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Google Operating Systems Technology

Chrome OS Benchmarked Against Moblin, Ubuntu Netbook, More 193

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the feels-a-little-like-apples-to-oranges dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Using the latest build of Google's Chromium OS source code, Phoronix built it out to run on a Samsung netbook and ran sixteen benchmarks, putting it up against Moblin 2.1, Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, openSUSE 11.2, and Fedora 12. They ran some of their usual desktop benchmarks (encoding, video, etc..), but more interestingly they ran a number of battery, CPU usage, and memory consumption tests under different settings that show some of the advantages and disadvantages for each of the Linux distributions, and spotted a few bugs along the way."
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Chrome OS Benchmarked Against Moblin, Ubuntu Netbook, More More

Chrome OS Benchmarked Against Moblin, Ubuntu Netbook, More

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  • Shocking. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Monday November 23, 2009 @03:38PM (#30205052) Journal
    Similar linux kernels perform mostly similarly on identical hardware, except for the pre-production one that they probably haven't bothered to polish for any particular real-world hardware yet.

    • Let's stop calling it "Chrome OS". (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23, 2009 @03:58PM (#30205250)

      Face it, "Chrome OS" isn't an operating system in any way. It's a web browser running on a Linux distribution. Nothing more, nothing less.

      A more appropriate name for it is "Chrome Fullscreen".

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by CannonballHead ( 842625 )
        Chrome FS?

        • Re:Let's stop calling it "Chrome OS". (Score:5, Funny)

          by Vendetta ( 85883 ) on Monday November 23, 2009 @04:20PM (#30205438)
          Chrome BS.

          • Re:Let's stop calling it "Chrome OS". (Score:5, Interesting)

            by ZosX ( 517789 ) <zosxavius@nOSpAm.gmail.com> on Monday November 23, 2009 @06:29PM (#30207162) Homepage

            Indeed. The media really needs to quit talking about chromium. Nothing to see here, move along. Revloutionary? That makes me laugh. Its not even stateless as some have claimed. (Then again, I never really saw how that would work without a FS rewrite.) It is just linux with a web browser as the only interface. After using it for 2 minutes (the most it would give me before dumping to the login) I wanted to punch someone. If this is the direction where computing ends up going we need to figure out a way to sabotage the future. A web browser does not make a thin client. Repeat after me. I want my applications locally, where I can use them regardless of having a network or not. This is so anti-pc it makes me filled with rage. The whole world could burn down and I could still do my work with my PC (as long as I survived). Try doing that with chrome. Ask the t-mobile/sidekick/hiptop users out there how well cloud worked out for them. Could you imagine of Microsoft released Windows 8 as purely just internet explorer and loaded bing by default? Google already has datamined us way beyond anything M$ could have ever dreamed of, but where is the outcry over privacy? Any company that needs to use "do no evil" as a way to placate the masses has some serious fucking issues. Chromium seems purely to be another vehicle to guide them to the pearly gates.

            I don't see it standing much of a chance. I don't think a great deal of thought actually went into it. It lacks so many basic features that I am kind of surprised they even released it. Like how do you log out or even shut down? It responds to ACPI requests (it is just linux) but there is nowhere on screen to power down. No desktop? No pretty background? Even android is a real OS compared to this. No nifty widgets? I don't see many people getting all that excited about running chrome and nothing but. I was kind of hoping for a competitor to ubuntu, but sadly this is not the case. Hats off to ubuntu btw for having the tightest netbook distro out there too! They are even beating xubuntu in memory usage right now.

            • Re:Let's stop calling it "Chrome OS". (Score:5, Informative)

              by DragonWriter ( 970822 ) on Monday November 23, 2009 @07:25PM (#30207984)

              Repeat after me. I want my applications locally, where I can use them regardless of having a network or not.

              The intent is for that facility to be provided by web apps with offline functionality, something that has been important to Google since before Chrome OS was conceived (or, at least, announced as something they were working on.)

              The whole world could burn down and I could still do my work with my PC (as long as I survived).

              The only initial barrier to do that with Chrome seems to be that the first time a user logs on, network connectivity and a Google Account is required, although Google has stated that that initial limitation is just that: they want to work with other authentication sources, specifically they've cited having an OpenID alternative as a goal. While this still requires network connectivity, something as simple as a home LAN with an lightweight server doing authentication would work. And, since Chrome OS is targetted for netbooks, a certain degree of network dependency is not as critical as it would be if it was intended to be a general-purpose desktop OS.

