Google Announces Chrome OS, For Release Mid-2010 1089
Posted
by
timothy
from the bring-on-the-shiny dept.
from the bring-on-the-shiny dept.
Zaiff Urgulbunger writes "After years of speculation, Google has announced Google Chrome OS, which should be available mid-2010. Initially targeting netbooks, its main selling points are speed, simplicity and security — which kind of implies that the current No.1 OS doesn't deliver in these areas! The Chrome OS will run on both x86 and ARM architectures, uses a Linux kernel with a new windowing system. According to Google, 'For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.' Google says that this new OS is separate from Android, as the latter was designed for mobile phones and set-top boxes, whereas Chrome OS is designed 'for people who spend most of their time on the web.'" The New York Times' coverage is worth reading, and there are stories popping up all over the web.
Please let there be no X! (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no mention of X anywhere, and hopefully there will be no X.
*fingers crossed*
Re:Please let there be no X! (Score:2, Insightful)
It would make more sense for this to use an adapted version of the Andriod GUI rather than X.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Chrome OS focusing on speed, simplicity and security does not imply Windows cannot deliver in these areas. It's just an alternative operating system, and has yet to prove itself. The summary sound rather, well, dumb.
Fear (Score:5, Insightful)
The web is NOT the OS (Score:5, Insightful)
The web is not the OS. The web is...the web. I do NOT want everything to be a goddamn web app. Web apps work very well for certain applications, and Google has shown that they can push the limits with dynamic content, but that does not mean the web application is an appropriate model for every damned application. I don't like the Chrome browser and I don't need an OS named Chrome that is actually Linux with a lame web browser bolted on as the front end. Google does search very well, but I've hated most of their other stuff. (Google Earth is one exception) I expect no different from this.
Automatically or automagically? (Score:4, Insightful)
"All Web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite Web technologies," the company said.
Depends on your definition of "automatically". From what I hear, there is this little prerequisite called "internet access".
Also, while it appears that many are finding the news of the new Google Chrome Linux OS a cause to celebrate, I would advise quiet optimism at best.
They are yet to release Chrome for anything other than Windows.
A complete Chrome OS may still be somewhere in the (rather) far future.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:2, Insightful)
And oh, anyone else notice the irony that the Chrome _browser_ for Linux seems largely like an afterthought right now? Still, way to go, Google.
I remember someone talking about this, citing the lack of standards when it comes to doing anything GUI-wise in linux which is slowing development. If this OS really does ditch X etc then Google have a clean slate on which to design the browser.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:2, Insightful)
The challenge to Microsoft aside, this will be a wake-up call to Gnome/KDE. The
Well I hear you about Gnome. It seems like they have just run out of gas.
I think the problem with KDE is that they woke up too much. KDE 4 seems like a project where they have genuinely bit off more than they can chew. They got so caught up in the big picture and the big rewrite that they seem to have actually regressed at the details level. I've ripped Gnome and KDE's file dialogs on my own site... way behind the times.
There... fixed that for you... (Score:3, Insightful)
Chrome OS focusing on speed, simplicity and security does not imply Windows cannot deliver in these areas. It's just a still non existent operating system, and has yet to show anything other than a blog post [blogspot.com] about its future. The summary sound rather, well, dumb.
Yawn, another distro? (Score:3, Insightful)
Fast web OS needed! (Score:5, Insightful)
Computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them.
They are trying to fill a niche of an OS that boots fast and is basically just a browser. This OS will have a desktop with some online favourites... and that might be just what you need on a NETbook..!
:-)
Gmail already looks like a standalone app on Windows with Google Chrome and Offline enabled, you get a nice icon on the desktop. And when you click it it loads in a second, instead of the several minutes my Outlook used to take to even be barely useable. The choice is clear, sluggish native apps are becoming obsolete, and lightweight online apps are becoming more and more reliable. And when you only use these kind of netapps, why bother installing a bloated OS. This might just be the next revolution in the netbook industry.
