Google Releases Source To Chromium OS 664
Kelson writes "Google has released the source to what will eventually become Chrome OS, and will begin developing it as an open source project like Chromium. The OS differs from the usual computing model by (1) making all apps web apps (2) sandboxing everything and (3) removing anything unnecessary, to focus on speed." Reader Barence adds "Google said consumers won't be able to download the operating system — it will only be available on hardware that meets Google's specifications. Hard disks are banned, for instance, while Google said it will also specify factors such as screen sizes and display resolutions. Google said it plans to officially launch Chrome OS by the end of next year."
Looks pretty shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds dumb to me (Score:4, Insightful)
So basically it sounds like everything will be stored on Google's servers in some way to me. So everything I do they will know.
I don't like it I like to control things that are mine!
Um, Thanks But No (Score:5, Insightful)
Google good, Apple bad ... (Score:4, Insightful)
How do we reconcile this with slamming Apple for trying to maintain 100% control over the OS/hardware combo?
Norman ... coordinate.
Cheers
restrictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Going back to sleep now... (Score:5, Insightful)
The OS differs from the usual computing model by (1) making all apps web apps [...]
Well, I guess we were overdue for another well-funded attempt to flog the dead horse of thin clients again. I'd read the press release to see how many lines I have to scan before the first appearance of the word "convergence", but I feel too overwhelmed by indifference...
Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Whoever modded you offtopic must really like Google.
I have to agree.
It seems they are getting a lot of press for a pretty underwhelming idea - a browser with direct access to the underlying hardware. wow
DOA (Score:1, Insightful)
No hard drive, and it's useless without the cloud?
There are many college campuses where this would not work. I can't use it while on the road without tethering (or in a hotspot), and I can't use it for anything work related because it all goes to the cloud.
That fast boot is all for nothing.
Re:Okay.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Something solid state would be my guess. It makes sense to refer to the new solid state drives as a "hard drive" since that is what its replacing but I feel the term "hard drive" is being used to refer to the drives that use platters and other mechanics.
Hard Disk Drive = HDD = Platters
Solid State Drive = SDD = Not mechanical.
Re:That's weird (Score:4, Insightful)
enthusiastic linux base
Something tells me that's the exact opposite of what they're going for. You're delusional in thinking that Linux users have that much weight to throw around in the netbook market. This is the type of thing Jane doe will buy and enjoy it because it runs facebook just fine on cheap, energy efficient, small form factor hardware.
Re:restrictions (Score:1, Insightful)
fork it
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Excellent Plan (Score:3, Insightful)
I assume that Google either believes they can get money from device makers or, more likely, has absolutely no interest in being on the hook for the fact that your broadcomm wireless running firmware XYZ.123 drops frames and repeatedly disconnects when used with WPA/TKIP, or whatever.
Key Piece of Information (it's only for netbooks!) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Please, allow me to fix this for you.
. The reality is that if lots of people use anything cloud, it will not be able to be realtime or respond quickly. Latency and transmission requirements are astronomical for this method. Of course the selling point is less hardware for the end user.
Seen what happens to google wave when you hit about 100 people? Imagine the same for 100 thousand people.
Of course on the flip side, if people do the computations for you (aka owning a computer), you don't need as much server space, and people can actually maintain copies of their stuff, and not be limited by network capacity and network access. Latency is much easier to work on like that.
In order for google to get around that latency issue they will need to be able to have around 50ms everywhere on the planet, which simply isn't feasible because sometimes computing on an app might take more than 50ms to do.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Okay.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I suppose "they're being word-weasles" is one guess.
Combining the "no hard drives" rule with the "every app is a web app" rule, I'm more inclined to think they really do mean "no local random-access persistant mass storage devices"; they want this to be a client for their cloud services.
Last mile bottleneck (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a lot easier to upgrade a datacenter
And harder to upgrade the last-mile pipe between the datacenter and the terminal, at least until other countries follow the lead of Finland and Spain in mandating a better-than-dial-up level of Internet service. If you're using a web-based operating system, you do not want to be stuck with 0.05 Mbps.