              Now, you may have an issue with the entire idea of a netbook-specific OS and prefer just a general purpose desktop OS with slight visual adaptation to the limit screen real estate -- and that's certainly a reasonable preference. But I don't think that all netbook users are going to share that preference.

              I don't think a great deal of thought actually went into it.

              I think that its pretty clear from reading the pages on the design and plans that a great deal of thought has gone into it.

              I think its equally clear that what has been released has not realized all of the things that are planned for it, and that it is not intended to be a production release, a release candidate, a beta, or even an alpha release, but more an opening up of the development code base and the work-in-progress plans to public view and comment.

            • I don't you are correct in thinking that this is something that's meant to supplant a full out fat-client OS like Windows or OS X for the typical end user. Rather it's really just meant as an OS for netbooks. Also, the application of (angry) personal experience as a way of predicting market trends is just shenaniganery. Not to mention you're comparing finished products to a product that is nowhere near market ready-ness.

              If I had a dollar for every time somebody said "It's just A with B as the C!! I don

      • It's Google's rebranding of Linux. Perhaps in a few years Linus will be demanding that it be called "Linux/Chrome".

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Runaway1956 ( 1322357 ) *

          Yes, you're probably right. He has, after all, demanded that Linux/Slackware rename itself, as well as Linux/Debian, and Linux/Suse and ...

          Oh wait, that hasn't really happened, has it?

      • Face it, "Chrome OS" isn't an operating system in any way. It's a web browser running on a Linux distribution.

        Chrome OS is an operating system. Specifically, it is specialized a Linux distribution where the in place of a traditional desktop environment, a variation of the Chrome browser is sued. Since a specialized Linux distribution is an operating system, so is Chrome OS.

        It may not do what you want out an operating system to do, and that may make it a bad operating system for your use. That doesn't make i

      • Re:Let's stop calling it "Chrome OS". (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Monday November 23, 2009 @08:09PM (#30208494) Journal

        A more appropriate name for it is "Chrome Fullscreen".

        An even more appropriate name for it is "Chrome's Google-Confusion-Fest". Because Google is starting to bewilder me with parallel, seemingly conflicting options!

        1) There's Chromium O/S, which is pretty much just a Linux distro with a browser.

        2) There's Android O/S, which is pretty much just a Linux distro with a browser, that's incompatible with Chromium.

        3) There's Google Gears, which is pretty cool, but doesn't work with Chromium O/S, or Chrome the browser.

        4) There's Chrome itself, whicch is just a browser, without a distro of any kind, and paradoxically, doesn't work on Linux.

        In short, while Google has been lobbing all this juicy-looking stuff out onto the marketplace, it's been set up in such a way as the boxes are likely to fall on anxious developers.

        This looks to me more like a minefield than a fruited plain!

        Come on, Google! If you want me, a developer, to "jump on board" with your stuff, you'd better get it all talking to each other, because your deeply fragmented product lines are causing me to shun your products.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Enderandrew ( 866215 )

      Each distro includes distro-specific kernel patches. They configure the kernel differently. They ship different releases of the kernel. And they compile with slightly different versions of the toolchain.

      So you will see benchmark differences with the "same" kernel on different distros.

      I'm shocked to read the Chromium is eschewing Ext4. What FS are they using, and it it because it is optimized for SSDs?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 )
        Given the number of times that Ext4 is mentioned in Chrome's publicly released design docs, I'd be inclined to suspect that they just haven't bothered to configure it with Ext4 yet, at least not in the publicly released build.

        Either that, or the left hand and the right hand need to have a little sit down and chat in the immediate future...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nomadic ( 141991 )
      Speaking of which, I wonder why they went with the linux kernel and didn't try doing something new? I mean, you'd think with the ridiculous resources they have and all the top-flight programmers they hire, they could have come up with something new and improved.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by LandDolphin ( 1202876 )
        Why reinvent the wheel? Use those resources to work on the "improved".

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nomadic ( 141991 )
          Why reinvent the wheel? Use those resources to work on the "improved".

