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Comments: 1089 +-   Google Announces Chrome OS, For Release Mid-2010 on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:14AM

Posted by timothy on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:14AM
from the bring-on-the-shiny dept.
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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.
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Submission: Google introduces Chrome OS by Zaiff Urgulbunger (591514)
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  • Uh huh. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:15AM (#28619927)
    That's GNU/Chrome, thanks.

      • Re:Uh huh. (Score:5, Informative)

        by beowulfcluster (603942) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:38AM (#28620179)
        "Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code." Funny what you can learn from TFA.

          • Re:Uh huh. (Score:5, Informative)

            by julian67 (1022593) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @08:39AM (#28621101)

            "Another window manager just dilutes the current pool....."

            It isn't 'another window manager', it's a new windowing system. Don't think X11+KDE/Gnome, think Apple CGL+Quartz.

              • Re:Uh huh. (Score:5, Interesting)

                by Serious Callers Only (1022605) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @09:12AM (#28621655)

                Great. I'm sure current applications will be compatible, nothing will break, all the libs will support the compiles, and so on.

                Why would any of that concern Google?

                They'll be offering a cut-down OS, probably with a new windowing system based on Android, which offers opportunities to develop web apps in the future which truly span the gap between connected desktop apps and web apps. They won't be concerned with porting existing Linux apps over, and neither will their users, who will be buying a netbook to use google mail, some sort of IM app and the internet, and not much more.

                It's not even clear if you'll be able to write binary apps for the system at all (they mention web apps and nothing else). Supporting Linux apis would just slow them down, and it probably won't be X based anyway.

                This is a foundation for a new generation of apps which aren't beholden to binary APIs controlled by the likes of Microsoft. In parallel with Chrome it lets them dictate the future of web/desktop integration, and start really pushing HTML5 features, and online/offline integration, rather than being continually held back by Microsoft's attempts to hobble the web and tie it to Windows.

              • Re:Uh huh. (Score:5, Interesting)

                by Kadin2048 (468275) <slashdot@kadin.xoxy@net> on Wednesday July 08 2009, @10:13AM (#28622721) Homepage Journal

                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.

                All of which matters ... not at all. The whole purpose of the device is to run ONE application, the browser. Everything else is there to support that.

                I suppose they'll have to design some other applications, to manage machine-specific configuration (WiFi settings, etc.) but maybe they'll just do that through a localhost web interface as well.

                Google doesn't care if it's impossible to build standard applications on it; actually from their perspective it's probably a plus if you can't. (And I expect they'll probably lock it down to make it intentionally hard to do.) Easier to support.

                Based on what's been made available so far, the device is squarely targeted at people who do all their work in the browser, or could start doing it. It's essentially a thin client to Google's web apps.

          • Re:Uh huh. (Score:5, Interesting)

            by zeromorph (1009305) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @08:54AM (#28621417)

            They could have just invested in Canonical and Ubuntu, rather than try to reinvent the wheel.

            Why Canonical and not any other Linux company, I mean (K/X/Ed)Ubuntu is great, (most of my computers run Kubuntu or Xubuntu), but Google has a particular objective: directing as many as possible users to Google products, this is clearly not the goal of Canonical.

            And besides, diversity is good, the goal is not to supersede one monoculture with another - Ok, Google is not the first address as far as diversity is concerned, but still.

            Another window manager just dilutes the current pool of people trying to do KDE and Gnome.

            It's not that the two are the only players in the FLOSS field, and probably they are not even the best for the specific requirements of netbooks. Fluxbox, Enlightment [enlightenment.org], or even something like Sugar [sugarlabs.org] are much more lightweight and might be better for the functions required. Or even Google has something new and exciting to offer. Anyways, I even doubt that the KDE and Gnome guys actually wouldn't appreciate other ideas being tested.

