Google Reveals Chrome Hardware Partners 343
Posted
by
CmdrTaco
from the because-they-can dept.
from the because-they-can dept.
nk497 writes "Google has announced the hardware partners for the Chrome OS — so we can expect to see netbooks running the operating system next year from the likes of Asus, Acer, and HP, as well as Toshiba. Dell didn't seem to make the list, at least yet. Google also said it had teamed up with Adobe, which could mean Google is looking to include the Acrobat.com web-based software suite in some way."
Marketing..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Air (Score:5, Interesting)
Will Chrome OS be any different... (Score:4, Interesting)
...as compared to this [startforce.com]? If not then Google will have a hard time convincing me to switch.
Re:what is Google's strategic intent here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Marketing..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I would absolutely love this (Score:5, Interesting)
How does your company feel about you keeping the presentation data on Google servers?
Re:I would absolutely love this (Score:3, Interesting)
My presentations are usually outside my office. Relying on a working internet connection for them sounds like a a major PITA to me, considering how much effort is usually involved for accessing a corporate LAN.
Re:Will Chrome OS be any different... (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, you can phone up your bank, if their site's not working for you and scream:
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU DON'T SUPPORT GOOGLE?"
and they'll get with the Google.
Try that with StarForce..
Re:Marketing..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Like OS X is just "Next with a custom GUI on the front end"?
Obviously we'll have to wait and see what they release. But I fail to see how starting from an existing OS means that they aren't bringing anything new, or that they're relying on marketing. And even better, they'll be giving their new OS back to the open source community.
Unless this offers any real advantage I won't move to it even it I purchase a netbook with it I would probably format and load Ubuntu on it.
Right, but to be blunt, those of us who do this are such a minority that I doubt Google are worried about that factor. The competition is Windows 7 (and perhaps to a lesser degree, netbooks that are shipping with Linux preinstalled).
priority (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:what is Google's strategic intent here? (Score:3, Interesting)
What I see it as is a commercial developer friendly version of Linux.
Odds are that it will.
1. Have an app store for people to sell apps. Yea the web based apps is all cool but I think that side of it is being over blown.
2. Will have Flash and codec support without having to get it from a none US repository. Google will pay for the rights.
3. It will come pre-installed for aunt Tilly.
The one thing I wonder about is will Google fork the Kernel and add a stable driver binary interface? If so will we soon see a lot more hardware support for Google Linux than traditional Linux.
Lotsa unwarranted pessimism around here (Score:3, Interesting)
Why does everybody act like Chrome OS will somehow be locked down to just running Chrome and using webapps into it? Just because the original blog post emphasised on the webapps part doesn't mean it will be any less functional than your favourite distro. They're not stupid, they'll do what the market wants to eat Microsoft's yummy marketshare, they won't give you a half-assed OS, they'll give you a fully featured OS that has the advantage of having an OS designed around performance, security, usability and more importantly (according to them) designed around the use of web apps in mind. That means you can beat your ass you'll have all the offline apps you want and have an OS just as functional as your favourite distro.
As for partnering with Adobe, what do you know, maybe they're out to get Adobe Photoshop on Chrome OS ;-).
Re:Marketing..... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a linux kernel, not necessarily a distribution in any meaningful sense. They could simplify it to the linux kernel, loader, some libraries, and chrome executable. I suppose they would need a shell, scripts, and helper apps for network config and dhcp, but For a browser-based internet device, 99% of a standard linux distro is irrelevant.
According to Anandtech, which may be mostly speculating, ChromeOS is just enough Linux to run Chrome. All functionality will come from web apps. It's the thinnest of thin clients.
Google, *please* don't screw this up! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm weary allready. First Android, then a completely differently branded second Linux knockoff. I know Google isn't dependant on making money with their software and OSes projects, but the last thing we need is further market confusion due to Google joining the fray of alternative OSes and distros. I beg that they manage to string Android and this Chrome OS thing into one OS ecosystem and that it will be well standardised and documented.
Re:Will Chrome OS be any different... (Score:4, Interesting)
Clueless Marketdroid-Infested (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the company that left VisualBasic background processes running from their install, looking for all the world like VB script viruses or trojans! Soaking up an appreciable amount of memory and CPU, just so their functionality would pop-up quickly. Any company where the marketdroids can have their way and do something that most geeks would know is inadvisable -- they are too infested to salvage.
Try Foxit or Sumatra readers for PDFs!
(Not associated with either company!)
Re:Marketing..... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's also half a chance that the OS will be user-friendly enough for the average end user not to run screaming from, unlike most Linux distros. Hell, they may even be able to use it without ever having to see a command prompt.