Re:Google good, Apple bad ... (Score:5, Insightful)
More interesting (well, to me), is this is essentially a re-hash of the concept of thin client computing which Microsoft tried so hard to get rid of in the 90's.
Everything old is new again.
Cheers
Re:Google good, Apple bad ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Help me out. Where can I download the source code to OS X and all the software components for a working Mac? Sure, I can buy Apple's official version of the OS on their official hardware, but where can I install it on my OWN hardware because I have the source?
Apple is a bunch of tight assed control freaks. They build good stuff, but you must run it THEIR way on THEIR systems.
Google builds good stuff, and they sell it on their systems or partners' systems, and you can STILL run in on anything you can make it work on, since they provide the source code.
So, yes -- Google good, Apple bad.
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:5, Insightful)
A hardware vendor can already put a tiny installation of Linux + X11 + Firefox or Chrome on small flash drive. Why make a new OS?
Re:Hmm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just like the early days of Linux.
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Does the 3rd world really have always-on mobile internet with unlimited data, such that all apps being webapps is a good idea?
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:4, Insightful)
But this will be useful in some cases (3rd world education, your grandparents, etc) where all your need are webapps, like Gmail, Google Docs, etc. Not everyone needs a full blown OS and the hardware costs associated with it.
Which 3rd world country has the internet infrastructure to support web apps?
Most of the time they're lucky to have text books, much less computers.
The future is already. (Score:4, Insightful)
Gmail wins mail.
Google docs provides a position in the office market.
Google Wave provides a shared, collaborative team synchronization system.
Google Voice provides a complete solution replacement for all phones.
Android positions Google in the handheld market.
Cell providers cut Google a sweet deal for ad revenue sharing (well documented already)
Cell providers cut Google a deal to resell wireless at their whim. (well documented)
Chromium OS excludes local storage, relies on cloud computing, ties to ubiquitous wireless data access resold by Google.
Screw the future. It's not "still coming." With Chromium OS, Google just implemented ubiquitous, disposable, always-on, wireless computing, collaborating, and calling for the masses, who need never again fear their computer breaking, their hard drive eating their data, or nearly anything else.
...and from this future there will be no escape.
Re:Having watch the video press conference... (Score:5, Insightful)
For likely 90% of home users, this will be perfect.
No way. A very large segment of home users need iTunes to sync with their iPod and iPhone, play video games, take photos off their cameras, work from home, etc.
I'd say this is perfect for no more than 50% of home users. Of course that's still a big market, but not the vast majority.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want it to Just Work, you go to the store, tell the clerk you want a "google box" and go home happy.
If you aren't all that hardcore; but know how to do a linux install and follow other people's fix suggestions in forums, there will presumably be one, or a handful, of third party builds that are broadly understood to work well on particular hardware, and somewhat less well on other hardware. If you own reasonably common hardware with the right chipset, and know how to use bittorrent, it'll pretty much be plug and go, albeit with a few techie steps.
If you are hardcore, it'll basically be LFS with an interesting boot process and Chromium brower in the init script, and best of luck.
Re:Google good, Apple bad ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Firstly, you are stupid and wrong. Google doesn't have 100% control in the way apple does, in fact google will make no hardware.
But the best answer to your question is that the OS will be open source, so you can DO WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT WITH IT.
Not necessarily a thin client (Score:2, Insightful)
This basically opens up multitudes of possibilities for offline apps. If you can plug in a USB flash drive, why not a USB hard drive? If you can store and listen to music offline, why not video? And if everything runs in the browser, it just means that the API is javascript. You can do a lot with javascript.
Also, being open source means that forks can add whatever regular linux functionality they want.
I'm interested in what they're doing with X11. Anyone looked at the code?
Re:restrictions (Score:3, Insightful)
Free as in beer != free as in speech.
I notice the conspicuous absence of license terms on the website.
Just because they open source it doesn't mean they don't prohibit you from modifying, distributing, or otherwise using it as you wish.
The only thing I see on the website is that you can contribute to their code base; it says nothing about it being GPL or Apache or whatever licensed.