On a side note: I can't wait until a new OS finally achieves the startup times of the good old trusy Commodore 64.
Re:The web is NOT the OS (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't like the Chrome browser and I don't need an OS named Chrome that is actually Linux with a lame web browser bolted on as the front end.
So then don't use it.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd really like to see some innovation there, much like OSX created an amazing GUI layer on top what is essentially Mach/BSD
The OS X GUI layer is essentially NeXTStep on a revised Display Postscript. It's slower and more resource intensive than X11, its graphics is targeted primarily at desktop usage. Where is the innovation?
X11 has been innovative from its inception, and it continues to be amazingly innovative today. For example, the kinds of visual effects Compiz delivers effortlessly and cleanly are much harder to achieve in OS X.
this will be a wake-up call to Gnome/KDE
What exactly do you think will be the "wake-up call"? Both Gnome and KDE have non-X11 backends, but people don't use them because there really is no benefit associated with getting rid of X11.
A non-X11 backend may make sense for Chrome OS because Chrome OS probably needs less functionality than X11 provides and it makes writing drivers easier. But in terms of innovation and functionality, X11 is second to none.
Re:Yawn, another distro? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this going to be different from other Linux distros and associated GUI revamp projects that have sprung up promising "we're going to be better than Windows! Really!" over the years?
Because this one will be a distro backed by the marketing clout and the manpower of a 125-billion-dollar corporation. Who have clout with OEMs and governments. Who have enough drones for programming a decent printer driver or providing non-snarky support. Who have a halo shinier than Apple in the eyes of most consumers.
This will be for Linux what MacOS X was for BSD (but with more code contributed back, hopefully).
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean like Flash, playing HD video or Google's own O3D and Google Earth?
Re:"its main selling points"... (Score:3, Insightful)
Judging by Google's vague statements, it doesn't appear to be meant as a bare metal OS, but something you add on top of what you have. ICBW.
What were you reading that made you jump to that conclusion?
It seems pretty obvious that this will be Chrome on a new windowing system on a linux kernel, developed for use on netbooks. There's no need for a VM, and they don't plan on having people download this - it will be the preinstalled software for low-end netbooks.
This should have dramatically lower memory requirements than Windows XP, and it will run on non-x86 processors. This will allow for the development of much cheaper netbooks!
Re:This recession is a good time to strike (Score:1, Insightful)
one thing I notice in your comment:
MSFT [google.com] and GOOG [google.com]
easy to see where google has the upper hand.
Re:The web is NOT the OS (Score:5, Insightful)
The web is not the OS. The web is...the web.
The web isn't what it used to be. The days when the web was mostly a collection of static pages are long gone. The web is dynamic, interactive, and user-driven. The web is email, ftp, live video, instant messaging, word processing, photo galleries, forums, flash, games, television... You get the idea.
I do NOT want everything to be a goddamn web app.
I'm not certain that's really something you get a choice in.
Web apps work very well for certain applications, and Google has shown that they can push the limits with dynamic content, but that does not mean the web application is an appropriate model for every damned application.
Technology grows, changes, advances - this is especially true in IT. If you go back a dozen years or so there was no way in hell you'd be able to run a word processor through a web page. Just plain was not going to happen. Now we've got Google Docs, which has some issues, but mostly works.
These days it seems absurd to talk about running Photoshop or AutoCAD through a web browser... But in another dozen years it may make perfect sense.
I don't like the Chrome browser and I don't need an OS named Chrome that is actually Linux with a lame web browser bolted on as the front end.
Would you feel better if it was Apple announcing the Safari OS? Or Mozilla announcing the Firefox OS? Or Microsoft announcing the Internet Explorer OS?
Google does search very well, but I've hated most of their other stuff. (Google Earth is one exception) I expect no different from this.
Other people, obviously, disagree.
