Chrome OS Introduces Aura Window Manager

An anonymous reader writes "Don't look now, but Google has officially revealed their intentions to go after Windows and OS X. Chrome OS 19 has arrived for Samsung Series 5 and Acer AC700 Chromebooks running the developer channel, and the changes it brings may shock you. The new Aura window manager has landed, bringing with it a number of features that you'd expect from a traditional OS. For starters, there’s the Shelf along the bottom of the screen. It’s set to hide when you’ve got a browser window maximized by default, but you can choose to have it always on top or auto-hide, too, just like the Windows taskbar or OS X dock."

Comments

Still working on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It surprises me they are still working on Chrome OS. Its probably not too bad, but I don't exactly see a huge demand for it, especially since they also have android which would work nearly as well for what they want to do with Chrome OS.

I kinda wish they pushed for Wave harder. That looked like something I would use.

Re:Still working on it.

[jmorris42]

Yea, worst of all worlds. It only runs web apps but few are so totally 100% always on that they are going to be comfortable with that. So now they add a desktop but it has fewer apps than any other possible system and will for a while unless they dump a ton of cash into it. Even Linux (as in a typical Linux/GNU/X distribution) has tons more apps.

The problem is the whole net centrism of Chrome OS. By definition it can't offer anything that any other platform that can run Chrome the browser can't also run. So that means anything developed for Chrome OS also runs everywhere Chrome the browser runs. Which means Chrome the OS, by definition, runs a pure subset of what every other Chrome the browser platform can run. Every other platform gets 100% of Chrome OS's app pool + it's own. And since they were stupid enough to put Intel chips in the machines they don't even get a power/battery life advantage. In fact an ARM based netbook/laptop running Linux + Chromium (Don't think Chrome itself is available on Linux/ARM but the unofficial Chromium almost certainly is.) probably would be a better deal

Re:Still working on it.

[kiwi_james]

I think you're missing the point. Chrome OS is not really for consumers - it's for Enterprises and Educational institutions.

These groups want a device that is highly secure, low / no maintenance and can be given to any random employee / student without much thinking about it. Add in the Enteprise controls that are available through a simple Web GUI and you can massively simplify the management and operation of your IT assets.

Is it something you give to your accountants or marketing team - no. Is it something you give to people working in the field or call centre staff or students - yes it is.

When you think of it this way, then Chrome OS is quite a unique solution and not worth the slamming that everyone here is giving it. There are some valid questions about how much of this could be folded into Android - but at present it has value, just probably not to you.

Re:Still working on it.

[jmorris42]

> it's for Enterprises and Educational institutions.

In other words, wouldn't they be happier with TERMINALS? That is what we are talking about after all, reinvent terminals and centralized computing, the priesthood and all that stuff people snuk in Apple ][ machines all those years ago to escape from? Only instead of VT102 escape codes we are using HTML5 on much more capable terminals. And now there is a cool video by some hipster douche telling us we don't want a computer anymore, we just want to use Google's instead of a blue suited IBM rep selling a mainframe.

But it is the same siren song, users with computers is dangerous, expensive, etc. Let US take all that away... for low monthly payments.

Re:Still working on it.

[kiwi_james]

> Only instead of VT102 escape codes we are using HTML5 on much more capable terminals
Awesome false analogy...comparing a terminal to a web browser experience.

> But it is the same siren song, users with computers is dangerous, expensive, etc. Let US take all that away... for low monthly payments

If you've ever worked in a large enterprise you'll have seen the cost that businesses spend on trying to manage and maintain their IT assets. Personally, in the days when things can be accessed via a browser, I prefer the approach of bring your own device and none of the corporate IT lockdown - but most businesses aren't quite ready for that.

I look around my office now and see half the people working in nothing but their browser all day (Email, CRM) - they wouldn't even notice the switch except for being pleaed about the faster boot time. But as I said in my early post - this isn't for everyone. The other half of my office would be hamstrung I gave a Chromebook to them to do their job.

It's a pity you can't take a small amount of time to understand the niche that Chrome OS fits into and respond to it based on that.

Re:Still working on it.