Pure FUD. The only things I have used the command prompt for in the last few months (running Linux Mint, at the machine):
1) ping and dig - and both of those can be done from the GUI, I just prefer the command line.
2) Django manage.py commands
3) ssh into a remove server
4) Restarting lighttpd
Now, how many of those are things the average user would need to do? All my average user stuff (installing desktop apps, web browsing, email, etc.) gets done without a command prompt in site.
Just because the sort of people who read Slashdot need to use the command prompt to get stuff done - stuff that most people have never heard of - does not mean the average user will ever see one.
Maybe Google will buy Adobe and opensource it (Score:3, Interesting)
Any 'web book' is gonna need Flash. It's too ubiquitous to ignore, but at least it's more cross-platform than Silverlight. If Google were to buy it and 'make it free' (one way or another), that might be good for us all. Maybe that's why they're hedging about supporting Ogg video in HTML5.
The other marketing advantage (Score:3, Interesting)
Y'know not all off the netbook retreat to XP was driven by Microsoft's pressure (though I'm sure there was plenty of that too).
The various netbook Linux'es were not great. Just read Slashdot, etc. Everyone was happy, happy, happy that Linux netbooks were being sold... and then they went on to say that the distros on the netbooks were crap - you should replace them with distro X. Is it any wonder that once the price advantage was gone, the netbook OEM's went with XP? Linux may well have worked better on their netbooks... but which Linux?
(pauses to dodge incoming bombs)
Anyway, notice that now that Google's in the mix, Asus, etc are coming back. It's not because Google's a sure thing. It's not even because it'll be better than what they were using before (though Google's no slouch - their stuff's pretty great). It's because the OEM's want a single alternative OS, and Google's name recognition guarantees that people will have heard of it.
Linux distros are great. I use Mandriva, when I'm not using Fedora or Ubuntu. That's right. I'm part of the 'problem'. And if I don't like Chrome OS, I'll replace it with what I want. But I'm not Joe Consumer. And Asus is selling to good old Joe. I'm ready to stop blaming Asus for their timidity or their lack of software development savvy. It's not their job to be great OS developers (or even supporters). And if Google's willing to take on that job, that's great news.
The only problem I see with this is that Google's conceding the desktop application market to Microsoft. Making this a 'web-only' device is very limiting. Limiting to what Google is happy to have you limited to, but limiting nonetheless. If there were a 'standard' Linux distro that had enough mindshare (and was good enough) for the OEMs to annoint it the standard, that might have produced something we Linux fans would've liked better. ...and then we could have junked it and put on our distros of choice. That's CHOICE as in 'always good, no matter what, no matter where'. Except when it's not.
Re:Lotsa unwarranted pessimism around here (Score:1, Interesting)
We think this because google is a web service provider. Therefore we assume that their "distro" will be tailored for exactly that: web services. With a heavily tailored kernel, and possibly tailored libraries. And no local apps: they don't want you to run abiword, they want you to run google docs. Why run a local calculator when we have a nice webapp. Furthermore, every bit they cut out is a bit they don't have to support. Also they don't give a rats ass about microsofts desktop market share, they care about the default ie with the default msn and the default bing. If it means creating an os to control the defaults, then so be it.
Partnering with adobe is a no brainer: google own youtube, youtube runs on flash, flash on linux sucks.
Re:Marketing..... (Score:4, Interesting)
No, your post is pure FUD. I bet you're posting from a top of the line gaming machine right? Bought the parts off newegg, and put it together yourself? Good hardware support, right?
I have an old Dell computer sitting here, which is something the average user would have. Here's the problems I encountered:
1) xorg.conf needed to be manually configured to fix the resolution and refresh rate. It required a lot of cmdline stuff; not as simple as opening the file in gedit and clicking save.
2) Ubuntu 8.10 broke compatibility with the SATA controller, in such a way that it booted okay, and then corrupted the disk while running. This took quite a bit of cmdline work to "fix". I wiped out the partition and installed a SATA PCI card to run the drive from.
3) Permissions wouldn't stick on my ext3 partition. Had to use cmdline rather than Nautilus to get it so users could read files and create new files on the partition. Without doing that, gedit couldn't save anywhere, and I couldn't open anything Firefox downloaded.
No offense to you, but the average user won't tolerate this crap. They barely tolerate stuff like UAC, and this is way beyond that.
Re:Security (Score:3, Interesting)
That part made me wonder what on earth they are going to do?
The only way to achieve an OS that cannot be affected by any kind of malware is to have one with absolutely no persistent state and no ability to run any kind of user installed program. So is that code for, "we're going to cripple it so bad it'll be useless for anything except running Chrome"? Or is there some fundamental way around this that I'm not seeing?