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Chrome OS Receives Extreme Makeover With Material Design and Google Now
MojoKid writes Late last week, Google quietly began inviting people to opt into the beta channel for ChromeOS to help the company "shape the future" of the OS. Some betas can be riskier than others, but Google says that opting into this one is just a "little risk", one that will pay off handsomely for those who crave new features. New in this version is Chrome Launcher 2.0, which gives you quick access to a number of common features, including the apps you use most often (examples are Hangouts, Calculator, and Files). Some apps have also received a fresh coat of paint, such as the file manager. Google notes that this is just the start, so there will be more updates rolling out to the beta OS as time goes on. Other key features available in this beta include the ability to extract pass protected Zip archives, as well as a perk for travelers. ChromeOS will now automatically detect your new timezone, and then update the time and date accordingly.
For the user's benefit of course! We promise! Don't be evil and all that!
Honestly, the most noticeable change was that the font changed on the tabs and URL bar.
I know- it's so terrible to have a sub-$200 laptop that boots in seconds and that has everything stored in the cloud so if my kids break it I can replace it trivially.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
and which pants heavily when you want to watch an 1080p MKV on it.
Watching 1080p video on an 11'' screen seems pretty pointless to me.
No? Watching http://trailers.divx.com/divx_... just fine on my Acer C720; CPU hasn't bumped over over 40%.
you're only giving google a head start on tracking your kids' every move online. not the greatest move a parent can make.
I guess you don't watch them on a Nexus 7 then.
I'd rather pay $250 for a real laptop running an OS that has an actual software library. I'd also rather keep MY data to myself instead of storing it online where some corporation has full access to it and that requires an internet connection just to get at it.
Some of us use computers for more than Facebook and YouTube.
know- it's so terrible to have a sub-$200 laptop that boots in seconds and that has everything stored in the cloud so if my kids break it I can replace it trivially.
If your kid breaks your laptop, that's accompanied by an ass whooping to ensure it never happens again, right?
Intelligent countries with intelligent people don't treat laptops as throwaways items.
Nor do they store their vital data in "the cloud."
Google fanboys are not intelligent.
If you mount it on your wall, sure. But a laptop on my lap fills up my field of view much more than the 40" TV in my living room does.
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
The part that is the joke is that the OS has ZERO apps, is essentially unusable with respect to usability and no one would ever take you seriously if you are caught using one. Could you imagine a prospective employee showing up to an interview with a P.O.S chromebook instead of a macbook? You'd be laughed out of the interview.
I know- it's so terrible to have a sub-$200 laptop
that would be nice, in reality new Chromebook Pixel is $999, £670, AU$1,320
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
You know, by now I'm used to articles in the mainstream news who confuse an operating system, applications (which may or may not ship with an operating system), and the look/feel that a particular GUI puts on both. However, a web site like Slashdot - self-proclaimed home of "news for geeks" - should be able to do a little bit better.
Come on Stallman, no shame in posting under a name.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Nor do they store their vital data in "the cloud."
Who is saying vital data, your bookmarks are vital data?
In actual reality, I went to amazon.com, typed "Chromebook", selected OS: "Chrome OS", then sorted by price resulting in 14 models below the $200 mark
I'm just curious why Slashdot of all places doesn't have the "SystemD Just Forked The Linux Kernel" article up yet? That was breaking news quite a few places today. You can even read it on distrowatch.com for those who haven't heard yet.
HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK, is this for real?
I've just been reading The systemd Project Forks the Linux Kernel from DistroWatch, which I presume is what you were referring to.
This isn't an April Fool's Day joke, is it? It is dated March 30, so I have to assume that it isn't.
Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. Systemd is utterly destroying the Linux community. It's doing this so much better than Microsoft or SCO could have ever done.
I would like to run this as a secure browser in a VM that I can revert to a clean state regularly.
The only ChromeOS VMs I've seen are very old. Anyone know of a good source for current ChromeOS as a (vmware) VM?
And I see plenty of sub-$200 Windows laptops, which are far more useful.
The remaining 5% makes me money. So yes, it is that important to me.
And, sadly or not, it requires Windows, so a Chromebook wouldn't cut it anyway.
The remaining 5% makes me money. So yes, it is that important to me.
Then don't buy a Chromebook. It is not a professional workstation. I don't have one either. But my kids do. Chromebooks are also popular with schools. They are cheap, and are difficult for students to screw up, because ... well because there is nothing on them. But if all you need is a broswer and Google docs, they are fine. You can buy five of them for the price of a Macbook.