[Anthony Mouse]

The problem is the whole net centrism of Chrome OS. By definition it can't offer anything that any other platform that can run Chrome the browser can't also run. So that means anything developed for Chrome OS also runs everywhere Chrome the browser runs. Which means Chrome the OS, by definition, runs a pure subset of what every other Chrome the browser platform can run. Every other platform gets 100% of Chrome OS's app pool + it's own.

You're ignoring how that can be a significant advantage. The alternative is what you want when you're Microsoft: You want your platform to run everything everyone else's can and then a lot more, because the more stuff runs on your platform and not others, the less people are able to switch. But that only works when you're already in the dominant market position -- adding some cool API or whatever is close to useless if the only way you can use it is if all your customers have ChromeOS and nobody does.

Now look at it from the other side: Suppose you make it so Chrome on Windows and OS X does everything Chrome OS can do. OK, now you convince some companies that it would be a good idea to write their custom business application against Chrome -- that way it will run on all major platforms, and for the few users who need only that application, you can buy them a Chrome OS computer which is cheaper and practically immune to viruses. Which provides the thin end of the wedge: Get people using Chrome OS in a limited capacity and the next custom business application that comes around for a refresh gets "works on our existing Chrome OS machines" as a requirement. Five or ten years later, everything businesses do works on Chrome OS and they start wondering what sense it makes paying money for Windows licenses.

Re:Still working on it.

[slack_justyb]

In other words, wouldn't they be happier with TERMINALS?

I'm with you, of course, I'm of the opinion that the trends are but a pendulum between central and distributed. I'd say we're still on the waxing side of the central ethos, but give it time and people will eventually want their data back.

However, I think it's all pretty neat. I for one am tired of the two decades of Microsoft that we are waking up from. People are seeing that the field of computers is much more diverse (which comes as no surprise for the people here on Slashdot, but now Grandma is asking "PC or Mac?")

We all are thinking "yawn" but c'mon, the industry needed a big shake up, and while technically we all here see this becoming nothing more than what we had in the 1970. We are changing the vendor from being one to anyone on the Intertubes. We are changing the equipment from being just a terminal to anything that can have a web browser. We are changing the people who create the content from those locked in a warm basement with punch cards, to a varity of diverse people from artist to programmers and everything in between. However, more importantly, this is showing the general consumer that there isn't just one computer to rule them all.

Slashdot users can smirk all they want about how this was already crystal clear to us, but the fact that even Microsoft's position is now challenged, forecasters say that Apple cannot stay at the top, and Google is all over the place unpredicable; means that the rule of alpha vendor may just be in fact ending, hopefully.

Re:Still working on it.

[Artifakt]

If you're going to be precise, we're not talking a move back to dumb terminals with Chrome, but a less restrictive move to more specialized computing devices instead of a general purpose computer. We are discussing putting limits on users, and limits that many here on slashdot would chafe under, but they aren't as drastic as the terms you chose.

For one thing, an OS such as Windows already has some of the same limits. Using the box for art may mean either a lot of expense for a legitimate copy of Photoshop or running pirated copies, or using something like the Gimp that may not be compatable with the next service pack and may never have good support. High prices for lots of business, math or music software similarly mean a lot of users can't afford to legally build the tool that can focus on some of those "General Purpose" uses. Keeping system hooks and APIs and such secret is a separate cause of making machines into non-general purpose computers, or specialty boxes, or whatever you want to call them. Apple's walled garden approach is effectively a vector pointed away from "General Purpose" computers in similar ways. Even Linux has some of this problem when you look at the whole package, i.e. what people mean by saying designers are 'dumbing down' the Gnome interface is precisely the same as saying they think less variety of purposes are suitable under it.

However, if you call those limited boxes terminals, I suspect the people pushing Chrome OS, Cloud Computing, and other things will both point out the differences from those old 'green on black texty thingees' until the similarities are obscured, and keep treating the base Windows or OS X type system as though it were a totally pure "General Computing" environment and the browser based systems were just a small step down from that purity. We do better to stress that even the baseline OSes have many, many points where they veer away from the idea of supporting a box that can do anything the user wants, (at least if it has the raw computing power to handle that task). Most users have run into the problem of not being able to do some task or other any better, even on a much more powerful machine than they once used. Or they remember being able to do something on an older machine that they can't do at all anymore. Warning them that these browser focused 'solutions' will have more of that sort of problem is something many of them will understand.