I'm not a big fan of Google Earth. It doesn't seem to have much of a point to me. I do enjoy Gmail though, and I make use Google Docs from time to time. Enough people out there are unimpressed with Google's search to keep folks like Yahoo and Ask in business.
The fact of the matter is that an awful lot of work is done through a web UI these days. And if you can replace a full-blown computer with some kind of thin client you can, potentially, save a lot of time and money on maintenance. This is just a web-based thin client, nothing more or less.
And if Google sees success with its Chrome OS you can certainly expect to see competition appear. There's nothing preventing you from rolling out your own Linux+Firefox/Opera/whatever thin client.
Re:The web is NOT the OS (Score:5, Insightful)
That reminds me, who is going to sue Google for distributing their OS without choice of browser... United States vs Microsoft
Yeah, because that case wasn't really about a monopolist illegally leveraging their monopoly in one market to gain a monopoly in a second market, right? It was solely because of the US law stating that you have to provide an alternative browser with your OS!
Re:Please let there be no X! (Score:5, Insightful)
How to spot the people who have never done any graphics programming below the level of a high-level widget toolkit: They complain about X11 yet, somehow, never specify what is wrong with it, or if they do then it's with quotes from The UNIX Haters' Handbook which haven't been relevant for 15 years, or by citing a post by the author of Quartz, which hasn't been relevant for 5-10 years. A modern X11 implementation gives you:
The only serious improvement I've seen suggested over the X model is to provide a vector scene-graph API so that you can store the entire sequence of drawing commands in things like OpenGL vertex arrays in the GPU's memory. While this is a nice idea, it would require a radical redesign of all existing GUI toolkits and applications to be used to its full capability.
Re:Please let there be no X! (Score:4, Insightful)
That'll make everything work.
Web Is (not) The Platform (Score:4, Insightful)
That being said, I certainly do believe it's the best way to deliver information and applications to our customers, but most of our internal business processes and applications would be better to do without.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:3, Insightful)
So?
Will someone please explain "capitalism" and "google is a public corporation" to this young man?
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:3, Insightful)
The software architecture is simple â" Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel."
This is what the world has been waiting for....
Finally, it's about time we moved on. X is dead, all hail Y !
Or is it finally Berlin ^H^H^H^H^H^H Fresco ??
Oh wait, X works fine after all and is being actively fixed.
Re:The web is NOT the OS (Score:4, Insightful)
The web is not the OS, but for a product aimed first at netbooks, the web is more important than for a product aimed at stand alone PCs.
The web is not the OS. but the less a person plans on running workware, bulk data storage, or games, the more the web apps are all that they need.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, but If we call this new OS, the "Google" OS, then we have to go back and call every other Linux distribution, "GNU" OSs. I'm OK with that.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)
If Chrome OS is essentially a thin client OS build around a webbrowser... how is it any better than any other operating system?
Does it offer anything to make the web experience better than using Firefox on Linux or the Chrome browser on WinXP?
Re:The web is NOT the OS (Score:5, Insightful)
The web is not the OS. The web is...the web. I do NOT want everything to be a goddamn web app. Web apps work very well for certain applications, and Google has shown that they can push the limits with dynamic content, but that does not mean the web application is an appropriate model for every damned application. I don't like the Chrome browser and I don't need an OS named Chrome that is actually Linux with a lame web browser bolted on as the front end. Google does search very well, but I've hated most of their other stuff. (Google Earth is one exception) I expect no different from this.
But.. but... I don't know how to program anything else! The web is the future! FUTURE!
In all seriousness, I basically feel exactly the same way. I've been building 'web applications' for companies for years because that's all they're hiring people for. It sometimes surprises me that it ever works at all. The sheer number of brittle components all hobbled together... there are so many weak points where something can go wrong. It just makes for one big headache after another. X11 is a server and has been delivering stateful GUIs across the network since the early nineties at least! It amazes me, the amount of technology we have today, and what we've chosen to do with it. It could have been so much more, but instead the worst possible solution won out the day... and now a whole generation of developers have no exposure to anything else.