A race to the bottom it is then!
everything stored in the cloud
As a parent you are supposed to be protecting your children, not selling their souls to the most convenient advertising agency.
both on phone and labptop
I love my Chromebook. I use Chrubuntu and/or Chroots in developer mode when I'm not traveling. The ARM architecture has incidentally given me an incentive to become much better at compiling from binary. If you don't want to do that: there are plenty of x86/x64 Chromebooks to choose from.
Every time I go to the airport I powerwash my device and reinstall from .tar.gz backups when I get home.
ChromeOS is lovely, it always makes me a little sad when I have occasion to go back to XFCE or LXDE as my primary on-boot.
>>Could you imagine a prospective employee showing up to an interview with a P.O.S chromebook instead of a macbook?
Depends on the job person is applying to. If in the course of work his only tool is browser - then chromebook is a sign that this person knows his stuff and doesn't feel uncontrollable compultion to buy bling-bling stuff just because it's trendy and cool.
and those are shite.
look, you can buy a crappy windows laptop for the same price.
which gets us to: do you want to buy a laptop that does one thing or a real laptop? with both you can use the cloud apps.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The "apps" that run on chromeos are toys and web pages^H^H^Happs instead of the standard software people expect, with the one exception being the browser.
The only way to turn a chromebook into a traditional laptop is to install another operating system on the machine and use that. In other words, a chromebook is a sub $200 web browser appliance. That's nice, but I'm not sure it's worth $200ish .
or not..keep clicking till something happens...undo or regret.
Not if you already have it like that.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Or a movie coming off torrents in that format.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I dont like the whole chromeos conceptbof anyone with a gmail account can login to my machine. I alsp havent had much luck with Microsoft office opening "standard office documents" (even the ones saved by m$ office).
Contextless, textless, unlabelled icons I take it then?
No separation of data using small 1 pixel width dividing lines, shading, or anything really, just one big flat white (or whatever colour they choose) mess?
Difficulty in easily identifying data because it's not highlighted or accentuated in any particular way?
Yep, love that material design. It's clever stuff.
Um, use YouTube? EVERY HTML5 playback is using MKV, thanks to WebM. MKV is its container format, they just changed the extension, and don't require support for all the features that MKV offers.
laptops already have a fairly well defined meaning in people's minds from the fact that laptops have been around for 20+ years.
Yup. A clamshell design with a screen on the top and a keyboard on the bottom. For most of those 20 years though a laptop also meant it costs half the price of a reasonable car, weighs 10 pounds, has 45 minutes of battery life and zero capability until you bought software separately from a store. Trust me, consumers HATED those things. These new devices have more Gees so are like 5 times more capable!
And people wonder shy the BSDs worked so hard to start using LLVM and Clang.
Out of interest, do you have any evidence that they are tracking people's every move online? I think it would be a big scandal if it were true.
For example, obviously they scan Gmail accounts to deliver targeted advertising, but do you have evidence that if you use a Yahoo email account they monitor the content of your email?
What about your Facebook posts, do they read those? Or your online banking sessions, do they track them?
Or did you mean something else by "tracking your kids' every move"?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So they downmodded you for it. Google can't make money MINUS tracking you (bigger money). Trackers pay the most vs. say, std. ads. Gee, I wonder who the NSA got their ideas from for their tracking & surveillance systems (which nobody likes since nobody likes someone's nose up their ass constantly). Of course, some stupid goof paid shill working for Google's going to "sound off" here, or the other advertising stooges (wastes of LIFE that they are, tracking and infecting us also no less as well as stealing our bandwidth we pay for too) - in that case, pre-empting their bullshit? FUCK OFF asshole. When all you have is downmods, you've got nothing and you know it as was the case here too in rotten downmods issued http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
No one needs Google docs.
Great, give kids a "computer" that you can't actually compute with. So much for learning, eh?
Unless you're taking a course in programming or programming as a professional, you don't really need a computer for computing. That's all B.S. from the 80s, 90 and the 00s. The computer is more like a pencil than anything else. It's a tool to get other things done. I, for one, like the idea of a $200 PC with a usable Word Processor for kids in school. MS Word is overkill for most people anyway.
And I see plenty of sub-$200 Windows laptops, which are far more useful.
Sure. Windows. Useful.
Why would you watch 1080p video on a shitty 1366x768 TN panel?
Yeah, now watch them off a local NAS - or somewhere where you don't have internet? Chromebook at the cottage? Nope. ChromeOS is a joke.
