Sure, it will eventually be done, but not easily and not now.
Your answer is also the reason why this won't work for an entire OS. Email is a relatively small requirement on a computer to merely access. Lots of other activities are by far not so small on the requirements such as latency. Google would have to be able to hit 70MS on EVERYTHING for people to be accepting of it. Easy example: multiple user simultaneous video editing on a thin client/cloud computer? do you think that's really going to work for anything more detailed than youtube? Hint: it won't.
the latency has such a physical distance requirement that unless google has sufficiently built connections everywhere in the world and/or enough tier 1 peering agreements in place they won't be sufficient. If they do, then it will. Otherwise, there's really no way around it. Meanwhile, it will also exponentially (and continually) increase the bandwidth and latency requirements as time goes on and things become more demanding.
Yeah, this is an open-source OS with very interesting solutions and oriented to the internet.
But what about heavy flash sites? Will it include a binary from a company not related to google? Or will they push open-source alternatives to flash?
I hope its the second alternative... or maybe there is a third one: push for HTML5.
I'm interested in hearing more about licensing. My understanding with Citrix Virtualized Desktop that I am strictly paying a concurrent user licensing fee. You seem to indicate there are other caveats. Can you tell me what your experience has been? My information has come from a reseller, and I got my quote in writing :) But if there are some hidden "gotchas", this is when I'd like to know...
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
If the source is available today, what is the time until someone throws up a virtual image that I can run?
Tomorrow?
Just web apps?
Well, that's dumb.
Super Mario Brothers
And also, Gaikai and OnLive.
Education is the silver bullet.
Five years ago, I'd be trying to setup a build environment for it immediately. Now I let lazy web do it for me.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
No, what they're saying is that outlook will open a new windows faster, and send the email itself faster, than Gmail does. What outlook is faster at is returning you to the main window. Gmail sends the mail, then loads the "inbox". Outlook keeps the inbox loaded, and then quese the mail to be sent. is it actually faster? That depends on your system, version of outlook and internet speed/latency.
due to poor cable/ POTS infrastructure, places in africa and india and central/ south america experience the internet pretty much only through their cell phones
of course its not 4G speeds, but its something, and it isn't a market to be ignored simply because the signal is slow and weak and intermittent. in fact, its a huge market with no other options. build their favorite gateway, and you have a captive audience of billions
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I just need someone to write a vim/latex web app, and somehow access all my music movies and picture.
I find it pretty pathetic that comments which misscharacterize things mentioned in the article or in the various links are so highly moderated.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
A dumb terminal with modern parenthood
No sig for the moment.
they did talk up HTML 5
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Maybe the knee jerk slashdot technopessimists will be right this time.
STFU about slashdot bias.
Perhaps by 2010 we will all have access to Neutrino networks, which will solve the problem of dead spots.
Sort of a cross between a netbook and a smartphone, I think.
Chrome's v8 javascript implementation actually compiles to native code.
ARM based devices have coined that term.
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...
Errr, no. Think AJAX. A great deal of processing can still be done on the client, but it can be done in a more universal interpreted language that is separated from the hardware it is running on. This is actually good news for application / service providers as it can allow them to only develop a single version of a product for any hardware.
All the people posting stuff about this being inefficient are spot on though, but who cares. The average PC nowadays is so far over specified for what it actually needs to do in and office environment that we no longer need to worry as much about efficiency. Instead the bottle neck in most situations is manpower as man hours are more expensive than mips.
I dont read
2 seconds is a LOT longer than 'pretty much instantly'. I'm not very familiar with Outlook itself, but presumably it behaves similarly to Thunderbird/Opera etc -- when you hit send, you are instantly able to move on to the next task without waiting 2 seconds (or more on slower connections).
I honestly don't understand why you'd use gmail -- Any vaguely modern computer can run a decent email client, pretty much any email service offers web access for when you're on another PC, and gmail is horribly slow when you try and access it over imap/pop3 (admittedly I haven't tried this in well over a year, but it used to be awful).
...goes the hopes of millions, that Google OS would kill MS. You may as well run Win Mobile or Moblin or iMacOSX.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Thats the thing I don't get. What is so hard on upgrading a computer? Couldn't an app just check if there is a new version available and download that transparently in the background and then start it next time the application is restarted (i.e. completly without user interaction)? Now sure, a lot of software upgrade schemes these days suck, but they don't suck because its impossible to do a smooth save upgrade, they suck because most are ad-hoc hacks that where never properly developed to give a smooth user experience.
