Try Out Chrome OS In a Virtual Machine 289
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Soulskill
from the that-didn't-take-long dept.
from the that-didn't-take-long dept.
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.'"
Counterpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a lot of handwaving [itworld.com] about how Chrome is not Windows, how it won't let you use photoshop on the netbook, as if you would. Here's a hint: if you're trying to run Photoshop on a 10" screen, you're doing it wrong.
Look for disastrous reports from Gartner, Forrester and of course the Rob Enderle / Maureen O'Gara flackalyst duet on how Chrome is the worst thing since smallpox. These are your clues that this is the real thing. They said the same things about the When Google says they released the source, people build it and publish virtual machines the same day.
Netbooks are stepping up in performance, as this four-threaded model [reghardware.co.uk] shows, and will soon be able to do many more things. Yes, VDI is starting to ramp. There is still a place for Chrome. It's the dead-simple desktop interface that many of the technology impaired need. It's a point on the graph twice the distance on the line from Debian to Ubuntu.
A bunch of people are going to whine it doesn't support disk. It's a next-generation operating system and solid state is the storage of the next generation. It has local storage - just not the slow kind you're used to. There is no more reason to support the legacy spinning disk on this platform than there is to support tape storage or floppy disk. Moving parts are so 2008.
Re:Torrent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Torrents ought to be choice #1 in distributing files of any decent size. As an example, I thought it was utterly retarded that the recent Ubuntu 9.10 release didn't have the download torrents front and center. Why the hell not? Obviously they didn't have the bandwidth to handle all the direct downloads, as I started one just to see how slowly it would go. It crawled along at less than 1 KB/s for hours. They had the torrents advertised on the forums, at least, but they clearly made the launch harder on their servers than it should have been.
Torrents let you do more with less bandwidth. Take advantage of that! I understand some people may not be able to use them because of their ISP being a douchbag or whatever, and those people will need normal HTTP/FTP transactions and mirrors... but everyone else can use torrents and share your burden with you.
Re:Torrent? (Score:4, Insightful)
http://gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/download/ [gdgt.com]
Yes it requires an account to download.
However it is not verified. AKA login immediately after.
I pounded the keyboard a few times and dloaded no problem.
I'd tell u my user and pass if I could.
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Quiet on the post front... (Score:4, Insightful)
Am I the only one with a CPU lacking virtualization? :(
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:2, Insightful)
Cause some people don't want to leave there system on all the time. Like in order to reduce power consumption. So we don't have to dump a giant ice cube in the ocean every few years. I guess we could just increase the orbit of the Earth by exactly 1 week.
Robot Party Week!
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:2, Insightful)
The real deal about Chrome OS (Score:4, Insightful)
It might be faster than blinking, but I simply DO-NOT-LIKE the paradigm they're trying to spread.
It reminds me the "old" ATM machines, when a mainframe did all the processing. I guess I don't have to recall it was a bank who owned the mainframe and that you must pay them periodically.
I think the idea of avoiding the startup delay is really cool, but has a SMALL detail.. data is stored on GOOGLE servers, which means if Google powers down their servers you cannot access your data.
Tomorrow Google could say, "ok, since now you must pay to use our services.." And that's when you regret your decisions. I haven't mentioned the fact they can do whatever they want with the data in their servers (yeah.. yeah.. the data confidentiality agreement - i don't think so).
Nevertheless, I think it might be suitable for some people in some cases. Computers would require less hardware, which is a pro.
In summary, I like the idea of speed up the OS, but I think some stuff is private property and must remain as such (at least for my stuff).
Re:It's like the old AOL, except AOL looked better (Score:2, Insightful)
i played with it for 30 minutes today. the entire thing is a web browser and they have some non Google stuff there to keep the DoJ away.
Yup, good thing they did that. Would hate to see Chrome abuse it's monopoly. But that's not enough, they should open source Chromiu... oh wait. What's the OS' market share again?
Re:Counterpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
Define killer app (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but long battery life to me would be a killer app. I think that the standard six hours or less shows a peculiar lack of any progress. Sure, I can go to a coffee shop with my laptop. But I can't relax at a coffee shop with my laptop. How long will a smart-phone CPU with a notebook-sized battery last, I wonder?