Reminds me of something (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Going back to sleep now... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but your users probably hate them if they have to do any kind of real work on them. That is, anything that can't be done in a web browser at least.
Go out and take a walk and ask people if they miss having a real PC. I bet they do. If they don't now, they will when the capacity for your servers approaches 80%, and then management will be unwilling to invest in more infrastructure. Then it will all fall apart when you exceed capacity and the number of complaints by users forces management to reinvest... in new desktop PCs.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
How quickly does gmail open for you, barring load times?
3-5 seconds, tops.
How quickly are emails sent? Have you ever seen the word "loading"?
1-2 seconds to send an email. Yes, I've seen loading before. It lasts no longer than 5-10 seconds at a time, faster than it takes to load outlook.
The answer is that loadtimes are not instant. How fast does someone else editing a google doc with you see updates? Not instant.
How long does it take to load Outlook, or load Word? Send emails in Outlook? Have it load hundreds of emails? Not instant.
There is an acceptable latency, but lots of things get around it which are also things that don't need good latency.
That's why you build your webapp to handle latency properly. I've used Gmail on an Iridium modem in the middle of the ocean. And it works. Is it snappy fast? Not like a 100Mb/s pipe. But they have all my mail stored redundantly somewhere, which I can search from anywhere with an internet connection, from any device with a web browser. Data stored remotely but cached locally during use is a natural progression for applications, now that storage and data transmission is evolving quicker.
Re:Google good, Apple bad ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not precisely. By their deeds you shall know them.
So far Google has usually been fair, and often good. Apple has usually had quality hardware, and often quality software.
But please remember that Google has wrangled a monopoly on the scanning and supplying of out of print books. It's got a few limitations, but it's basically a monopoly. This is evil in and of itself, and contains the potential for a lot more evil.
So you can't count on Google to "Do no evil". A slogan isn't a business plan, and Google is a corporation. Also remember that even if you trust today's management (and they appear almost trustworthy), you don't know who their successors will be.
I think I'll give Chromium a skip for now, until things clarify. That's a pretty strange mixture of Open and Closed they're offering, and I'm just going to keep my distance until matters clarify. (I'd say it again a different way, but the redundancy might start getting too repetitious.)
Yay let's create a big single point of failure! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Okay.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I want my email accessible from multiple locations. I can check it at work, at home, on my phone, on the moon, etc.
Do I trust my ISP? Hell, no.
Do I trust companies like Microsoft, AOL or Yahoo who hand over my data to everyone on the planet? No.
Do I trust Google, who has fought court orders to protect my privacy? Yes.
Name a better alternative.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Welcome to the future, where we abandon decades of established desktop APIs for the web in order to return to the glory days of DOS, where everyone re-implements their own!
By the way, finding out Chrome OS is as reduced in its functionality as I feared is really disappointing. Why would anyone use this if they could install a Linux variant that can run things other than Google-brand web apps? And it can run them at native speeds instead of at JavaScript speeds?
It's just amazing to me how many top players in this industry are so eager to step backwards in progress without realizing it.
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:2, Insightful)
So they're doing what we normally bash Microsoft for doing.
Re:Okay.... (Score:4, Insightful)
>I want my email accessible from multiple locations. I can check it at work, at home, on my phone, on the moon, etc.
>
> Name a better alternative.
Running your own IMAP server at home, accessed via SSL/TLS. Something which I (and many others) have done for over a decade.
A.
Re:Okay.... (Score:2, Insightful)
In other words, I should trust them with all my data. And probably be tied in forever. No thanks.
Re:Okay.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Install my own mail server and tape drive system which I must maintain whitelists and blacklists for, or let Google do the heavy-lifting?
Let me ask a better question. When Bush said he might start asking for search data on every user in the country, and then AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft preemptively was handing that data over, while Google was busy fighting court orders not to have over user data on Orkut users (who were in fact spreading kiddie porn), what has Google ever done once to suggest to me that I shouldn't trust them?
Or are you a member of the permanent tinfoil-hat brigade?