"it's very simple to use, there's nothing to maintain. It should just work." HA HA, oh wow.
"All user data will be stored in the cloud, with the operating system only using local flash memory for caching data such as settings."
Why? I have good internet but it doesn't have 100% uptime or no lag. So every personal photo will be uploaded? and if I want to edit it, re downloaded or at least a snap shot of it? Will the editing happen in the cloud, meaning lag before I see every crop and color adjustment? or will it download and have my low grade cpu do all the processing then reupload it every time? not to mention God help you if you have a porn collection like 99.9% of guys with computers I know. so all my legally bought and ripped dvds will have to be uploaded to a cloud? Then streamed back to me?
"If your cloud is down it affects any computer you're on," he said. "I'd like to see a comparison of the cloud with what you have today. I think the cloud will compare very, very favorably."
Ok now you are just lying through your teeth or are just really dumb [marketing]. I can work or play for hours without my internet plugged in, thank you. Also my laptop does the same in or out of wi-fi.
Chromium is currently only geared for netbooks. These are slow as hell and used only on the go anyway. The only thing that one'd be doing on one of those is browsing the internet anyway...
And it's a nice testbed too.
So while I will totally not install this onto my desktop, I will swap my Linux install on my ASUS EEE PC 900 for Chromium the very day it's released!
Here be signatures
all the kids have 500 gigs of porn, I'm not joking. They are not going to save that in a cloud and have it streamed to them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartbook
Your telcos wet dream.
Always on their network, burning into some small over priced, slow data plan.
But it might run Linux and let you change providers if you shop around.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Because I like not having to configure each mail client on each computer I use, having my entire mail history available to me through a browser, and not having to worry about backing my mail up. The notion of a local mail client is quaint.
The reason Android is picking up so well within cellphone manufacturers is that it allows for customization without the burden of maintaining a full OS. Google plan is to have another platform designed around their very profitable services. There is no need for Google to get money from device makers, the use of services would amply justify the profits. In a way, it's the same philosophy phone carriers use in subsidizing devices to make you use their network. Google has the inherent advantage to allow customization, so every device maker can have their own skin. At the end, Google wants to control the key parts that make you use their services. So no hard drive (everything is in their cloud), Small, efficient screen (long battery time), reliable connection. I am sure it won't care what chip you use, because, from their perspective, that is totally irrelevant.
Why would Google just target netbooks? In some ways, desktops are just as good a place to put Chrome OS, since you tend to have perfect, uninterrupted wired internet on desktops, so you can do much of your cloud work with the same stability you would get from offline work.
Now go try that again using an EDGE or CDMA network communications device.
Also, go try doing that basically with any cellphone-like device, which is what this is aimed for. You won't get the same response times, I assure you.
Remember, this OS is aimed at machines that load everything into RAM and cache to a micro-SD card or something, tops. No hard drives allowed, and no super fat-bandwidth pipe.
You'll be lucky to get the performance equivalent of a Pentium 3 sending data over a 56k modem, on average (cell provider's claimed network speed is rarely if ever actually realized by any of their customers in any location, burst speeds at best, and the really depends on signal interference and network traffic).
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
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.
Let you shop around provided that the radio is capable of changing bands. I investigated a switch from Verizon to Sprint recently, as they use the same type of cell network, and found out I'd be under contract again paying off a handset identical to the Verizon one I'd just paid off with the exception of tuning to a slightly different band. Particularly irritating, given that a vast portion of Sprint coverage in my area is actually from Verizon towers (indicating that the technology exists somewhere to let them interoperate).
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
consumers won't be able to download the operating system
Yeah, the article and thus the summary say that, but it's just the result of really bad journalism. If you read the first FA it links directly to how to download the source. There's even a place to browse the git repository.
Then unless I've grabbed the wrong license file it appears to be under basically a BSDish license.
No filesystem access. Less space than a hard drive. Lame. :)
(For the record, I think this sounds very exciting -- the first truly new OS idea in a decade).
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. —Tanenbaum, Andrew S.
Remember, Google doesn't build Chrome OS primarily for today's infrastructure. They build for the future, with tomorrow's technology.
A few early adopters will take the hit, accept the flaws of an OS runs best when online in a world where the infrastructure doesn't support it everywhere. These are probably mostly going to be urban people in areas where Turbo 3G and WiFi connections are no problem.