          • Re:Uh huh. (Score:5, Interesting)

            by maraist (68387) * <michael,maraistNO&SPAMgmail,n0spam,com> on Wednesday July 08 2009, @09:07AM (#28621583) Homepage
            Well, the UI is the most resource intensive aspect Linux from my perspective. Conversely, the java VMs on android are probably it's greatest resource hog. Windows and MAC have more "optimized" UIs, whereas most things on Linux UI are X-based which means most communication is serialized through a single socket and much information is stored redundantly in the app and the X-server. Hell, in recent versions of Fedora I have a problem where my X-server grows to over a gig of RAM even when all windows have been closed. I hate the fact that I have to log-out/in-again because of mem-leaks in either X or gnome (can't determine which). Ironically, I still prefer gnome over Mac/Windows UIs in terms of it's expressiveness / adaptability to my needs.

            So it makes sense to provide OS hooks for an alternate UI mode.. Hell there's dedicated VGA mode for games in existing Linux. Gnome/KDE are not light-weight (though X can be), and I can't imagine how you could retool them to be. Much less how you could to this in a way that supports existing KDE/Gnome/X apps.

            Remember, we're talking the slowest possible hardware above cell-phone-grade that we're talking about here. Big screen and keyboard, but essentially a cell-phone/PDA on the backend. I wouldn't be surprised if the browser is required to be full screen like on a cell.

            Further, there is a serious argument to be made about low-performance devices and the lack of desire to store sensitive / loosable information on them. Viruses + hardware failure + hardware upgrade means losing your data. While some people avidly setup backup strategies, it's applied with lesser diligence to lower-end devices. And if you're buying on the cheap, than backup solutions cost extra thereby defeating the point. Why buy a $100 netbook then have to buy a $90 external backup hard drive?

            I'm not saying this isn't valid, I'm saying that there are massive groups of people that are affected by quality-control issues and migration strategies of software vendors including MS, and google is allegedly attempting to obviate that aspect entirely by making low-cost devices 100% online.

            I do see a valid use-case.. 3'rd world, poor US citizens, virtually every high school/elementary school.

            Of course google is merely trying to promote it's online dominance and we should take pause. But other than the OS, I'm not sure that this ties your experience to google (though maybe their search engine/user-profile - but anti-trust will eventually kick in).

  • Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bheer (633842) <rbheer@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:15AM (#28619929)

    This is excellent news, because a commercial vendor with *lots* of clout will - finally! - push Linux to OEMs. Like Android, they really want to go after the OEM market with this one. Don't be fooled by the "it's mainly for web browsing" spin - You might not run AutoCAD or Photoshop yet (or ever) on it, but apps (especially HTML5 enabled apps) for home users will follow, targeting the XP/Vista Home Edition user types. And this would be sweet for corporate desktop deployments -- no virus hassles, little to update, most stuff stored on the server (assuming they get offline support sorted out well, of course).

    Fingers crossed that Google's "Linux" will have more polish than what's there in distros so far. Microsoft "love our licensing or leave" and Linux distros "we're open source so live with the flaws" will then both be on notice.

    Interestingly, Chrome OS is apparently a bare-bones Linux + a "new windowing system" + the Chrome browser.

    I can't wait to see what the new windowing system is. 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 challenge to Microsoft aside, this will be a wake-up call to Gnome/KDE. The good news is, because this ought to be open source, the OSS community can really get behind this and improve other products.

    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.

    • Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by je ne sais quoi (987177) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:38AM (#28620183)

      I can't wait to see what the new windowing system is.

      You and me both, but I'm a little confused. What do they mean by "windowing system"? Are they doing a rewrite of X11, or do they mean they are designing new window decorations and widgets (e.g. gtk or qt), or do they mean the whole desktop environment (e.g., kde, gnome)?

      If it's a replacement for X11, why are they doing that? I could see that maybe X11 has too much legacy code and really isn't designed to be the most efficient for a single screen laptop where you don't need an X windows server per se, but on the other hand, I can't imagine that they are going to need something that can outperform X11 for gpu intensive applications like gaming development. I'd love to be wrong about that last bit though. Whatever they mean by it though, it'll be nice to see.

      • Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Seth Kriticos (1227934) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @08:00AM (#28620477)
        I really don't think they will replace X11. It's a stable and effective windowing system, and it also consumes low amount of resources (my N800 also runs one perfectly fine, and that's a 400MHz ARM with no GPU). It is also really powerful on appropriate hardware (with wine I can perfectly well play games of the newest generation without speed penalties). X11 is also quite uniform between Linux platforms. It also just provides the bare minimum to communicate with the hardware and display graphic primitives on the screen. The problem with X11 is that it is a very old design and an extreme pain to develop with directly because of the API 'aesthetics'.. but it would be much much harder to replace it with something from scratch. My guess is that Google will go on top of X11 and write a window manager (program that manages running windows, adds decorations, bars, icons etc..). Then tightly integrates this with their browser. Well, let's see what happens.

      • Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Eravnrekaree (467752) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @09:01AM (#28621505)

        Well, these are myths about X. First X does not have "Legacy" code. Code is not like milk where it goes sour after a certain amount of time. Code that is decades can still be perfectly good and in fact newer attempts to implement the same things implementing by older code can actually result in buggier code of poorer quality. X is actually pretty efficient and does not use a lot of memory compared to other GUIs. The core X engines probably use somewhere in the area of a few megabytes.

        X also has an extension mechanism where the protocol can be extended to keep up with new features and developments. X is a pretty capable system, and keeps up with all of the most recent needs of GUIs. It also has assured backwards compatability and has become sort of an API standard, so you could always count on an X application running on any X server without having to worry about compatability issues. The network transparent design allows for things that are unthinkable on windows, like running programs on one computer and displaying to another, and displaying programs from several user to one X server, etc.

    • Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by wisty (1335733) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:38AM (#28620191)

      Doesn't this sound a lot like iPhone 1.0, when SJ told developers to use "Safari" as the app framework?

      Still, I guess nobody does web dev like google.

    • Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jipn4 (1367823) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:47AM (#28620315)

      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:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mwvdlee (775178) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @08:23AM (#28620837) Homepage

      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:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gentlemen_loser (817960) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @08:48AM (#28621303) Homepage
      Don't be fooled by the "it's mainly for web browsing spin"? It seemed pretty clear to me. Google's direction all along has been to move applications from the desktop to the web (which in many cases, in my opinion, is a stupid idea).

      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?

      • Re:Competition is good, baby! (Score:5, Informative)

        by wisty (1335733) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:35AM (#28620151)

        Even with just a browser, you need multiple windows. When an AJAX command tells the browser to pop up a new window, the browser uses the native windowing system to pop up a new window. You also need windows for multiple browser instances, tabs, menus, and other fun stuff. It's not turtles all the way down.

  • Native Client (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fzz (153115) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:19AM (#28619951)
    I wonder if they have Google Native Client [google.com] in mind when they say they're going to re-engineer security from the ground up? Very cool technology.

  • Hold on a sec... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mc moss (1163007) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:19AM (#28619957)

    Buying stocks in companies that make chairs.

  • Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GF678 (1453005) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:20AM (#28619965)

    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!

    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.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tjstork (137384) <tbandrowsky@might y w a re.com> on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:33AM (#28620123) Homepage Journal

      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.

      Oh, don't beat around the bush. I'll come right out and say it. I think Windows 7 is fast, safe, and simple to use. I have Vista, Win7 and Ubuntu 8 on my machine, each with its own drive, and while Vista is a tad bit better than Ubuntu, Win7 runs rings around both, and is easier to use than either. I do not think I have enjoyed using Windows this much since NT first got the Win95 shell.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Fred_A (10934) <fred&fredshome,org> on Wednesday July 08 2009, @08:37AM (#28621059) Homepage

      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

  • Fear (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chord.wav (599850) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:22AM (#28619981) Journal
    I wouldn't run an OS from a company who's business is knowing your consumer preferences, but suit for yourself. I'm sure there's a positive side of this story too, but I let that to another user.

  • Chrome is the new Emacs? (Score:5, Funny)

    by deadbeefcafe (1371017) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:22AM (#28619995)
    Chrome is a nice operating system, but it could do with a decent web browser.