Re:Still working on it.

[swillden]

I'm blessed with a glut of computing hardware, I suppose, but I have a desktop, a laptop, a chromebook, a tablet and a smartphone. Oh, and I have a bluetooth keyboard which can be used with the tablet or the phone. With all of those options, I would have predicted that I'd never use the chromebook. It seems like if I need a full keyboard I'd use the laptop or desktop, while if I just need to do something small, I'd use the tablet, or the phone.

In fact, I find the Chromebook fills a couple of important niches in my life. First, it's what I reach for when I want to look something up on the web, fast. It's more portable than the desktop, quicker to get running than the laptop and more useful (for web-based stuff) than the tablet or the phone. Second, it's my "shareable" computer. I'm not handing my laptop to anyone. I wouldn't even if it weren't a company laptop and therefore forbidden to be shared with non-employees. My tablet and my phone are even less shareable.

But the Chromebook? I log out, hand the little machine over and say "just log in with your Google account". And for people who use lots of web apps, all their apps are "there". If they use Chrome on other computers and use Chrome Sync, when they log in all of their bookmarks, etc., are all on the Chromebook already.

The combination of instant access, super battery life, built-in 3G data and shareability makes my Chromebook one of the most-used computers in my house.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but have no particular interest in selling Chromebooks. I just quite like mine -- though I probably wouldn't have one if Google hadn't given it to me.)

Re:Still working on it.

[RobbieThe1st]

But that's where it's so brilliant! I can have my Debian heavyweight desktop running Chrome as an app alongside firefox and everything else, still use the cloud tools from that along with my nice local ones. And when I'm on the go, I can use my phone which *also* runs chromium and use the same web applications along with it's local ones. And I can borrow a ChromeOS netbook from my employer for a task, run the same Chrome webapps, and not have to worr about getting software loaded on it...
No, a ChromeOS device will never replace a desktop for most. It won't even replace a phone. But it could /compliment/ both.

And, as the grandparent post pointed out, once you have your apps running via a web browser -- even if they are 'intranet' apps vs 'cloud' ones -- you just might give up on windows for a signifigant fraction of machines.
Some, of course, will always need a real OS. But not your Kiosks, database-frontends etc. -- All things that require remote servers anyway, so why not just use a webapp instead of a local app? And at that point, why not get rid of windows for Chrome OS, something lightweight, secure, and hard to screw up?

Re:Still working on it.

[hairyfeet]

And does anyone else smell the delicious waft of moist and chewy irony here? MSFT gets ready to shove out a desktop that is more like a tablet/smartphone hybrid so Google puts out something that at first glance....looks a hell of a lot like Windows 7, only replacing the start orb with the ...well chrome orb but it is a different KIND of orb at least.

Now all we need if for google to buy ReactOS and bitchslap MSFT silly by making a Windows desktop that runs better than what they are gonna be pushing in oct. The irony would be so sweet i'd probably become diabetic.

Seriously though Google just really doesn't seem to know what to actually do with ChromeOS. As you pointed out Linux has much more programs and Google just doesn't seem to grasp that not everywhere in the USA has high speed 24/7 connections. Finally what to me seems to be the biggest "WTF were they thinking" moment when it comes to ChromeOS....the price. ZOMFG have you seen how much the ones that have released ChromeOS netbooks want for the damned thing? Many are over $500! For an OS that is pretty much completely useless without the net and has less programs than both Linux and Windows AND if that wasn't enough to set off your WTF meter the specs on the hardware is beyond shitty. The ones I've seen have a shitty Atom CPU, shitty Intel graphics AND a crazy price...wow I wonder why those don't just fly off the shelves?

If you want a net based OS friends listen to old Hairy and just get a EEE PC netbook. Not only do they come with better hardware (ION or my favorite AMD Fusion) but you get Expressgate that is a NetOS that boots in less than 6 seconds and has tons of apps, both free and pay, in the ASUS appstore. Oh and you get Win 7 as well so you can still run any Windows programs if needed or if you prefer Linux or want to triple boot they are supported OOTB since IIRC Ubuntu 10.04.