You don't even have to visit the future in order to experience a world where you are can be online virtually everywhere - even in rural areas (and for peanut money). Just visit Scandinavia for instance.
I was on a train between Gothenburg and Stockholm about two years ago. Too cheap to pay for the Internet connection on the train, I used my ~$12/month unlimited Turbo 3G with my laptop. I dropped connectivity 3 times, the longest time was about 5 minutes. That was two years ago and that train goes through some very rural areas!
4G is around the corner, and that is probably what Google has in mind for Chrome OS. High-bandwith and low-latency connectivity available virtually everywhere.
In the near future, Internet connectivity will not be an issue 99.9% of the time in any places most people are ever likely to go. With Google Gears as a backup-solution for those few occations, I don't really see connectivity as being a major problem.
quick, register googlebox.com while it's available.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
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?
I'm guessing you don't use outlook... ever...
Two seconds from 'send' to responding again would be a blessing. When it was first installed and I had no messages at all, it was perhaps slightly faster than that. Now, with 20-100 messages in inbox and everything else ruthlessly redirected to local storage files it can take 7-10 seconds to return responsiveness to the main window after sending. (this is a reasonably recent machine, dual-core processor, 2gb ram)
If I could use gmail at/for work, I would. I have a few thousand messages sitting there, but it loads in a fraction of the time that outlook does. Sending mail takes maybe a second or two until I can click 'compose' or click a message to read.
Personal experience and all that, but everyone I know who is stuck with outlook hates its bloated corpse.
Now, on to the relevant stuff:
This sounds more like something intended for netbooks (or similar)... Seriously, no hard disk? Think of a larger, much more capable version of a smartphone and the whole 'everything is web' approach makes sense. Just because it's all web all the time doesn't mean that you can't serve your own apps on 127.0.0.1. Local processing would still be possible (and necessary), it's just wrapped up in a nice little security sandbox. A side effect is that as long as it stays compatible with web standards, any application written for this OS will work in any standards-compliant browser. Should make porting kind of irrelevant (from Chromium to other OS).
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
I do know it's likely a little different when you compare it to XP licensing but, coming from VLK's, since a VLK requires that the machine have some type of Microsoft COA on the box for an OEM edition for a VLK to apply, you couldn't use a VLK on a VM.
On top of that, once you get the VM licensed properly, you have to buy what at the time was called a VECD (Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop) license for each machine as well (at $99 per). On top of that, you need[ed] to be on Software Assurance, which meant there were annual fees associated with the MS licensing on top of whatever Citrix wants....
It's a nightmare, I assure you, and I read somewhere on Brian Madden's website when I researched all of this for my company at the time that for the first two or three years, VDI is actually cheaper when you're using Citrix from a licensing standpoint. After that, the annual fees raise the TCO of licensing the thing much higher than Terminal Server farms, but of course, perhaps the cost difference is worth the sanity that VDI will induce on your administrative burden.
Just saying, there's waaay too much to it. Microsoft enjoys per-seat licensing. As such, it's really the most straight forward option for most businesses.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Grr... Slashdot ate my comment the first time I posted it. It follows here:
I do know it's likely a little different when you compare it to XP licensing but, coming from VLK's, since a VLK requires that the machine have some type of Microsoft COA on the box for an OEM edition for a VLK to apply, you couldn't use a VLK on a VM.
On top of that, once you get the VM licensed properly, you have to buy what at the time was called a VECD (Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop) license for each machine as well (at $99 per). On top of that, you need[ed] to be on Software Assurance, which meant there were annual fees associated with the MS licensing on top of whatever Citrix wants....
It's a nightmare, I assure you, and I read somewhere on Brian Madden's website when I researched all of this for my company at the time that for the first two or three years, VDI is actually cheaper when you're using Citrix from a licensing standpoint. After that, the annual fees raise the TCO of licensing the thing much higher than Terminal Server farms, but of course, perhaps the cost difference is worth the sanity that VDI will induce on your administrative burden.
Just saying, there's waaay too much to it. Microsoft enjoys per-seat licensing. As such, it's really the most straight forward option for most businesses.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
For some reason, it reminds me of the classic "Have you tried JavaScript?" WTF.
I mean, the concept of a terminal is a good one (and not new), but why do we have to rewrite a bunch of reasonably optimized UI remoting protocols that we have -such as, well, X - in HTML/CSS/JavaScript? It doesn't really solve anything, but it creates a bunch of new problems that are then hurriedly solved (such as writing state-of-the-art JavaScript JIT compilers with whole-body type inference so that JS scripts run fast). Why?
