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Comments: 664 +- Technology: Google Releases Source To Chromium OS on Thursday November 19, @03:02PM
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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."
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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)
Re:Um, Thanks But No (Score:5, Funny)
Hey man, information wants to be free. What, you didn't think that applied to YOUR information?
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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
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.
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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.)
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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
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restrictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:restrictions (Score:4, Informative)
from /src/LICENSE:
// Copyright (c) 2006-2009 The Chromium OS Authors. All rights reserved.
//
// Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
// modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
// met:
//
// * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
// notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
// * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above
// copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer
// in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
// distribution.
// * Neither the name of Google Inc. nor the names of its
// contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
// this software without specific prior written permission.
//
// THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
// "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
// LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
// A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
// OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
// SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT
// LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
// DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY
// THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
// (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE
// OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
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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:Going back to sleep now... (Score:5, Funny)
It's going to be a synergenic revitalization of the optimum dynastic capitalization for interconnected dynamics in the convergent subsidiaries of virtual datacenter alligories.
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Re:Going back to sleep now... (Score:4, Informative)
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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.
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Having watch the video press conference... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the infamous network appliance made real. The OS is a simplified kernel with a specific set of supported hardware with a simple interface and no on-system storage for data. All apps and settings are "in the cloud" i.e., on google's servers.
For likely 90% of home users, this will be perfect. A relatively dumb device that only runs a web browser to use web apps (googles or anyone else's provided their signed by google) to do their work.
It takes user-friendly to an extreme and makes everything just part of the web browser experience.
The root OS partition is read only and the selection of hardware is prescribed by google. You can download the source to hack it, but you can't make an installable image as you can't cryptographically sign it for their okay. They're only planning this to be a bought with hardware purchase.
Sound familiar? It should, it's basically the Apple experience made into a net appliance.
Re:Having watch the video press conference... (Score:4, Interesting)
A relatively dumb device that only runs a web browser to use web apps (googles or anyone else's provided their signed by google) to do their work.
It sounds like a television, with more interactivity. Hook the appliance into a screen, connect to the broadband service and you'll have a functioning computer.
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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.
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Key Piece of Information (it's only for netbooks!) (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't trust developers. (Score:5, Funny)
Unlike traditional operating systems, Chrome OS doesn't trust the applications you run. Each app is contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and viruses to infect your computer. Furthermore, Chrome OS barely trusts itself. Every time you restart your computer the operating system verifies the integrity of its code.
The developers barely trust themselves to write secure code so they decided code will not be writen at all. Not trusting themselves with this even they have scrambled their passwords and erased their door access cards. Security has been further enhanced by all staffers being locked up in the basement behind a externally locked door. 6 weeks later the only issue is now is the smell.
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.
Reminds me of something (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reminds me of something (Score:4, Interesting)
Exactly.
And that sounds great if you're a programmer right out of college, but Win32 tie-in, specifically with MS Office is still a huge factor in the real world. A big problem here is that the hardware they're targeting will be able to run fullbore Windows 7 just fine.
We've had web-based word processors for fifteen years but Google's web-based word processor is different because it's from Google?
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Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Funny)
Just web apps? I guess I can take my old 8bit computer out of the closet, because we're returning to purely interpreted programs now. Hey look ma! That program that compiled occupied about 512K of RAM now takes 150MB, YAY FUTURE!!!!!
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Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I plan to move our company to a "dumb terminal" model over the next couple of years. You say that the cost of hardware just gets "shifted", but this is not entirely accurate. I have roughly 60 users. Each machine must be spec'd to handle the biggest workload, even if that only gets hit during some small fraction of the day. For 99%+ of the day, I have a powerful machine doing very little. With a centralized model, I can smooth that out.
But that isn't the biggest reason I am going to this model. I have folks who can be working in our central office, satellite office, on the road, or at home. I need ways to give my workforce the flexibility they need to work anywhere.
From a cost standpoint, PCs are awful. Maintenance is generally more than the hardware costs. Software installation and configuration alone costs us about 1/4 of a FTE. By centralizing, I am expecting that number to drop by 2/3.
Now, granted, my network is either local, or connected by dedicated T-1's except for our road folks. So, while I think this is a great idea for my workplace, I don't think it makes a lot of sense for me at home.
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Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks for your brilliant retort without any supporting facts. I will throw out the whole strategy now.
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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.
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Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Informative)
How quickly does gmail open for you, barring load times? How quickly are emails sent? Have you ever seen the word "loading"? what do you think that means? (hint: it's not referring to just processing).