I also consider a boot time of less than 10 seconds a killer app. The standard 45 seconds or more that even Windows XP (old) on my Core 2 Duo (new) gives me is baffling after 25 years of the PC. (Really, its more like two minutes before it is really ready to give me attention.) If my computer shuts down in two seconds and boots in three, l wouldn't plan my morning around it: "Time to make coffee --- no, wait, start the computer before you make coffee, then it will be ready at the same time."
Security is also a killer app. Encrypted home directory + read-only root + twin root partitions + a lot of other things = a lot more peace of mind. What if my laptop is stolen? Well, at least they're not going to find anything on it. My house guest is asking me if he can borrow my laptop. If it's a Windows laptop, I (but admittedly not the average user) will do a quick mental check --- do I have anything private on it that he might see? Is he going to accidentally download a virus on it? Etc. Sure, I can do things so that it will be less of a problem, but it's a lot easier if the computer already is set up as much as Chrome OS is for sharing.
Now that I look at them, what do these things all have in common? A less-stressed user experience. I don't have to think as much as I used to about taking care of my computer. Sure, it won't run Final Cut Pro. But I say, you should have made these the priorities --- at least with some --- any of your models. Get battery life, boot speed, and security to where you would have expected to be in the 21st century. Then branch out to fancy applications. Which is exactly what will probably happen. Browsers are only getting abler.
Re:Torrent? (Score:5, Insightful)
..which is some of the shittiest and most expensive pipe on the whole network, cannot be made as efficient as a conventional client/server setup).
Efficient in what sense? Certainly not time in release cases. If host A has a 100MB file and a 10MB/s connection, the most that host can upload that file at is 6/min. At 10,000 users this takes about 28 hours.
If the first torrent uploads to 2 people, and those two people to two more...etc it will quickly (4 hours) beat the single host case even if every pipe after the first is 1/100th the speed.
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. (Score:1, Insightful)
It's comments like yours Obispus that makes Slashdot THE place to come to for Informative commentary on where the computing world is heading.
Back to going over the Chrome OS source...
Re:Counterpoint (Score:4, Insightful)
I just unplugged your water. Your wunder platform just nosedived. Even better, I just took a frontend loader through the fiber backbone in your area. Maybe tomorrow, probably the next day, until then, well, there's always picking your nose.
Do you think this hasn't been done before? For fuck's sake, either the current group of marketers and IT types have amnesia or literally grew up in a cave. There's a reason timesharing lost out to personal computers.
Oooh, shiny! (Score:3, Insightful)
C'mon people. I'm sure this is a very nice project and perhaps it might eventually be popular with Grandma Homeuser, but is everyone so dumbstruck by the Google name that they can't state what must be said?
First of all, it's not an OS, so please don't call it an OS. That term has an actual prior meaning that should not be hijacked in an attempt to sound geeky-cool. Perhaps "operating environment" is the right term? In any case, it's just a web app in the end.
Secondly, as a developer, I will never ever ever use this kind of app as my main interface. I need to be able to write/compile/debug software that executes on my actual hardware, not just on some virtual machine in the sky. If you take that away from me, you are taking away one of my most important freedoms. Not to mention that you're also thrusting me back into the 1960's. I own a computer, not just a "terminal".
Third, all your data lives in the cloud. This isn't a showstopper for me personally, but I know it's a big problem for many people. Speak up!
Folks, once the coolness factor wears off, are you really going to want this? I think not.
Re:Not real Alpha (Score:5, Insightful)
I got really excited until I realised that I was about to punch my required Google credentials into a VM prepared by someone I don't know or trust. :(
You're both missing it... (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, this isn't really about businesses. It's about home users, students, and private individuals, at least for the moment. My babysitter is a nursing student, and I was telling her (i.e. flirting with her geek style) about ChromeOS and she was all over it. Why? Nothing to break. She doesn't need anything but a basic word processor, and actually uses Google Docs already as that's used by her school. Likewise, her email is gmail from school. She is a self-described techno-idiot, and loves the idea of a cheap computer with limited moving parts.
Second of all, when and if this sort of thing breaks in the corporate space, it won't replace desktop PC's. It will replace terminals (either traditional dumb terminals or Citrix) in call centers, at least at first. These things literally run one and only one application all day long. Right now, businesses are using Citrix to run a web browser or even a terminal emulator for reliability and ease of maintenance, and it ain't cheap--real example. Imagine when they can replace these with $100 "ChromeOS Boxes". Clear win. As for the politics point, I promise you that the girl in the call center has absolutely no political clout. She'll take what she gets and like it.