I guess that, if all you have is HTML and JavaScript, everything starts to look like a web page.
Here's something that should be a real concern for geeks. Right now, the ordinary desktop users who don't really need a powerful computer are buying computers. This means that due to economies of scale, the cost of computers is relatively cheap. Imagine what will happen to the price of "powerful desktop-ish machines with full-featured OSes" if 90% of the computing market suddenly starts using these toys. Start preparing to go back to the days of $15,000 computers. Just saying. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I imagine you're aware of this, but with Linux, you could do all this for free. Citrix'll cost you a ton for client access licenses, and Linux has this kind of thin-client support built in.
Of course, you must be replacing a traditional Windows desktop-centric network, and I guess you have some need for Windows-only apps with no viable Linux equivalent. But don't you wish you didn't have that requirement? Maybe one of these days...
Interestingly, maybe ChromeOS will support a citrix client (or X / NX server). Maybe the new devices built around ChromeOS will make really nice thin-client terminals for more than web-only use. Not clear yet, but that could be enough of a niche to keep the hardware manufacturers onboard. Maybe even Wyse...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I saw it at http://chromebook.blogspot.com/2009/11/chrome-os-has-been-released-introducing.html
there is a torrent to a .vmdk file which should boot up in virtualbox or vmware,
have fun!
Isn't that why Google created the V8 JavaScript engine? It (just-in-time) compiles JavaScript to native machine code.
It's worth noting that Google isn't actually under any obligation to keep Chrome/Chromium open-sourced. Just because they released a version (for desktop web browsing) that is F/OSS doesn't mean they can't later close it, or simultaneously release another version (for netbooks on their custom OS) that is closed-source. They own the copyrights; they can use whatever license (including proprietary) that they want. The only things they can't do are close somebody else's code (Linux kernel, WebKit, etc.) or retroactively change the license on the stuff that they've already released (though they could state that as of tomorrow, all further development of Chrome will be proprietary).
Sorry, not really relevant to the article, but it bothers me when people arbitrarily assign the GPL powers it doesn't have. That's exactly the kind of idiocy that makes commercial vendors leery of using it.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
What the fuck are you talking about?
Linux uses the GPL v2, which doesn't have anti-tivo provisions. Tivo uses linux. Chrome OS uses linux.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
We moved away from mainframes and dumb terminals to desktop computers and now we are moving back again... (cloud computing and the like) after the love affair has ended with that we will be moving back to the equivalent of the desktop computer.
can't say i have ever felt like complaining about the 2sec wait between sending an email and making the next move. Never actually noticed it before myself.
Every 6 months or so I'll try running my gmail via imap on outlook/evolution/thunderbird and always go back to the web interface.
Maybe its that another bookmark is easier to handle than another application? maybe the gmail interface / search is vastly superior to those desktop clients? Maybe its just personal preference?
Don't point that gun at him, he's an unpaid intern!
If your Javascript code is "purely interpreted", then you should probably stop using a browser from 2005.
My thoughts exactly. I'm seriously considering switching to Thunderbird at work even though my company uses Exchange + Outlook. Of my morning login, Outlook easily eats half of it.
Of course, I don't know how much of that is waiting for Exchange (not to rib on Exchange... we have really old servers.)
Why?
Loading Outlook 2007 is a couple seconds. Outlook 2010 actually loads in under a second for me on another computer with a slower CPU, albeit a faster disk.
Guess what: Chrome OS happens to use Chrome as a browser. Yes, we know it's surprising. We can hardly believe it ourself.
Trusted Computing rocks!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Hmm...the deciding factor is that if we can still watch pr0n on it!
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
I think my mom is a typical Joe Sixpack computer user. She uses Firefox to access Gmail and read some newspapers. Chromium would be great if this was all she did. However, she also uses the computer to store and view her photos. Does Google seriously want us to upload all this data to the cloud? Several gigabytes every time you empty your camera or digital camcorder? What's Google's plan for multimedia?
The computer they envision is just a glorified dumb terminal. There's nothing wrong with that, but there it is.
I was really excited about this, until I tried to actually use it. It gave me an important lesson about open source and cloud computing. The frontend can be open source, but all the apps below it can be easily locked out. From what I can see, normal users can't actually get at a lot of the goodies. Like the application section.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Now go try that again using an EDGE or CDMA network communications device.