This whole thing just seems more than a little pointless when compared to what is out there. Android is a hit so maybe they should either just stick with that or if they want to gain some real share subsidize the hw and get the price point down to around $100 which they could do with ARM, hell they probably could with X86 if they took a single core Bobcat as that would cut out the cost of the graphics chip. Don't view this as hatred for netOSes, on the contrary i just love Expressgate and can really see the appeal, but just not on weak hardware at crazy prices.

Re:Still working on it.

[FunkDup]

Yea, worst of all worlds. It only runs web apps

Yeh but there are advantages to dumb terminals, like lower power requirements, more hardware architecture options and centralising resources. Think of how overpowered most office machines are already, getting all those spare cycles into a central location could be very fruitful (both in cost and power). If you've ever been responsible for more than 5 machines you'll appreciate centralised management systems. Think Active Directory with a whole lot less complexity exposed to Murphy and his team of gremlins.

Businesses run so many internal webapps nowadays that ChromeOS is likely useful as it is. If the chrome box speaks RDP then you can run legacy apps on terminal servers.

I'm pretty sure that somewhere in this plan is an appliance style server (in the vein of turnkey) which would pretty much change everything.

Re:Still working on it.

[unixisc]

Google either buying or forking ReactOS would be a great idea - make Windows 7 the target spec on which to base it, build into it everything that it needs, borrowing generously from Chrome OS and only substituting IE9 w/ Chrome, so that there are no issues, and run w/ it. Offer different Window Managers at installation - be it XP, 7, 2k, 98, ME, Vista, whatever.... Have different editions, just like Windows does, and offer various options @ various price points, ranging from $20 all the way up to $200, depending on what's being sold. That way, most hardware would get covered. Oh, and call the new OS something else - since Chrome is already associated w/ Linux, give this one another name.

I don't think they should offer Android on laptops any more than MS should have offered Metro on it. Instead, make either ChromeOS or ReactOS look exactly the way they need, and stop overemphasizing on the web. They are big enough and good enough to challenge MS on their own turf. While MS is busy trying to convert everyone to Windows 8, take this opportunity to steal all those users, particularly the ones being encouraged to leave XP.

Re:Still working on it.

[Anthony Mouse]

when you don't have Internet

And when, exactly, is that? It happens about as often as (and is often simultaneous with when) you don't have electricity, which tends to brick just about everything after a few hours when the batteries run down, or immediately for anything without batteries. If you have cellular wireless service in addition to wifi, it happens approximately never, because the only place you don't have one or the other (if not both) is the middle of the woods where you, again, have no electricity (not to mention no corporate offices or employees).

What gives you the impression that "works without internet" is a common business requirement in a world where everyone has internet 99.9% of the time?

Only 76 more versions

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they'll catch up to Windows 95.

Re:Only 76 more versions

[theedgeofoblivious]

So next Tuesday then?

About Aura

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the relevant info about Aura.

yet another 'alternative OS'...

[ThorGod]

Hey, google, do us a favor and actually do something ground breaking with your OS. Take some cues from Plan9 that were never implemented on a desktop. Maybe make it more like a network OS than a hardware OS?

It sounds like it's going to be little more than a bootable interface to the web, I know. But google does employ people that were part of the Plan9 project, so it's not like they can't do something NEW.

Also, let me not be the first to say...I hope they realize they have to respect their users' privacy on their actual hardware...(I suspect they wont.)

Re:ChromeOS different to Android 4.0?

[larry bagina]

Chrome is linux running a web browser and nothing but a web browser. Android is linux with a bastard java stack that can run arbitrary applications.

Officially revealed?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Don't look now, but Google has officially revealed their intentions to go after Windows and OS X.

So creating Chrome OS in the first place wasn't enough of a clue for you?

Re:Instead of all this new crap, why not FIX YUR B

[Barbara, not Barbie]

It's not a "moving target" - it's a badly written specification. Pick a change at random - a lot of them are mistakes - whoever wrote the spec left too much as either ambiguous or "assumed."

So you can have perfectly-formed html and css, and it will still break. It's "broken by design" - just like we used to say about Windows. Also, no amount of back-filling is going to change the fundamental problems - html and css and javascript are not a good way to build programs, and never will be.

Re:Just cut it out

[Nimey]

It's an extension. ThinkGeek sells a programmable USB one with a Javascript interface.

Google moves ever closer

[djlowe]

Google moves ever closer to gaining complete access to our personal information, and more.