Is everyone seriously impressed that we're creating stateless GUIs to remote applications by scripting marked-up text inside increasingly bloated and resource-hogging third-party applications? Is this the future? Really?
I'm with you on this one.
Re:Why would I want this? (Score:1, Insightful)
You wouldn't want this, you self-centered asshole. This OS is not intended for Linux zealots. Never was. It simply gives portable devices a web browser in the cheapest (reused kernel) and fastest (stripped down to run just a browser) way possible. There are people who would find this useful. You aren't one of them. I'm OK with that, and I know a lot of other people will be too.
Re:Please let there be no X! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. I'm beginning to get the feeling that all of these people railling against X11 have very little clue what they are really talking about.
Re:Uh huh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing that interests me is how ebullient people are about something that they know nothing about, simply because it's got Google's name on it.
As Ted Dziuba put it, Google's very good at selling ads. Supporting actual customers? Not so much.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
its main selling points are speed, simplicity and security
- Our chief selling point is speed... speed and security. Our two selling points are speed and security. And simplicity. Our *three* selling points are speed, simplicity and security... and openness...
Our *four*, no, *Amongst* our selling points are such diverse elements as, speed, simplicity...
Wait, I'll do this again. (exits)
- I didn't expect yet another Google Beta
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing it's more about how you said it than what you said. You are not inaccurate, well the "troll" part is an assumption and could be inaccurate, don't assume malice when ignorance is suitable, but the main points are correct. But phrasing something rudely as you did doesn't server to help anyone any better than a more polite phrasing, and in most cases it actually does a worse job.
Re:Yawn, another distro? (Score:1, Insightful)
Money. Lot's of Money.
As they say.... money moves mountains.
Re:Why would I want this? (Score:1, Insightful)
This is a Linux distro that can't run any non-google-SDK software. No X server wipes out being able to run most of the GUI software in the ecosystem. You locked to google. Why would I want this? Technical Linux people aren't going to want it.
and the technical linux people market is how many % of the market?
Normal users won't dare install any thing called an operating system. And everyone, will want to be able to run the apps they want, not only google approved ones. All this pain just for browser?
normal users will be getting it with a new machine, not installing it themselves. normal people already don't get to "run a lot of apps they want" depending on what machine they chose - buy a windows PC and you don't get iLife, for example. buy a Mac and you don't get to run ... most games :-)
Thing is, we don't want to be controlled, never have.
how did you think MS got to the market share it has now?
you're looking at it all wrong. ease & speed of adoption + demand is a LOT more important than "current market players". primary evidence being the iphone - before the iphone introduction, number of iphone apps was zero. look at how many there are now. just because there aren't really the kind of "web based apps" out there that can make you imagine what life would be like with a primarily web-based-app ecosystem doesn't mean there won't be, if Google can put enough machines out there in the hands of enough people.
Re:Uh huh. (Score:2, Insightful)
Google is everywhere; home pages, search bars, browsers, phones (more will come I'm sure) and has even become a synonym for the word "search". Google it and you'll see.
Alternatives to Windows do not exist for the average user because they are not common knowledge. If you say Linux to someone they are oblivious. If you explain it you loose them more. "So... it's like Windows then right?" And since they have it... why bother. Same thing with BSD or any other alternative. Google has the resources to put it out there. And if people are willing to try an OS because it is made by Google, then they have opened themselves up for alternatives. Thus becoming aware that they exist. And what's to say, they won't explore more if they feel that Google's Os isn't right for them?
We always say it's a preference. But the majority of average users don't have the luxury of preference. Windows is all they know.
Re:Uh huh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Great. I'm sure current applications will be compatible, nothing will break, all the libs will support the compiles, and so on.