There are plenty of good options for a small laptop there. Personally I have a desktop computer that can do all the great things I want it to. For a laptop I wanted something small and light that I wouldn't have to worry about. A 13in Chromebook worked perfectly for that. I never use it for gaming or image development, usually just web browsing and email. Occasionally I'll do some development by SSHing into a Linux box, and if I really want to do something more intensive, I can remote desktop to my machine at home. It takes 6 seconds to boot, updates also take 6 seconds (and my windows are opened after), and it doesn't get loaded down with crapware. Worst case I can do a factory reset.
Now I realize some people want a mobile primary computer and this isn't the machine for them. Judging by the tablet market, people are quite happy to get machines that do one thing, so maybe it would be better if you saw this as a cheap tablet with a keyboard and USB ports.
So the anonymous coward gets modded 3, informative for making an unfounded blanket statement of paranoia, and you get modded 2 for pointing out multiple ways he's wrong. Except for the fact that this dynamic is the new standard for the cesspool Slasdot comments have become, it's all pretty silly.
And it has nothing to do with the merits or shortcomings of ChromeOS. Any website that tracks you (be it Google's or anyone else's) tracks you pretty much regardless of what platform/browser you're using to access it. I don't know whether Chrome on ChromeOS supports ad-block, etc - but I suspect it does. Just like on Windows, Mac and Linux desktops.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
"New standard", hah. It's been this bad for the better part of a decade. That's part of the reason why RON PAUL was so big here.
Why not merge with Android, already?
My Chromebooks are pretty poor performers and as the months move on they get slowly worse.
Why haven't Google already replaced the ad-hoc, stripped-down Linux distribution with their much more sucdessful other ad-hoc, stripped-down Linux distribution?
Kriston
Yup, the one remaining problem with low cost Chromebooks - the resolution.
Admittedly at 11" it's not so bad to have 1366x768 (16:9), however I think I'd prefer 1600x1200 (4:3). Or 2560x1600 but not $999...
Why is someone taking a laptop into an interview?
Bazinga!
Are you listening, Google? This is me, and so many of your customers.
What do we want? Not a bunch of the nonsense direction windows8 has headed in.
How about a clipboard history? Clipman on some of the linux distros is pretty close to what would be good. IIRC there used to be a clipboard manager on 3.1, I'm not sure if it showed a "history" per se.
Features like that. Window snapping is good, window dressing is a waste of everyone's time.
Because I already own the fucking video. What would you do, convert it just because "hey it ain't fittin'"?
I can watch 1080p MKVs on my crappy Samsung S4 Mini without a hitch, it works, doesn't consume much power (30% battery for a 2h long movie is pretty darn good) and yeah the phone resolution is crap but I don't care. I care about playing the damn video.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I know- it's so terrible to have a sub-$200 laptop that boots in seconds and that has everything stored in the cloud so if my kids break it I can replace it trivially.
It comes with an SSH client, and you can get access to a shell if you try. What else do you need?
I'm a web developer and I use a Chromebook. It hasn't really slowed me down at all. Clearly you have no experience whereof you speak.
You don't know anything about what you're talking about, per the usual. It looks like you've been listening to gweihir too much. There were at least two other projects looking to replace init, and half a dozen more providing some form of process tracking. Lumping two things that you hate and fear together must feel good, but systemd's development and adoptation has been a public process, and both systemd and pulseaudio offer important technical improvements (that apparently you don't understand). I realize all you do here is go off on ill-informed rants, but this one is only tangentially connected to reality; you might want to dial back the frothing a bit. I mean, you don't even use Linux — what's it to you?
P.S. That bit about "by the time he's done the kernel will be just a VM running on top of systemd!" was hyperbole, right? Because otherwise it's so far beyond crazy that it makes me wonder if you know what those words mean.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
You must not have read about this game changing feature: "ChromeOS will now automatically detect your new timezone, and then update the time and date accordingly."
"Some of us use computers for more than Facebook and YouTube."
The smugness here is pathetic.
No, I'd just watch it on something more appropriate for hi res video. It just seems weird to be irked by this issue when you clearly have other tools that work out much better for that particular thing. Not to mention your issue is in all likelihood hardware related (i.e. you used a very early gen chromebook) as I've never had issue with local video playback on the C720 nor the Dell 11, both in chrome os and ubuntu via crouton.
I downloaded it, and played it off my chromebook's SSD. If I had wanted, I could have thrown it on an external hard drive or USB stick.
LOL, DivX. How very last century of you. Try a non-ancient codec that is actually capable of representing a 1080p source.
