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ChromeOS Zero Released

charliesome writes "Hexxeh, a student from the United Kingdom, has been the source for ChromeOS builds since the release of the Google operating system. He's just released ChromeOS Zero, a small build designed for speed and aesthetics. He recently did an interview with The Chrome Source."

16 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    So he's basically doing the job of a Linux distributor. He builds the ChromeOS packages from source, then you can download his binaries and install them. This is probably easier and quicker than building them yourself.

    That's all there is to it.. if ChromeOS Zero was Slackware, this guy would be Patrick Volkerding.

  2. Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Informative

    TFA says it is ChromiumOS. Chromium is the is the open source version of Chrome.

  3. Re:What is this? by micheas · · Score: 3, Informative

    They are different in that google only releases the source.

    If you have ever installed linux from scratch or some similar OS, you can install chrome. As far as I understand, google has no plans to release chrome OS binaries, They expect anyone installing Chrome OS to be able to compile code from source.

  4. Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Informative

    He compiled the code that Google only officially releases as source code to the public at this time, and this his third release, after fixing several problems he discovered. He's one of the few people working on this OS that Google doesn't employ.

  5. Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. by rchh · · Score: 5, Informative

    Chromium OS is the development version of Chrome OS which, when released during 2nd half of 2010, is also going to be completely open source.

    --
    Computers can reverse entropy.
  6. Re:chromeOS can't set proxy - without internet! by H3XX3H · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was testing an earlier ChromeOS build in VMWare and although it worked OK when at home, on a network with proxy went to click the option to configure proxy, it opens up another tab in the browser - "Page cannot be displayed" - the proxy page couldn't be displayed unless I already had an internet connection working, and without setting the proxy I couldn't get an internet connection.

    You need to do it via terminal right now sorry since there's no UI in place, edit /usr/bin/chromeos-chrome-login and chromeos-chrome-loop to add the --proxy-server flag to the bottom.

  7. Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. by H3XX3H · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't get who this guy is. He was the source for ChromeOS builds?!? Google dropped it?! How does this guy handle Google's builds?

    I don't get it.

    ChromeOS Zero - what's so special about it?

    These builds take the ChromiumOS source provided by Google, and just improve upon it and deviate slightly from the direction Google is going in. Google is tailoring to a very limited set of devices, but really, there are a lot of people on a very wide range of hardware who would like to use ChromiumOS, and so I'm trying to make it more accessible/usable. I'm also providing updates automatically with the launch of the updater beta, to remove the need for frequent reimages to stay up to date.

  8. Re:Maybe he'll make Chrome OS useful! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    I suspect that you just suffer from mild retardation. That's likely why you find GMail's web interface acceptable.

  9. Friend, I am about to destroy your arguments. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Where to begin, where to begin... You are so full of shit and misconception that it's difficult to start tearing you and your pathetic arguments apart.

    Using X tunneled over SSH, I already have access to my main desktop system. I can access it from work, I can access it from my smartphone, I can access it from my netbook. I don't use other public computers, because I can't trust their security. Only a fucking moron would dare use a public computer for anything that requires a login.

    The "Cloud" that you worship is full of shit. I've been working with computers and networks since the early 1970s, and we saw all this "Cloud" crap back when mainframes were king. I know you're probably just a teenager, and don't have any experience with large systems and networks, but there was a reason we moved away from mainframes towards PCs. Mainly, it was because centralization of any sort is a very dangerous thing. And yes, your precious "Cloud" is centralized. Even small failures of centralized infrastructure end up being very costly.

    The moment you lose Internet connectivity, and it will happen, you're absolutely fucked. You can't access your files, for instance. If you're using web "apps" then you can't even access the applications! You're beyond fucked at that point. Now your fantastic netbook running Chrome OS is nothing more than an expensive way of displaying a "Cannot connect to server" error message.

    Given the amount of data that various "Cloud" providers are dealing with, it's very doubtful that they have appropriate backup solutions in place. The cost to do it properly would be astronomical, even if you factor in their economies of scale. I trust myself to back up my own data much more than I could ever trust some admins at Amazon or Google or some lesser host.

    So it's 2010, and we can play games from 1996 in our web browser using Flash? That's not an accomplishment, you stupid dumbfuck. But yeah, the potential is really amazing. Just think, in 2025 we'll be able to play games from today! SO MUCH POTENTIAL!

    I do a lot of consulting for large and small clients, and very few use web apps for anything serious. You never see POS systems implemented as web apps, for instance, because they're too unreliable. (Oh, and since I know you've got absolutely no industry experience, "POS" stands for point-of-sale. We're talking about the software you see running on cash registers.)

    If you ever manage to get a job, you should try to see how large companies use web apps. You'll find out that most don't, or if they do, it's for some near-meaningless task. One insurance company I works with does use an ASP.NET app. Do you know what it does? It maintains the roster of their goddamn company baseball league. A small finance company I know of uses a JavaServer Faces-based web app to schedule who is going to get coffee for the office. They wouldn't trust anything serious to a web application. All of their serious applications are desktop applications.

    I'll give you credit for having the balls to try and defend some of the shittiest technology (yes, even worse than Microsoft Windows) to ever come along. I sure hope your post was just an exercise in devil's advocatery. But if you do take yourself seriously, I sincerely hope that you never get into the computing field. You and your stupid ideas will be torn apart in the real world, and unlike the pain I've just delivered to you here, it will hurt you and your pathetic "career" a whole lot more.

  10. Re:And the point of this is ... ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Looks like vendor lock-in to me ... all depends on Google. If Google ever goes bye-bye, all your data goes bye-bye too.

    You've never heard of the Data Liberation Front have you? It's a group run by Google that specializes in ways to backup or migrate your data from Google products. If you want to keep backups of your Google web app data in case they disappear, you may go right ahead. With few exceptions, you have that power.

  11. Re:And the point of this is ... ??? by nine-times · · Score: 2, Informative

    Because Google has been working on Google Gears and HTML offline functionality? If that stuff is working, you should be able to run Gmail, Google Docs, and other applications without a connection.

  12. Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. by g253 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I see no reason why you can't have your "traditional" development model (deadlines, programmers paid to do stuff they don't like, all those niceties) and still release the code as OSS. How about Ubuntu? Don't they have all of the above?

    The fact that anyone can access and modify the code doesn't mean it must only be provided by volunteers.

  13. Re:0% Sugar Content by Air-conditioned+cowh · · Score: 2, Informative

    Chrome Zero, your first sugar free OS.

    Good grief! I hope not :-O

  14. Re:May the competition begin. by psnyder · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wake up MS. There another new kid on the block as rich as you.

    Google is not nearly as rich as MS.

    Microsoft

    • Revenue US$ 58.437 billion (2009)
    • Operating income US$ 20.363 billion (2009)
    • Net income US$ 14.569 billion (2009)
    • Total assets US$ 77.888 billion (2009)
    • Total equity US$ 39.558 billion (2009)
    • Employees 93,000 in over 100 countries (2009)

    Google

    • Revenue $ 21.796 billion (2008)
    • Operating income $ 6.632 billion (2008)
    • Net income $ 4.227 billion (2008)
    • Total assets $ 31.768 billion (2008)
    • Total equity $ 28.239 billion (2008)
    • Employees 19,665 – September 30, 2009
  15. Re:Insightful by MrCrassic · · Score: 2, Informative

    Informative.

  16. Re:Open Sores... by daw1234 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The rubbery parts of Oakley sunglasses are also made from UNOBTAINIUM® (http://www.oakley.com/pd/6213)