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Intel and Microsoft really really really want you to believe there's a fundamental difference between a "netbook" and regular desktop/laptop computer. Their margins depend on it.
But there really isn't, hardware-wise netbooks are are perceptually competitive with most desktop PCs, and most of them run a full desktop OS (Windows).
Question is, if you could have all the advantages of a desktop OS like Windows or Linux, and still access "the cloud" via Firefox, why would anyone choose an OS that only runs a web browser?
Re:Google good, Apple bad ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do people continue to be ignorant of the fact that Darwin is open source?
I can't believe you're posting this in a discussion about an OS that is restricted to Google's browser, will be tied to Google web services, and will only run on Google-approved hardware. Could your double standard be any huger? Why don't you just admit that you love Google simply because they use Linux and throw the phrase "open source" around a lot (even though their search engine, the core of their business, remains as closed as ever)?
Re:Going back to sleep now... (Score:3, Insightful)
It really depends on what kind of work they do at his place. The last place I worked at was so dependent on really large volumes of data (up to multi-terabyte sized) where any single section didn't take that long to do (less time than copying a portion of the data to a desktop across a Gb network) that if the network went down no one could work anyway. And we used fat clients. It would have been vastly easier for us if we had used some kind of thin client system, but the IT system that was set up before wasn't set up that way, and changing anything felt pointless because management felt they had to be involved, despite not understanding anything about technology manufactured after about 1930.
How much could you get done at your work if the network was down? Some places I've worked it wouldn't matter much, but others, well, the network was the computer to paraphrase it.
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Even maintaining a relatively light distribution feature-wise isn't a lot easier and anyone claiming installing Linux is hard clearly hasn't tried over the last 5 years. The days of manually having to fix your lilo configuration are over.
Linux is desktop material, look at the countless numbers of Linux-based netbooks before MS got into that market and look at increasingly more systems coming with a Linux distro preinstalled. If Linux is _your_ desktop material, that just depends on your dependence on Windows software.
Google clearly disagrees with you, but it seems to be going the Apple-route: tie the operating system to both the hardware and the services. It will be interesting to see how much of an overlap there will be between Android and Chrome OS.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
A dumb terminal with modern parenthood
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Chrome OS will never need to get updated (because it is perfect from start)
All of its apps will be web apps. They will always be updated, because you use them directly from the server. So the updates should be way less common.
2. it will never need any anti-virus
Pretty much. It will have a read only root fs, a tmpfs based /tmp, and it won't allow the execution of any binary in $HOME, and every process and web app will be sandboxed. http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/security-overview [chromium.org]
3. the only one who will ever see his personal data is some senior sysadmin and some viral marketing salespeople at Google, and you can totally trust those guys.
Well, with that one I agree, but it'll be open source, so hopefully "internal trojans" can be spotted.
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but google don't have a monopoly on desktop os, you can completely ignore chrome os and not suffer any disadvantage as a result.
Completely ignore windows and you cant play many games, cant open some proprietary formats (which you will come across sooner or later, like it or not), cant run many proprietary apps etc.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because running a software interpreter means having the CPU do between 10x and 1000x as much work compared to running the same logic natively. It wastes battery life and limits the complexity of programs you can implement on the exact same piece of hardware.
Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that Microsoft doesn't let you fork their operating system and connect it to your own cloud.
Re:Google good, Apple bad ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Congratulations (Score:1, Insightful)
A hardware vendor can already put a tiny installation of Linux + X11 + Firefox or Chrome on small flash drive.
Congratulations, you just told us what Chrome is. You didn't think they would write the whole thing from scratch, did you?
Re:Last mile bottleneck (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow I think rendering Pixar movies is not on the Chromium supported list. It's clearly aimed at the netbook market.
Re:Google good, Apple bad ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Thin client computing itself was just another type of redo of users on "dumb" terminals interfacing with the central mainframe computer.
Re:Reminds me of something (Score:3, Insightful)
Google's web-based word processor is different because it already has 2 million customers. Not as big as MS-Office, certainly, but that does suggest that it has past a certainly usability level. Most web-based tools of the past simply failed because they sucked.