This is not to put down any effort to get rid of X11, rather, my guess that cross-operating system application porting will once again go to hell, cause conditional compiles, and much Zantac consumption.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)
Google actually states: 'For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.'
Their comments about giving developers the largest user base of any platform are complete bullshit. Web developers already have that user base and not every application should be ported to run in a browser. At first, I cringed a little when I heard that they were getting pulled into an anti-trust investigation. Now I feel better about it. I have always had an uneasy feeling about an advertising company being able to gather and broker as much information about someone as they do. For Christ's sake, they archive, search, and use your EMAIL to develop more targeted ads. The idea that my entire OS could/would gather everything it could on me scares the crap out of me.
I realize I am sort of rambling, but I have two main points:
1) Not every app belongs on the web. In fact, most do not.
2) I am not comfortable with an advertising company being so in control of all of our private data. An earlier commenter pointed out what a big "win" this would be for corporations looking to deploy thin clients. How much of a "win" will it be to have Google searching, indexing, and archiving all of your company's sensitive documentation, all in the name of building better advertisements?
OS == Browser (Score:4, Insightful)
For years, we have been hearing about how you don't even need an OS any longer, and how a browser is enough. There is a queue of usual objections to this idea:
Well, for the first time, I believe that an internet-only OS is now possible. Most of these objections are dwindling. Peopel backup their files online anyway, so the fear of having someone else in control is going away. How many people have all their bills, passwords, etc. stored on a gmail server somewhere? 3G has made internet access almost ubiquitous, and web apps are getting a lot more sophisticated - enough that webmail is powerful enough for almost the most hard-core email users.
This may actually work now, whereas, even 2 years ago this would have seemed absurd.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't mean to denigrate the hard work done by the KDE and GNOME teams. They were decent a decade ago and are excellent today. But one of the territories where Microsoft's grip is weak is cheaper hardware. I think it's intelligent for Google's OS to tackle this first. I also think it's a place where KDE and GNOME have the least to offer.
Re:Stop Google before the damage is too serious (Score:3, Insightful)
Just note how they take the kernel, but avoid to contribute to the GUi arena.
Sounds to me like they're contributing a whole new lightweight OSS GUI layer.
I do agree that their model is all about promoting their non-free software (the proprietary stuff they run on their servers). But on the other hand they're doing nothing to prevent people from writing competing web apps.
The Linux kernel and basic related utilities should be set under the Afero GPL v3 license ASAP!
I'm not sure how that would help. We don't hear of many modifications to the kernel or basic utils, being hoarded by the people who write them and run them on their servers.
Re:Don't focus on installing the OS (Score:3, Insightful)
Lots of comments here are (rightly) skeptical that individuals will download a new OS.
And yet...
My dad has a Windows laptop that's suffering from inexplicable slowdown syndrome -- my meagre Windows skills couldn't fix it (full defrag, adware and virus scan) and the only solution I can think of is a full Windows reinstall.
He might be wary of a live USB drive of an ordinary Linux distro (even though it would be perfect).
But something with the warm and fuzzy feeling of Google's blessing, even if all it gives him is a fast boot and a browser; that might be enough.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:3, Insightful)
so tivo is a linux distribution?
By any rational definition, yes it is.
Re:Please let there be no X! (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. That has absolutely nothing to do with X and everything to do with what you are asking X to display. Should I call MacOSX ugly because one time I opened up goatse on a mac?
Thanks for proving the GP's point.
Re:Uh huh. (Score:2, Insightful)
The main thing Google has going for them in this is the same one that Microsoft has going for them:
When someone asks 'where do I get an application to write my important documents? spreadsheets? email?', Google can say 'We have that for you', just like Microsoft does, instead of saying 'You can go here, here, there, over there, or somewhere around there to get that'. People like the answers to be simple, and Google is famous for being simple.
Further, since Google claims to be making the browser the focus of the OS, the interface will already be familiar to most of the users, even if the window dressing is a little different from what they're accustomed to (and really, isn't that the case for most users with Microsoft trying to push XP off the side of the road?).