Also, go try doing that basically with any cellphone-like device, which is what this is aimed for. You won't get the same response times, I assure you.
Remember, this OS is aimed at machines that load everything into RAM and cache to a micro-SD card or something, tops. No hard drives allowed, and no super fat-bandwidth pipe.
You'll be lucky to get the performance equivalent of a Pentium 3 sending data over a 56k modem, on average (cell provider's claimed network speed is rarely if ever actually realized by any of their customers in any location, burst speeds at best, and the really depends on signal interference and network traffic).
You obviously never even tried this. On a "cellphone-like device", the mobile interface is actually very fast. On a droid, Gmail is every bit as quick as on my laptop.
Debian's approach is quite frankly crap. Its better then most of the other crap out there, but compared to the ease of updating a webapp its still crap. Its far to slow at updating, requires far to much user interaction, is far to inflexible and far to brittle.
When you want to make an update process that "just works" you have to do something that is near 100% failsafe and automatic, i.e. something that verifies the up-to-dateness automatically and updates when necessary and something that verifies the integrity of an application on each start, so that you never run into a state where an installed up is broken.
A clever netbook? (-:
Sorry...
You know, I like to think that I'm a nice person, but I'm going to just have to say this; you are an idiot if you think you can compare what's essentially opcode code translation with complex interpretation.
Have you ever found a CPU that was designed to run programs slowly? x86, along with every other ISA, is designed to run general applications as fast as possible. So they designed their CISC-philosophy chip to do instructions that would, if used, make programs run faster. But when they developed the RISC philosophy, and figured out how to implement superscalar design, of course you're going to get more performance out of the RISC core - it's implementing every part of that 5-cycle instruction simultaneously in one or two cycles. Besides, with the plethora of extensions x86 has tacked on to itself, do you really think that those instructions are the most important for running your computer?
However, the web is not machine code. There is no known design for a hardware processor that will 'execute' a web page. And that's because web pages are more like a page description language than anything else. Thinking metaphorically, it's more like source code for some high-level compiled language. Every time you render a web page, you have to wait for it to compile the code. And even after that, you have more complexity with javascript, AJAX applications, server pushes, flash, java, and more. And if you think about it, you'll realize that none of the web technologies were originally designed to do even a quarter of the things we make them do today. Do you really think that we'll be able to do everything that we can do with our relatively behemoth desktop machines on a web browser?
I'm not saying it's impossible to do everything we can do with computers in a fancified web browser. But it's definitely going to take a lot of work, and for it to work, the technologies involved in the internet are going to have to evolve dramatically.
Google's already got an OS, Android. It's already shipping, it's FOSS, it's got a huge developer base with tools since it's really Linux programmed in Java with a different compiler generating different bytecode for a different JM (Dalvik). It runs on mobile phones and netbooks, and probably PCs, too - and will soon probably run on anything Linux runs on.
What possible strategy could come from also releasing a ChromeOS that is different from Android? Does Google expect lots of people to develop for both Android and ChromeOS? Google surely realizes there are only so many developers, even if ChromeOS is easy and more new developers spring up for it.
Launching one new OS is gutsy, and succeeds about once every couple of decades. Launching two within a couple years is foolhardy, and undercuts each of them.
--
make install -not war
How the old is made new once more. Back in the early '80s we were only too happy to get away from that model... Just goes to show. Just as well I kept that card-punch (a Burroughs equivalent of this), maybe I'll need it again in a few years.
Screw 32G, it sounds like all they need is about 4G.
This isn't designed for cellular devices, that's Android. It's for thin client desktops with SSDs rather than HDDs, not MicroSD. I don't see why it would not take full advantage of the bandwidth, it's not like their customers are gonna have gigabit level ethernet drops to the home.
The target audience isn't power users, it's basically an OS that runs a specific browser with some support for stuff like digital cameras so you can upload your photos to Picasa, Photobucket, et al. It's for Ma and Pa to use.
15 years ago, it was a 68040 Amiga at 25MHz or an Intel Pentium at less than 100MHz running Windows 3.1.
My "phone" is more powerful than these today... don't worry about the desktop.
-Dave Haynie
Have you ever found a CPU that was designed to run programs slowly?
Have you ever used a web browser that was designed to run web apps slowly? No, of course not - processors and web browsers are both designed to do what they are intended to do as fast as they can. And, in both cases, there is a large range of programs for which this is fast enough, and some for which it isn't.