Yes, I'd convert it for a specific device. It only takes a couple of minutes, but then I'm not trying to encode on a dinky little Chromebook....oh wait, I forgot, Chromebooks can't even encode anything because they lack the software to do even that.
The smugness here is pathetic.
Sure thing. Now get the fuck off of my internet, noob.
How is Chrome OS more useful than Windows? Hint: It's not, you're just a Google fanboy shill.
Fact: Windows has over 1.5 BILLION users worldwide. How many does Chrome OS have? A dozen?
I chose something even lighter than a laptop. I bought an $80 HP Stream 7 with a quad core Intel CPU and Windows. It's more portable, more powerful, more useful and less expensive than any Chromebook.
Unless you're taking a course in programming or programming as a professional, you don't really need a computer for computing.
Even for learning programming, a Chromebook is good enough. At my neighborhood school they start teaching Scratch in 4th grade. It runs in a browser. For older kids, they move on to the Khan Academy programming lessons, which use JavaScript, which also runs in a browser. A "real" computer isn't needed until high school, for the 5% of the students that take AP-CS, which uses Java.
You must not have read about this game changing feature: "ChromeOS will now automatically detect your new timezone, and then update the time and date accordingly."
Ahh, yes. Thank you fellow AC. I clearly see now that Chrome OS will easily overthrow Windows once word of this amazing breakthrough gets out to the people.
I mean wow, detecting timezones and updating time accordingly. It's like the future has finally arrived!
A sub-$200 Windows laptop will almost certainly be very slow, as it is not purpose-built. It's trying to do everything poorly, essentially. A sub-$200 Chromebook, while the screen may not be great, will likely be as fast at browsing the web as your full-fledged desktop. And it will almost certainly be much faster at such a task than a sub-$200 Windows laptop.
Link me a test file to play, and I'll play it and let you know how it goes.
Go find one yourself. It shouldn't be too hard to find a 1080p h.264 video with 5.1 AAC audio with ASS subtitles in an MKV or MP4 container, what with that being standard for the entire modern world.
None of those are programming languages. Let me know when kids are able to learn C, C++, Pascal, Delphi or Assembly on a Chromebook.
Scratch is the equivalent of Logo, which is first grade level at most. JavaScript is, as the name implies, a scripting language. Java is an interpreted language equivalent to BASIC and at best fourth or fifth grade level learning.
Then why do all of the sub-$200 Windows laptops have better specs than the sub-$200 Chromebooks?
A sub-$200 Chromebook, while the screen may not be great, will likely be as fast at browsing the web as your full-fledged desktop
This is where I know for a fact that you're either a fanboi shill or just stupid.
Nah, then you'll come back at me with "oh no, I meant the SuperSecretUltra H264 profile, the "High 10" profile isn't good enough for the real modern world. What's with only using ASCII characters in the subtitles - everyone knows that the cost of supporting UTF-8's extended character set is essential for everyone's laptop and also going to magically kill your computer's performance."
If you cared at all about actual real life rather than FUD, it'd be easy to link me one.
I've already done more than I'm obligated by providing you the format criteria. Go do your own work, you lazy, entitled little prick. The burden of proof is solely on you.
burden of proof is on the person who made the assertion ("chromeos pants heavily when you watch a 1080p MKV on it"). :)
Please tell... which computer and software would you use to convert a 10 GB large, 2h long 1080p video to 1366x768 in 2 minutes? Keeping embedded subtitles in is a requirement.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
This guy did: https://rolandh31.wordpress.co...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
No? Watching http://trailers.divx.com/divx_... [divx.com] just fine on my Acer C720; CPU hasn't bumped over over 40%
There is your assertion, using an obsolete video format knowing that nobody uses DivX or considers it a viable codec any more.
I asserted that "an obsolete video format knowing that nobody uses DivX or considers it a viable codec any more" plays just fine, and it does. :)
Intel Core i7 4870HQ, 8GB PC3-12800, Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SATA III SSD, Windows 8.1 Pro, Handbrake 0.10.1 64-bit
Video file 30 minutes 1920x1080 Blu-Ray to 1366x768 h.264 = 1 minute and 42 seconds.
Subtitles are nothing more than text files that can be muxed into any container with mkvmerge in less than 5 seconds.
So close to 8 minutes on a top machine. Not two.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
If by close to 8 means less than 7.
Google "what Google knows about you".
Absolutely no problem on my Acer Chromebook 13. 1080p60 Youtube videos play just fine, too.
Eat the rich.