I don't think this will be the end of the road for Microsoft, but I certainly think it has the chance at being more successful in the Netbook space than Linux has been so far.
X is pretty dang good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheers!
Re:Uh huh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Google has one thing that Canonical and Ubuntu even red had doesnt, broad household name recognition
Re:Uh huh. (Score:3, Insightful)
If it's just a browser drone, then why not use something still slimmer? It doesn't take much in a kernel to run a single application, in fact 64K ought to do it with room to spare-- save rendering jpgs and video.
Bah--- they're not going to support much at a zero cost anyway. It's a community-support ecosystem at best, and trying to teach mom at worst.
This is why it will fail: in reality, it's stupid as you describe it compared to Ubuntu, Xandros, and even wiggy Linux or even Android builds. There is no value as you describe it, unless it's the prospect of throw-away netbooks, and the world has a recycling problem as it is.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:3, Insightful)
one man's 'clunky' interface is another man's 'horrible, broken, unmaintainable, must-be-rewritten-from-scratch' interface. The reality is that its almost always good enough for its purpose assuming you are prepared to work with it and not assume that everything needs to be 'fixed' by changing them to your preferred programming model.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:3, Insightful)
"But in terms of innovation and functionality, X11 is second to none."
But the main driving force behind network transparency was the particular ecosystem that X was developed for: Centralized processing and relatively dumb terminals. Once computing power is decentralized, you're left with a system that unnecessarily couples networking and windowing.
Re:Uh huh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fast web OS needed! (Score:5, Insightful)
how can a local application compete with powerful servers, it takes my pings 20ms to get to google and back, on old computer (42,000rpm drive) can take a similar amount of time to read its disks (14ms worst-case 7avg), but the processing by google can be nearly instant. Say i want to do 4 things at once that all require small amounts of disk access e.g listen to music,browse the web, im friends, have my email client running, on my computer the disk will spend 7*4=28ms running around touching these files, if i throw this all to google they probably have what i want stored in ram and the whole thing will take 20ms.
Obviously this isn't entirely fair as most OSs will cache files and unless your using fsync too much (stares at firefox) you don't have to wait for the disk read/writes, but this is basically why internet-based apps can compete.
Re:This recession is a good time to strike (Score:1, Insightful)
Deep pockets versus deeper pockets. Google's market cap is $125b and Microsoft's is $200b. Not long ago, the gap was larger. Falling PC sales have taken a bite out of Microsoft's revenue. They recently had their first down quarter in their history.
Microsoft still makes 4X the money Google does, though. In 2008, Microsoft earned $17b in net income compared to Google's $4b. Now, $4b is nothing to dismiss, especially when you're using and writing entirely free and open source software, but still, if Google has deep pockets, Microsoft's are even deeper.
See: MSFT [google.com] and GOOG [google.com]
.
Google is probably the only company in the world that can generate excitement about a new OS, and making an open platform will encourage software developers to write apps for it. Hasn't that been one of the big complaints, the lack of software for Linux?
Many have tried taking down Microsoft. All have failed. Perhaps Google is finally the David to slay Microsoft's Goliath. Perhaps not. Exciting times, these are.
Microsoft is going after Google's windpipe (search revenue) by releasing bing and now Google goes after Microsoft's windpipe (OS or more importantly OS . hegemony). Exciting times indeed.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:3, Insightful)
While I suspect that the assumption that the application model is going to be dominated by browser-rendered apps, I doubt they'll go "single window". I can very easily see something where Chrome is the only user-facing truly native application, but where, just as with desktop Chrome on conventional OS's, they fully support multiple windows, dragging tabs out to do make new windows (or dragging tabs in to collapse multiple windows into one), etc.
For netbooks, single-window might be sufficient, but it seems from the coverage very clear that Google sees netbooks just as a stepping stone, so I doubt very much that they are aiming this in a way that it will be just barely good enough for netbooks, and not suitable for anything else.