Imagine a full Google OS, no monetary cost, offered under their current licenses. It's slick, clean, multi-platform, perhaps always in beta, but backed by a company with some of the best software engineering resources the planet has to offer, creating a near-perfect end user experience, all the while farming information from its users by default.

Sorry, but I'm not having any.

Paranoid? You're damned right I'm paranoid. Google scares me now more than any other company in the world. They've created a paradigm that seduces people into using their products in return for their personal information, in ever-increasing detail, all while promising that they're not evil so as to reassure them.

I don't know - maybe they'll prove themselves to be so. But if history is any indication, it's not likely, and I can't help but think that a company that exists only to gather and sell information about people will eventually abuse that in order to make money.

Cynically,

dj

Re:Just cut it out

[PCM2]

Most of you people who say "there's no use for this" have probably never used a Chromebook. I have -- and though my initial reaction was not too far off from yours, I have to admit that I ended up using the thing way more than I ever expected I would.

My particular use case can be described as: "Eehhh, I guess I'll just leave it in the bedroom for when I need to look something up real quick."

Now, previously I might have done the same thing with some old laptop. But the genius of the Chromebook is that it's a Chrome browser and nothing but, so it never bothers you with anything that would go along with being able to do more than that. It never tells you there's a security fix for the printer driver, or asks if you want to upgrade to the latest Ubuntu distro (which changes the entire UI). If you have a few PCs lying around the house, you've probably rolled your eyes at least once when Microsoft's Patch Tuesday rolled around. That never happens here. It's just a Web browser that sits on the dresser.

There are security updates and it even gets new features, but it all happens behind the scenes, while you aren't paying attention, just like it does with the Chrome browser. Which is totally what you want when you really don't plan to use it for anything but browsing the Web.

Now, I'll go ahead and point out that this makes the Chromebook sort of a luxury item, because for most people who live in today's real world it's going to be a secondary computing device. You're going to buy another computer first, and then you'll buy one of these. But that's fine -- they aren't that expensive, and wasn't that pretty much the case with the entire netbook category, too?

You might say "but a netbook can do a lot more than a Chromebook, a Chromebook can hardly do anything" -- but I have no plans to do anything with it but surf the Web. Could I get a netbook and install Chrome on it? Yes, but that wouldn't be as convenient. Here, I grab it off the dresser, open the screen, and I've got a browser window. Three seconds.

It really is a pretty neat product. Google just hasn't done the best job of marketing it. Maybe that's because, unlike tablets, it looks like something you already have -- a laptop -- even though it's not one.

It may be that the price just has to come down even further. If Chromebooks sold for $199 and still had reasonable build quality, would that seem like a value to you?

XP replacement

[unixisc]

It surprises me they are still working on Chrome OS. Its probably not too bad, but I don't exactly see a huge demand for it, especially since they also have android which would work nearly as well for what they want to do with Chrome OS.

I kinda wish they pushed for Wave harder. That looked like something I would use.

On the contrary, seems to me that Chrome OS, or more appropriately, Chromium OS, would be a perfect replacement for Windows XP to people who can't buy Windows 7 or any extra hardware to run it. Unlike other Linuxes, here they would have Google behind the thing. Actually, more appropriately, Google ought to escalate the role of Chrome OS from being just a web OS to a general purpose one, like Windows.

I do worry about things like driver support. Incidentally, is there any reason Google chose to go w/ Linux, as opposed to FreeBSD? With FreeBSD, they'd be getting a driver ABI on which to base their device driver architecture, so that things don't break as they upgrade. From what I understand, that's a lot more difficult to do under Linux. Note that here, we're talking about having Chrome supported on a wide variety of hardware unlike Windows 7 or 8 - namely, all hardware that currently runs Windows XP or 2k.

Incidentally, does Aura run on top of X, like KDE or GNOME? How would it look? The Chrome OS site hardly says anything about it. And how far is the entire OS from completion?

VMware Image?

[Amiralul]

Is there a way to test this new Chrome OS dev release in a virtual machine, like VMware?

Re:ChromeOS different to Android 4.0?

[shutdown -p now]

Well, it's a full Chrome browser. (The Android browser is not Chrome.)

Android 4.0 has real Chrome now.