The small business users may be the last market to move because they often rely on unusual apps. But I do think that the availability of the Google platform and ChromeOS may push applications that have in the past been PC based onto the cloud. As this becomes more common, Chrome OS starts to make sense. This is a long-term play for Google, and I don't think they expect much uptake overnight.
The real story here, though, is that whether Chrome OS wins or loses, the web has reached the point that Bill Gates feared ten years ago: it is now "the platform" for many apps. Worse, it has got a great, powerful, profitable company in Google, pushing it as a platform from many different angles. It will replace desktop PC's--not in 5 years, maybe not in 10, but in 20? Count on it. It's worth noting, though, that this will be just as bad for Apple as it is for Microsoft. What happens to AppleTV and iTunes store sales when you just stream your movies and music off Amazon when you want to watch them? This technology is already here.
Chrome OS is good for . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
netbook style devices for using the cloud and surfing the web. Hardware has come a long way over the past few years. Most home users use email and the web. I work in IT, I ssh, remote desktop or export my display and run things on the server pretty much all day. I could easily do most of my job from a netbook. The only downside is the physical size being too small. (I love my dual 20" monitors!)
If I look at how I use my personal computer at home, a netbook has enough power to handle about 90% of what I do. I stopped playing intensive games on my PC years ago and bought an xbox. I got tired of having to constantly upgrade it.. Spending 300$ on a console is much more bang for the buck. The only things I wouldn't want to do on a netbook is photo and video editing. My kids computer has a processor that was released in 2002 and it does everything they need it to do. I have an old computer with a celeron processor running my website on linux. Quite frankly, i'm running out of excuses to convince my wife I need a new computer every couple of years.
These devices won't replace your laptop or desktop in the foreseeable future but they are perfectly suited for those times where you don't want to carry them around. You just want something cheap, lightweight, long battery life but powerful enough to surf the web, check your email, edit some documents, remote desktop back to the office, etc.
Having something like Chrome OS, that is optimized to interface with the cloud can't lose. If it does lose, it will be to a competitor who was able implement it better.
Re:Oooh, shiny! (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, it's not an OS, so please don't call it an OS. That term has an actual prior meaning that should not be hijacked in an attempt to sound geeky-cool.
Err.. you sure? If it isn't an OS, why do I need a virtual machine to run it? And I'm pretty sure the specs I've seen say it's based on a modified Linux kernel, which suggests to me that it's an OS.
Re:Not interested (Score:3, Insightful)
Gears / HTML5
Please try to keep up, the mindless poorly reasoned whining about Chrome OS was yesterday.
Probably it's a better idea to wait until there is some sort of Beta release available, instead of this very alpha release.
Re:Platform shift? (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting post.
You're not the only one. IIRC, The reason Netscape had to die was that MS foresaw a day when the browser would supplant the O/S as the primary application environment. Having that sort of control in a non-MS company was unacceptable in itself, but having the browser also be cross platform and therefore capable of eroding MS' lock-in of operating systems generally... You can see how that idea would play in Redmond.
Part of that may be intentional, in the hopes of not provoking MS as Netscape did. If Firefox doesn't try and encroach on MS primary domain, maybe the softies won't allocate too many resources to the "Destroy Firefox" project. That said, I think it's more likely a hold over from the original vision for the Phoenix browser (back before the name changes) when it was supposed to be an ultra-light, ultra-fast browser with all the heavy-duty code shifted out to add-ons. That was by contrast with the old Mozilla (now Seamonkey) browser, which still had a lot of the Netscape O/S convergence features in it, and which were largely considered to be bloat.
Personally, I'd sooner see Firefox move back toward to Phoenix model and shift more stuff out to add-ons than to see it adopt more of the features of a graphical shell. On the other hand, if they are determined to add everything but the kitchen sink (as sometimes seems to be the case), then I really can't see why they can't add a decent filer to the app - it would make life so much easier on occasion.
Well, it's logical to Google. To the rest of the world, there are still issues with having your data stored on someone else's platform. What happens if your internet connection drops? What happens if the cloud service provider folds and takes your data with it? What happens if, in a decade's time they are bought out by BigEvilCo who leverage the vendor lock-in implicit in a cloud architecture and hold a decade's worth of your data to ransom?
"Local" has some compelling advantages.
No argument there :)
Re:Torrent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pirated? How does one pirate open source software?
Re:Nothing to see here... (Score:4, Insightful)
RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)