Computers are *communication* devices (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when telephones were new, no-one quite knew what they were for. One company came up with a music service. This was before radio, so the idea of piping music to your home was radical. This may seem absurd to us now, but it isn't: radio went the other way. It is entirely possible that we could have built a world where we listened to high-fidelity music by phone, and spoke to our friends by radio. Even in the early 20th century the phone companies didn't get it: they ran campaigns trying dissuade housewives from chatting over the phone, believing that the technology was for Important business use (a few brief, high-cost calls instead of lots of cheap long ones).
I remember when people though computers were giant calculators. Then the computer became personal: it could do your books, teach the kids arithmetic, and keep track of your recipes. (Though why anyone you would want to keep their recipes in a computer was never clear). The hardware companies tried to sell to everyone, but they weren't quite sure how to do it: the truth is, most people had no real need for a computer.
Computer technology isn't personal anymore. It's social. The PC is a phone, not a calculator. That's why everyone needs one. That's what driving development of the technology. Ours is not the only possible path: computers could have remained high-cost devices for use by individuals to produce things or do business. But that was the path not taken. This changes what computers are.
To you, desktop applications may seem superior on the basis of their technical merits. Fair enough. Hollywood seems to see computers and the net as a new broadcast medium, like television, for which the current infrastructure has significant technical failings (privacy, QoS). In their case I hope their vision is never realized. But for many people, these visions are irrelevant. No matter the quality or polish of the applications, no matter the convenience of video-on-demand, for them the technology is technically inferior if it does not fully support communication and social activity. For them - and for me - the cobbled together infrastructure of the Web is far superior - technically superior - because for us it is above all a medium for communication.
Re:Uh huh. (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, I fear it might NOT be GNU/Chrome. Since they are already creating a new windowing system, what's to say they won't drop the GNU core altogether? After all Android is in top of Linux without any GNU toolchain.
This, ladies and gentlemen, would be the first real fracturation of Linux: one on top of GNU and one on top of ChromeOS.
This is potentially dangerous for Linux.
AC
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see how MS Windows' windowing system could be described as a "client/server architecture". Could you elaborate?
Re:Will it support Internet Explorer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft is welcome to port IE to Linux.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:1, Insightful)
Where is the proof ? I checked git repository of
DirectFB and didn't find any google reference.
Re:Please let there be no X! (Score:2, Insightful)
[X11 is] still constrained through the filesystem socket layer...
I hardly know anything about the internals of X11, and even I know that this is completely false and has been for years. Even back in the 90's, X11 had no such limitation.
When you are remoting X11 over the network, it goes through a network socket. Fair enough.
When running on the same computer, X11 can run though a *NIX domain socket, not the same thing at all and much lighter weight. But, X11 usually just uses shared memory. No performance hit for the remote networking stuff when you are not using it.
I'll say it again: no performance hit for remote networking stuff when you aren't using it.
And, these days, Windows drivers have similar functional decomposition, where there are various parts to the driver and they communicate through shared memory.
Given that you are so wrong about this, I mistrust your expertise on all your other claims.
And your insulting ad-hominem tone was pretty special there too. You were wrong on the facts, but hey, at least you were obnoxious too.
By the way, I love how the original post mentioned that he runs modern games at full speed on Linux using Wine, and you used gaming as an example of how Windows spanks Linux.
The icing on the cake is that I have read many posts by TheRaven64 and the man knows what he's about.
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:2, Insightful)
Except for the "open source" part. (Yes, I know that parts of OS X are open, but Google's going to do the whole stack.)
Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:2, Insightful)
I think I'd be cautious and preserve any interface indefinitely. That being said I'd also be cautious about exposing an interface in the first place for exactly that reason.
The current trend for refactoring, where people spend most of their time rewriting code they've already written once and usally manage break compatibility to boot seems to me to be disasterous.