          Yeah, that phrase comes from the free software community a lot, though funnily enough people have no problem writing 70 mp3 programs that all mimic each other's functionality...The reason to do it, from Google's standpoint would be a) they would have more freedom when it comes to how they license the product, and b) they could do something new instead of just jumping on the 30 year old UNIX paradigm. I think if they got the best peopl

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ZosX ( 517789 )

        Why reinvent the wheel? Linux has had millions of dollars invested in its development over the years and is stable, reasonably efficient, and well documented. To start out from scratch would take years of development time. Why do you think that linux is becoming so prolific on so many different devices? It runs on any remotely modern processor under the sun. Actually, that is why I am so disappointed in all of this in a way. This is simply a rebadging that does little to credit all of the people that got li

  • How? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Spety ( 1269166 ) on Monday November 23, 2009 @03:42PM (#30205096)
    Are CPU and memory usage statistics even available in the current build of Chrome OS? I don't remember seeing them when I ran the version that was posted as a VMWare image.

    • Re:How? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Enderandrew ( 866215 ) <enderandrew@NOsPAM.gmail.com> on Monday November 23, 2009 @04:14PM (#30205378) Homepage Journal

      I thought you couldn't even install apps. Here they're installing the test suite, performing LZMA compressions, etc. Perhaps Chromium OS does more than we were led to believe it can do.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 )
        TFA mentions that they mounted the ChromeOS image on another system, and made some adjustments. At least at this stage, it is pretty much stock Ubuntu with a chromey face on top, so anybody who has the image mounted rw on another system should be able to bodge on anything Ubuntu can do with fair ease.

        • I imagine the simplist solution would be an Ubuntu Live CD, and then chroot into the Chrome OS. You now have terminal access.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ZosX ( 517789 )

        CTRL+ALT+T brings up the terminal. Can't remember if you need the alt.

        Apt is installed, so yeah, it is basically stock ubuntu with chrome running on top. Feel the innovation!

      • I thought you couldn't even install apps. Here they're installing the test suite, performing LZMA compressions, etc. Perhaps Chromium OS does more than we were led to believe it can do.

        Doesn't Chrome OS have the same 'Native Code' support that Chrome has?

    • Even if it was, Chrome isn't in the same game that Fedora, Ubuntu and Opensuse are. Chrome is designed to rely heavily on net applications, the others are designed to rely much more on the desktop. Comparing them to Chrome is nothing less than comparing Apples to Oranges.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by CannonballHead ( 842625 )

        Comparing them to Chrome is nothing less than comparing Apples to Oranges.

        I've never heard of an Orange. Is it similar to an Apple Mac?

        :P

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by oPless ( 63249 )

          No but there are tangerines [wikipedia.org] and apricots [actapricot.org] does that help?

        • Orange Micro (Score:3, Informative)

          by tepples ( 727027 )
          Back when Macs still used 68000 series CPUs, Orange Micro [wikipedia.org] made single-board PCs that plugged into a NuBus slot on a Macintosh II, allowing Mac owners to run MS-DOS and Windows and their apps.
          • That sounds vaguely, vaguely familiar. But I've always been on x86 (and Windows/Linux), so I wouldn't know. Interesting stuff though, thanks for the reply to a comic post :)

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ZosX ( 517789 )

            Ahh the good old days. There was also a 3do on a card for the pcs. The PC on mac card was a real classic. I wonder how many mac users bought it purely just to play all the games they were missing? It was a 486DX/2 that did SVGA. All on an expansion card. Cool stuff back then.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by masmullin ( 1479239 )
          Orange is a wireless carrier. You can buy Apples from them.

          http://shop.orange.co.uk/iphone/choose-your-plan

      • Linux and Windows would be oranges and apples. I think Linux and Chrome might be comparing oranges to tangerines.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ZosX ( 517789 )

        But they are the same os. Except one has a web browser and one has a web browser and other actual applications installed. It seems fair to compare them. When is the limitation of choice a design feature?

        Hah! Imagine if M$ only let you install and run internet explorer!

  • snake oil (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 23, 2009 @03:46PM (#30205134)

    Benchmarking operating system distributions in such a way is only useful for regression testing. Benchmarking operating systems that are designed only to run only on specific hardware against operating systems designed to run on as much hardware as possible won't provide any meaningful results.
    They didn't even use the same file system for each install.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Sinning ( 1433953 )
      Actually, it will show which distribution will run best on your specific hardware. I agree that it's not meaningful to most. However, most is not all.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Guspaz ( 556486 )

        Not really; Chromium OS is designed to run one single application. Its performance for video encoding or 7-zip compression is completely meaningless; it will never be running any of those applications. Heck, they did all sorts of I/O benchmarks when Chrome OS doesn't really touch the disk except for caching.

        The only meaningful benchmarks they could have run would be to compare various browser benchmarks between Chromium OS and Chrome running on different platforms on the same hardware.

