Try Out Chrome OS In a Virtual Machine 289
itwbennett writes "Some very generous Alpha OS geeks have snagged the Chrome OS source code and compiled a version to share with the rest of us, writes blogger Peter Smith. 'The build comes in the form of a virtual machine, which means you'll need VMWare or VirtualBox running, and of course the image of Chrome OS itself. The folks at gdgt are distributing the latter, and they've set up a page with all the links you'll need. You'll need to create a gdgt account if you don't have one yet. The Chrome OS image is only a bit over 300 megs, so it's a fast download. If you need a little more handholding, TechCrunch has a step-by-step guide to getting Chrome OS installed and running using VirtualBox, and a Chrome OS torrent they link to.'"
Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Informative)
The only novelty is that the lack of a "shutdown" option seems to be intentional; the local machine is supposed to be stateless in the sense that it commits all transactions remotely before announcing their completion. Plan 9 also tried to achieve that goal, at least initially.
Kudos to the people who put these images together, though--they've saved many of us significant time.
Shameless Plug (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Shameless Plug (Score:3, Informative)
password: password
It will work until some wanker changes the password. .
Re:Torrent? (Score:5, Informative)
User: DotSlash
Pass: Slashdot
Dunno if it allows multiple logins....
Re:Torrent? (Score:4, Informative)
Depends on who you ask. If you ask me, torrents not only clogs my connection regardless of upload/download speed so no one can browse the net, but are actually slower than most http/ftp downloads that support a few simultaneous connections.
Any reasonable client lets you control how much bandwidth it uses... it's up to you to know how to configure your client so it allows you to do other things while you torrent.
That's why rapidshare et all are so popular.
Most people can't afford as much upload capacity as RS has... that isn't cheap, you know. My argument is that torrents are more useful for the uploader of the files, not necessarily the downloader.
Besides, most people don't know what torrents are. You can't have them front and center to general users.
Why is that? Because of the negative rap that torrents get. Which is why the bullshit in the original AC's post is a troll. I'm refuting this point of view.
Re:Torrent? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:1, Informative)
It's important on your 10" netbook
Re:Can't Get It To Work In VBox (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Can't Get It To Work In VBox (Score:2, Informative)
Change the virtual network card to one that's supported. How to Try Out ChromeOS in Virtualbox [ibeentoubuntu.com]
Re:Counterpoint (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, in the last year at work I had more power outages than internet outages, exactly one power outage and no internet outages. The internet is getting more reliable these days, so while it seems scary, and definitely has a downside, if it saves money then businesses will do it anyway. They didn't mind being locked into Microsoft, they won't mind being locked into Google when it saves money from the bottom line.
Re:Torrent? (Score:4, Informative)
Your math is flawed.
In the prefect case where everyone has 1MB/s upload it would in theory take 100 seconds for any number of people. This is because any one peer starts sharing what it's downloaded as soon as it has one single block of the file.
Of course blocks are not infinity small, people don't have 1MByte upload speeds and it's not a 'big start'.
The best models depend on the state of the swarm. During the initial seed then there is one slow seeder first order approximation is that everybody in the swarm is at the same percentage level. Transfer rate is limited by the upstream of that first seeder.
If the many of peers disappear once they have the file then the swarm is in a seeder starved state. The download rate of any one peer will be about the same as it's upload rate because of the 'tit for tat' like sharing rules in most clients when they aren't seeding.
If the swarm has lots of seeders then in addition to the 'tit for tat' rate a peer will get a 'fair share' of the total upload bandwidth of all the seeders. This is what can fill your downstream rate.
The vast majority of swarms are in the seeder starved state but at the moment the ChromeOS VMs are seeder rich; go for it.
Re:The real deal about Chrome OS (Score:1, Informative)
That's what I thought initially, but this build of ChromeOS requires a gmail account to log into the system.
getting console (Score:2, Informative)
ctrl+alt+t will open up a console session
F8 will give you a screen with other keyboard shortcuts (there's a bunch of stuff that's interesting).
Re:Shameless Plug (Score:3, Informative)