Web apps have similarities with desktop apps - they have a UI written in a page description language, and code that supplies the functionality for that interface. There are lots of apps for which interpreted code is fast enough, because they are not limited by processing speed, but by IO speeds, or by the speed at which the user can use them, or something else. For these apps, a desktop app written in python, or a web app written in javascript, could be just fine.
Do you really think that we'll be able to do everything that we can do with our relatively behemoth desktop machines on a web browser?
Of course not, but no-one's suggesting that. I might be able to do all the stuff I want to do on a netbook, in a web browser, though.
I thought that Apple was bad about wanting total control, but they've got nothing on Google.
My response to this crap is the same as my response to the failed monopolists in Cupertino: I simply don't buy their shit under any circumstances.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Can games be played on this OS? (Given large enough physical memory and graphic card)
Sure. As long as you want to put your prawn "in the cloud". Like I'm about to do THAT.
That issue, if nothing else, will make this OS a non-starter.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
I dont see to much of a future of Chromium OS, yes google is behind that thing, but linux came first. It will be hard to gain that terrain, and there is BSD. I dont think they are going to be able to bit Windows. And you are going to need internet everywhere you go. Maybe i am wrong but i dont think the current internet connections are fast enought to allow you to access big files over the internet. How about big files like movies? The only thing i can think of is that their target is netbooks in first world countries, and maybe hoping that in the next 5 years internet connections will speed up, so they can handle that huge amount of data transference. Having everything in a cloud seems what technology is aiming in the future but it doesnt seems practical for me, at least for the next five years. Maybe with Internet2 (yes i know is mainly for educational and research porpoises)or when everyone uses IPv6.
So I will outsource that to Google.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... that is all the reconciliation we need.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
how is there a monopoly in a market that nobody else wants (or can) offer the same product?
In any case having a monopoly is not evil, abusing it is.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Open Source licenses (like the GPL) are not EULAs in the traditional sense, they are copyright agreements.
If Google release the code then as long as you respect how the code is copied and modified (Copyright) I don't think they can dictate how the software is used (EULA).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
For creating one of the most limited PC operating systems of all time (with ads too) !
There have been several of those "dead horses" in the past.
Apple's Newton comes to mind, where an idea was way ahead of its time.
In this case everything seems to be in place: people are already doing most of their work online (email, webs surfing, now even document editing, presentations and basic photographic and video editing) and we have broadband, something we lacked during previous attempts.
When Sun tried the idea they didn't have desktop applications in offer. It all worked great, but the only thing you could do is run an X application back in your display.
Now you have all applications online, even in corporate networks.
You are also underestimating the frustration in many companies with the asinine maintenance cycle of Windows based desktops. In many companies they are trying to use things like Citirix and bizarre Windows thin clients in order to minimize maintenance costs, a thin client with credible applications is a holly grail, not a dead horse.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
They can no longer install programs they find in the net, download and watch videos and pictures, and run that funny program that was sent by a person they have not met before.
Computers are not in an office to satisfy employees aesthetic tastes, they are there to accomplish specific tasks, so frankly I would not be particularly concerned if users feel frustrated, there are enough people out there that would be grateful to have a job, so they can give their place to somebody else if they feel aggravated by using restricted computing resources.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
iPhones are luxury items, most people don't have one, ditto for iPods.
Play video games? Buy a console.
As for the rest, I fail to see why you can't upload pictures from your camera (have you heard about this little thing called Picassa?)
And of course if you have a web browser+flash+java you can work from home (there are several solutions out there that will work for you).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
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.
What makes you think Google won't make sure this remains true? Actually, isn't Google trying to do exactly what Apple does here, make sure they have full control over the hardware their software runs on?
Unlike for Apple when they started, Google doesn't actually have to design their own hardware though, it has become a commodity, available from many vendors. Google just has to pick one which will do exactly what they want.
If you don't back your mail up in a way you can always get at, then it's your fault it you loose that mail. Services go wrong, or get shutdown etc etc. I've lost data twice online from believing in this cloud rubbish (it was called something else at the time) and Deja lost my mail for me twice. Just a few months ago I read about AOL pulling the plug on web hosting service they where providing to their users, without notice, and those who didn't have local copies of their site lost it. If you are tied to the working and survival of a service outside of your control, you are asking to be made a mug of. It's not different this time, just like it wasn't different every other time. Sure webmail is really useful, but don't leave important data only there, and because of security, best not their at all. Listen to the old dudes, the world isn't that different now, people are still people, computers are still computers and companies are still companies.