  • Seven pages to tell us that they're pretty much the same? And Chrome's power management sucks? I'm wondering why they didn't do a Windows test, too. I thought that would be a requirement in these types of tests.

  • The most boring benchmarking ever. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by w0mprat ( 1317953 ) on Monday November 23, 2009 @03:47PM (#30205148)
    All the distros were very close in performance with the exception of one or two benchmarks. 10% is not a perceptable difference. Wake me up when Chrome fever is over and something interesting is posted about it.

    • Chromium can boot in 3 seconds. That is more than a 10% difference.

      It boasts a new UI. It is going to be supported by more vendors as an OEM install than Linux ever had. It will bring Linux to the masses. It is designed to be secure. It will make Microsoft shit their pants.

      That's good enough for me.

      • Chromium can boot in 3 seconds.

        So basically no offline (relatively speaking) functionality and can boot in 3 seconds. Yay?

        It boasts a new UI.

        Yes, it looks like Chrome.

        It will bring Linux to the masses.

        Not really. I would barely call this Linux. I guess it uses a Linux kernel, but it has little similarities past that, as far as I can tell. I know, Linux == Kernel, but ...

        I really don't see much of a threat at all right now. It's a huge push for thin-client. Not everyone wants a thin client. I wouldn't want a thin client, even on a netbook, since I don't have internet access everywher

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by Enderandrew ( 866215 )

          So basically no offline (relatively speaking) functionality and can boot in 3 seconds. Yay?

          All the web apps are using Gears, which caches everything for offline use. So all the apps will be usable offline. Your data is stored in the cloud, but also cached to the SSD. So it isn't fair to say it doesn't function offline.

          Yes, it looks like Chrome.

          I can't imagine I'll pass up KDE for this myself, but it passes the Grandma test. They know how to use a web browser already. You plug in a camera, a little overlay shows the camera. You literally drag and drop a photo from the camera to a Google Talk overlay, and it sends to the pi

          • All the web apps are using Gears, which caches everything for offline use. So all the apps will be usable offline. Your data is stored in the cloud, but also cached to the SSD. So it isn't fair to say it doesn't function offline.

            A thick thin client. I guess it might have it's uses, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to try to push onto normal desktop systems...

            Passing the Grandma test is important. Put Grandma (even if she knows XP) in front of 7 and Chrome. See which one she prefers.

            I agree, the Grandma test is important. I'm not sure which they would prefer. But I wasn't aware Google was trying to produce GrandmaOS. :)

            Moblin has a new UI, and people aren't saying Moblin doesn't count as Linux. Embedded Linux still counts as Linux.

            Good point on the embedded part.

            This is more than a thin client, since a thin client can't be used offline. And apparently it is a bit of a misnomer to say you can't install other apps, since they installed the Phoronix test suite.

            I'm still not sure - and apparently not many are - about whether it's actually a thin client or not. If you could use it like a normal, for lack of a better word, thick client, then I'd be much more inter

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 )

              I guess Gears works at any rate, but that strikes me as a hack.

              Gears is attempting to converge with the HTML5 offline stuff. It's a good idea for web apps in general, and it happens to be usable for the Chrome OS.

              For example, you can't attach something to an e-mail in gmail's offline mode.

              That strikes me as a limitation of Gmail, not Gears.

          • For one it doesn't pass the grandma test because most of the time grandma knows Windows. Tell them one is Windows, and the other is Linux and they will pick Windows because they -know- Windows. They don't want change. They don't know how to even use the computer. Move an icon over to the left rather than the right and you'd think their hard drive was destroyed by how little work they can get done.

            And yeah, its going to work great with Google apps but lets say you don't use Google apps. Its useless then.

            • Except Windows Vista and 7 have changed enough that Grandma doesn't know it anymore. I put my mother (grandma in her own right) in front of KDE and OpenOffice. She was able to figure out KDE just fine. And she thought OpenOffice was MS Office, even though I told her it was different.

              Chrome is different enough that no one will confuse it with Windows, but if you can figure out a web browser, you can figure out Chrome.

              The demos of Chrome do show shortcuts for pulling up Yahoo Mail and Hotmail as well. So I'm

              • Except Windows Vista and 7 have changed enough that Grandma doesn't know it anymore. I put my mother (grandma in her own right) in front of KDE and OpenOffice. She was able to figure out KDE just fine. And she thought OpenOffice was MS Office, even though I told her it was different.