The answer is that loadtimes are not instant. How fast does someone else editing a google doc with you see updates? Not instant. There is an acceptable latency, but lots of things get around it which are also things that don't need good latency.
It's also not about quantity of bandwidth. Latency is not bandwidth capacity. You can have 1TB/s but if your latency is >300ms, there are things it will not work for.
Also, please quit the "Typical use" phrase that comes about all the time. There is no definition of typical use that you can specifically define for anyone other than yourself, as everyone has different definitions of that phrase. "typical use" is entirely subjective. You can try your best to generalize it but there's a limit to how realistic and accurate it will be.
I think you're missing the kind of apps that will also have an issue. There are apps that are latency sensitive, and there are ones that are not. As an example, someone will notice packetloss/latency trying to load the slashdot homepage, but they don't notice the latency between when they hit submit on a comment and/or preview. The difference is whether what you are doing requires attention or not. In the case of "all apps to be online only", that will inadvertently catch a ton of applications.
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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.
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Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Interesting)
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What is an OS anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, what does an OS need to do? It needs to manage the network, talk to devices and launch applications. That's it, isn't it? By specifying "no hard disk" Google is cutting out a major part of the device chat. Displaying a folder hierarchy is essentially a search, format and display application. They're good at that.
A large part of the Windows code is managing a large variety of devices, from displays to USB devices. If Google specifies the display format, then there's another large chunk of code dropped. The UI is an application, pointing devices are - devices.
Add an IP stack for the network and stick a security layer in somewhere, if you still need it.
By limiting configuration choices to those that have a broad appeal a *huge* amount of OS can simply go away. You have less local IO, less device chat, and no local disk latency to worry about.
People know how long their network takes to react, and will accommodate that. In contrast, a very thin OS will be very quick and will compare very favourably to a thick OS in response. And if most of the IO is server-side in the cloud, you won't see a lot of IO delays (source of most hangs) and response should be smoother overall, because servers tend to have the best IO controllers and enough spindles to stripe (not that Google would resort to actual hard drives!) Where's the beef?
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Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's something that should be a real concern for geeks. Right now, the ordinary desktop users who don't really need a powerful computer are buying computers. This means that due to economies of scale, the cost of computers is relatively cheap. Imagine what will happen to the price of "powerful desktop-ish machines with full-featured OSes" if 90% of the computing market suddenly starts using these toys. Start preparing to go back to the days of $15,000 computers. Just saying. :-)
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Re:Hmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you use x86, you've been running all interpreted code since the mid 90s - all x86 processors since the Pentium Pro are RISC processors with an on-chip virtual machine for the x86 instructions. This objection to interpreted code seems to be based on, well, nothing - why should we care what implementation strategy our software happens to be using?
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Re:Hmm.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, because they have also announced that it will be OSS(except, presumably, a blob of trademarked logos and stuff), there will most likely be third party builds available; but the sort of people who download third party builds of OSS code can either RTFM beforehand to make sure that their stuff is supported, or deal with it like adults when their unsupported hardware turns out to be problematic.
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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.
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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
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Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:5, Insightful)
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Looks pretty shit (Score:4, Interesting)
I think most people will stick with Windows and proper GNU/Linux netbooks
Yeah, this sounds to me like just another try at the failed Internet appliance [wikipedia.org] idea. Didn't work then, and I doubt it'll work now. With a netbook you should be able to run everything Chrome has (as long as you have a browser and a network connection), plus a huge variety of other stuff. For example, on planes I carry a netbook with a few movies and a lot of music; will I be able to use a Chrome device for that?
Maybe if the price were significantly better, I might consider one of those things, but again I don't see how. Netbooks are cheap enough as is, and I don't believe manufacturers will be able to save much on Chrome OS devices.
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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.
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Re:Okay.... (Score:5, Informative)
FTFA:
Boots from flash, be it built-in or external (think SD card), presumably. I'm sure someone will come up with a live CD/PXE boot eventually, though. Plus, it's an open source OS, so someone will eventually hack in standard SATA drivers and the like, if Google refuses to provide them.
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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.
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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.
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Google should give Gmail some love (Score:4, Interesting)
While I extensively use Google's products, I find that GMail is still wanting in terms of searching for email.
Here's why: You search for all mails containing some word...Gmail returns all mails having such a word with no obvious categorization. It would be better if it can return emails categorized as follows:
Those with attachments and what type of attachment it is, those sent last week, last month, last year, 2 years ago etc...those sent by who...and so on.
Right now, the interface sucks big time. Anyone agree? Yahoo does a better job at this.
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Re:Who would use this? (Score:4, Interesting)
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