Perhaps Google should not bother with these things doing backwards things like booting and launching browser... If they implant a "Google chip" into our brains, we will wake up and whatever we wonder will be searched in Google properties and injected into our thoughts with Google adsense mixed in middle of them.
Calling this insane? Watch people lining up for Google powered FREE netbooks next year, especially 8-13 year old kids...
Dear EFF: Remember what you are supposed to do? That "powered by Google" searchbox on your site, start with removing it.
Hit shift+c to compose in a new window. Then you don't have to wait that OMG ETERNITY of 1-2 seconds to return to your inbox.
$ make love
make: don't know how to make love. Stop
Yet, most people don't get it. Historically, the main motivation for the birth of the internet was specifically to avoid the dreaded Single Point of Failure. What we see in the cloud concept is exactly the opposite. The cloud can (and statistically it will) eat your data, along with everyone's else. What if a whole contry's data infrastructure is in one failed cloud?
Do you trust one company to be better at handling YOUR data than yourself? Do you trust it will never be hacked? Do you trust it will always be online? Do you trust nobody will access it without your consent?
I don't. You shouldn't.
Also, what happens when you get without internet access? What happens when power is out? (my laptop can run for two hours on battery, my router won't)
What happens when the three-strikes law passes? Not if, given current state of affairs. Will you be locked out of all your data? What when you put all your family HD movies in the cloud, will you need to have fiber to watch it with good quality?
Also, economically that's a catastrophe. The cloud will maintain some companies basically with a monopoly on YOUR data. It will destroy the whole industry based on standalone software. Don't be mislead: you WILL have to pay to get even the most basic software running. Many companies already do that with auto-deactivating software. The cloud will only make it easier.
And for those who think the comment above looks like some doomsday dark sci-fi story, I advice to take a look around. Things are already happening. One doesn't have to dig deep to find news of what's already happening.
say what? that has nothing to do with the delays that are incurred in the background from things processing. It's not whether it's 1 second, or 5 years. There are delays that are added by adding a server-step between everything.
You might not see the 1-2 seconds yourself, but add another thousand users, and you sure will. This is why Chrome OS has, well, almost no functionality, only basics. More advanced stuff would show latency sensitive issues.
easy example: maya programming and testing on chrome. Good luck with that, in not having the program on your pc.
no, it's not. Even on 3g or wireless with a 22mb downstream connection at home, the phones are not fast enough to process the data. /note, this is on a g1 with cyanogen even.
Maybe they'll use this:
http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/software-updates-courgette
I do both. I host my email on Gmail, but typically access it via IMAP in Evolution. That way, it's integrated with my work email and everything else.
-l
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I think he fails to understand it because of a simple reason. Apple, with a CULT base, not a customer base couldn't get away with "web apps only" on a tiny device.
Lets see what will people say about "web apps" on a fscking 12 inch screen and a real keyboard.
Steve Jobs couldn't make people convinced about it. You know, the Reality Distortion Field guy, CEO of Century or something... Apple didn't dare to claim people's personal data too...
BTW, I wonder when will US Govt. ask Google about how far they will go?
You know, there is something called Linux and entire tree of BSD which is free to do anything with. I can find 10-15 elite guys and start my own BSD Distro and if it is better than FreeBSD (imaginary speaking), it can have potential to grow bigger and perhaps make a multi billion enterprise giant (Red Hat).
Why don't contribute time and resources to them and play with a giant information monopoly toy instead? Return? More 13 year old clueless kids personal info?
Apple can't and won't port iTunes to Chrome OS since they won't be able to run their own schemes of communicating with their devices.
iTunes.html can be done, usbmuxd.html can't.
In theory, if there is enough market, Apple can release iTunes for Linux, a closed source binary but on a WebOS, they can't even if they want to.
Well, if you'll settle for yesterday's hardware (or in other words what we have today), at least for a while you'll have a near-endless supply of cheap/free used computers to play with as nearly everyone will have one sitting around they'll be wanting to unload. On the other hand, this could end up hurting the new PC business even further if most of the remaining PC users decide they'll settle for a used Core 2 system at 1/10 the cost.
People are making up new words for products that already have names at an alarming rate. If we don't put a stop to this soon new products that are not yet named (or even exist) will need even more ridiculous names made up for them.