                OpenOffice, unless you need to do powerpoint stuff (and, as I recall people saying, if you have Excel macros), is really good and has come a long way. A lot of people that I know, adept or not at computer usage, use it with no problems at all. I can recommend it without reservation to random people that don't want to spend the $300 or whatever it is for Office. I do like MS Office still, it seems very polished still - but OpenOffice.org is shaping up to be a very good product and already is.

                KDE, though..

                • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

                  by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 )

                  their documents are all Google documents ("what? what if it's a Microsoft Word document?" ...) and you need to type that in the address bar...

                  Neither of these are required. I just watched a demo in which someone plugged an SD card into a laptop running Chrome OS -- it popped up a filesystem browser. They found an excel document, clicked it, and it opened in the Web version of Microsoft Excel.

                  So, they're working on it, but there is definitely a model for running applications that happen to be webpages.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by ZosX ( 517789 )

                Asides from the gloss, I'd say that vista and windows 7 have done a respectable job at staying basically the same. If anything they seem like refinements of the design laid out in windows 98 and nothing more. Sure the start menu is a little different and there is no up arrow in explorer, but other than that its pretty much the same. I'd argue that XP brought bigger changes with icon grouping in the taskbar, shrinking systray and the redesigned start menu that is pretty much what even windows 7 is using now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by garcia ( 6573 )

        It will make Microsoft shit their pants.

        Will it, really? I don't think so. They are still going to sell W7 and Office and life will go on for Microsoft. And when people get Chrome and boot it up only to find IE8, Word, and Excel don't exist, and the inability to install Favorite Shareware application foo, then we'll be right back to square fucking one.

        *shrug*

        • Microsoft went nuts doing their best to stop Best Buy and other retailers from selling Linux in retail. They won't stop retailers from selling a Chrome netbook.

          That alone proves that Microsoft will panic.

          With Chrome gain 10% market share in a year? Maybe not. But Firefox grew slowly over several years, and I suspect Chrome could follow a similar growth chart. Most end-users don't install an OS on their own period. They get an OS when they buy a PC.

          Given that retailers will sell this, it will be fast, secure

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Hadlock ( 143607 )

            I'm reading this thread while ubuntu netbook remix upgrades from 9.04 to 9.10 (why oh why won't 9.10 image install for almost half of users? but 9.04 has zero issues, wtf)... I tested out Moblin 2.1 final and 9.10 remix, I can say that they're about 70% ready for prime time. Check back in about a year and we'll have some serious netbook contenders. Moblin is really, really cool, (and snappy as hell) but is too trimmed down for the power user. I suspect Chromium OS will be roughly the same. 9.10 UNR allows y

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Hadlock ( 143607 )

              9.10 UNR allows you to swap between standard GUI and "Netbook GUI" on the fly - that's why I finally decided on running that

              Aaaand it appears that feature was removed in the 9.10 version, for inexplicable reasons. Fucking brilliant. And my sound isn't working (But it works in wubi 9.10 motherfucker...)

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ZosX ( 517789 )

              you should always install windows first and then run gparted. just leave a nice block of space at the end for linux and swap. windows needs to set up its bootloaders properly or you will not be able to boot. hit up my e-mail if you get stuck.

        • IE8,

          How many people actually care about "IE8" vs "The Internet"?

          Word, and Excel

          Aside from Google Docs, it's possible to configure the system to integrate with Microsoft's online office suite. So yes, Word and Excel do exist.

          inability to install Favorite Shareware application foo

          Which only lasts as long as it takes them to find Favorite Web Widget Foo to replace it, with the added bonus of not fucking up their computer. That's probably going to be the biggest change here -- you won't be able to fuck up your computer without some serious effort.

          I've seen a lot of kids, not particul

      • Chromium ... will bring Linux to the masses. It is designed to be secure. It will make Microsoft shit their pants.

        A huge percentage of people who bought linux-based netbooks returned them and bought Windows netbooks instead. [informationweek.com] They did this because they couldn't take their usual Windows software on the go. If a wonderfully featureful and customizable OS like Ubuntu couldn't wean people off of netbooks what makes you think a one trick pony like Chrome will?

        People are willing to pay extra for a product that works the way they want it to.

        • Chrome netbooks aren't claiming to be a typical PC. They are very clear in their marketing. It is a web appliance basically.

          And frankly, if you're running Vista Home Premium, or 7 on a netbook, and trying to install Photoshop, you're in for a world of disappointment. If you're buying a netbook for anything other than basic word processing, playing media, and connecting to the internet, you're doing it wrong.