  • The web is NOT the OS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by syousef (465911) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:26AM (#28620039) Journal

    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.

    • Re:The web is NOT the OS (Score:5, Funny)

      by bgarcia (33222) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:32AM (#28620107) Homepage Journal
      You forgot to tell us to "get off your lawn".

    • Re:The web is NOT the OS (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Ephemeriis (315124) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @08:04AM (#28620521) Homepage

      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)

      by agentultra (1090039) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @08:24AM (#28620857)

      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:The web is NOT the OS (Score:5, Insightful)

        by schon (31600) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @08:04AM (#28620523) Homepage

        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!

  • Fast web OS needed! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thijsh (910751) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:35AM (#28620149)

    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. :-)

  • This recession is a good time to strike (Score:5, Informative)

    by MarkEst1973 (769601) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:39AM (#28620199)

    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.

  • Mcdonaldsoft rival at last! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by yossarianuk (1402187) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:42AM (#28620225)
    I'm amazed at the amount of negative responses from Linux fans... This is what we have all been waiting for - isn't it ??

    No matter how scary google's power is the main things are that:-

    1) They are using Linux
    2) They WILL make deals with computer manufacturers to get the OS preinstalled.
    3) They will opensource the code

    The only people who should fear this O.S is MS and existing Linux distros - although the competation and the opensourcing of the code will benifit the entire community.

    I'm sure MS will still be the best at saying 'Have a nice day' and flipping CD's.

  • Why would I want this? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jabjoe (1042100) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:52AM (#28620375)
    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. 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? This seems to be built on the dream of a thin client that runs nothing but a browser and all software is web software. It's an old dream, the world only needs five real computers, etc etc. Thing is, we don't want to be controlled, never have. I want to run what I want, how I want thank you very much Mr mainframe. If I'm right about the web app stance, this is a stupid idea come up with by people who think they can see the future but aren't looking at the past. The best google could have done is done yet another standard Linux distro, with X in some form, so they can tap into the existing software ecosystem. They can quality control the software with a repository. That way they can take advantage of much of the existing Unix software. Then they can use their brand, and Linux speed, security, software base, etc etc, to make it big in the OS world.

    • No vision (Score:5, Interesting)

      by copponex (13876) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @09:09AM (#28621601) Homepage

      If it's open source and has a unified API, you're overlooking the fact that this is now real competition to Windows. Brand name? Check. R&D budget? Check. Third party support? Check. Linux kernel? Check. Imagine Canonical with billions of dollars.

      Hell, if it's actually a brand new WM this will probably take the top distro spot the day after release. Just providing developers with a consistent platform that requires the investment of one working computer and an internet connection is pretty appealing. Even if it sucks for Linux diehards, the competition will change the landscape for Microsoft and perhaps even Apple.

      Imagine an advertising campaign: "Is your computer broken? Just stop by your local Starbucks or Staples and pick up your free copy of Google OS. After making room on your hard drive, it will load a new and secure operating system that will allow you to browse the internet, play Solitaire, and write letters with it's included office suite. Once it's loaded, you'll have the option of recovering data and backing it up online for free so you'll never have to worry about data loss again."

      Yeah. Some eyebrows were just raised in Redmond and Cupertino.

    • Re:Yawn, another distro? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Marcika (1003625) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @07:53AM (#28620385)

      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:Please let there be no X! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 (641858) on Wednesday July 08 2009, @08:07AM (#28620569) Homepage Journal

      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:

      • OS-independent remote display (e.g. show a GUI on a Windows machine or a Mac from your *NIX netbook).
      • Backwards compatibility with apps written in the '80s.
      • Off-screen rendering and caching.
      • Accelerated compositing (e.g. for fast antialiased text drawing and for translucency effects).
      • Fast partial-redraws of windows (very important when compositing over a network).
      • Good OpenGL integration (including network transparency).
      • A standard mechanism for adding extensions, so new features can be added without breaking backwards compatibility (most of the features of X11 that you use today are implemented as extensions).

      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.

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