          There is a bunch of debate and FUS over netbook returns. Some retailers have said returns were the sa

          • I'd like to think that with the name "netbook" people know what they're intended for, but they still put up with the performance hit to run their favourite apps, however poorly. Obviously Photoshop isn't important to the netbook demographic, but Bejeweled and MS Word and MSN Messenger certainly are.

            The "world of disappointment" you mention isn't caused by running familiar apps slowly, it's caused by being forced into inferior and unfamiliar facsimiles.

          • Yes, a lot of people are going to be "doing it wrong" and the result will be an uphill battle for Google.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jipn4 ( 1367823 )

          If a wonderfully featureful and customizable OS like Ubuntu

          ASUS has been shipping a shitty version of Xandros, and HP has been shipping a broken SuSE install. Heck, I would have returned those netbooks if I hadn't been able to blow their bad Linux installs away and replace them with good ones.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kTag ( 24819 )

        It boasts a new UI ? Compared to what ? Chromium browser ? Previous version of Chromium ? Another OS ?
        Sentences starting with "it will" and "it is going to" are just useless.
        It is designed to be secure, like all other browsers/OS and it will be full of bugs like all other browsers/OS which are going to make it a lot less secure.
        Nothing interesting there for me.

        • If you think that Windows and IE were designed to be secure, then I don't know what to tell you.

          There is a world of difference between Chrome's security model, and Windows.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kTag ( 24819 )

            Windows since NT version has been designed to be secure. Really I think they had a good shot at it. The result is not impressive, but they tried. If you are talking about bloat and bad decision leading to complex issues, I agree with you. But you can't say that a modern version of Windows has not been designed to be secure.
            IE now, it's a different story. Actually I think IE8 use the same security model than Chrome (the browser), each tab/window gets it's own process, same with plugins no ? I actually don't

            • Windows was designed that so each user ran with full administrator priveledges. Pretty much every process on the computer had full access to everything.

              Explain to me how that is designing for security.

              Chrome and IE8 do have per-process models. IE8 only gets any level of sandboxing on Vista and 7, because it depends on UAC, which is still not much better.

              Since compatibility with old apps gets broken, you have to elevate most things back up to administrator level, and users get trained to just hit confirm on

      • It is going to be supported by more vendors as an OEM install than Linux ever had.

        No, I think the Tivo has that honor.

      • But Chromium also lacks most functionality that the other distros have. It's decently easy to make something fast and secure when it doesn't do very much.

  • If you really care about Linux performance... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Silverlancer ( 786390 ) on Monday November 23, 2009 @03:50PM (#30205178)
    There's been an enormous improvement in the Linux scheduler in recent months [multimedia.cx]--in some cases the performance improvements are as high as 60-80% with simple multithreaded apps like video encoders. The instant 2.6.32 comes out officially, expect to start seeing some completely absurd results in stupid "comparisons between Linux distros" like these, where the distros that happened to update to .32 trash the ones that haven't yet.

  • Program loader, not a true OS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zorro-z ( 1423959 ) on Monday November 23, 2009 @04:33PM (#30205564)

    As I watched the Google Chrome OS rollout, it occurred to me that, when it comes down to it, Chrome isn't so much a full OS as it is a program loader, a la DOS. As the presenter explained, most of what an OS does Chrome *won't* do- no scheduler, no other apps, barely a file system, etc. What it will do is load a Web browser, and then get out of the way. That strikes me as rather similar to the experience I had back in the day using SLIPNot to simulate a graphical browser over a SLIP connection.

    This isn't a criticism; far from it. It may just be that precisely what netbooks need is a program loader to start a Web browser + then get out of the way, rather than a full-fledged OS to tax their limited- by design- resources.

    Now, if I could just find a way to load SLIPNot on my Eee...

    • Hold up.

      OS = Operating System
      DOS = Disk Operating System

      All an operating system does is get the computer going. All the rest of the stuff you are mentioning is fluff.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pavon ( 30274 )

      Well since Chromium is basically the Chrome Browser running on Linux/X11, I see it as more like GEM or Windows 3.11, except it lacks tiled windows and has a fairly primitive API.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by oxfletch ( 108699 )

      What on earth makes you think that an OS running a multiprocess browser has no scheduler?

  • Not the banchmarks I care for. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Requiem18th ( 742389 ) on Monday November 23, 2009 @04:40PM (#30205632)

    While Ubuntu Netbook Remix (soon to be "Edition") owns Moblin in most graphs the reason I switched to moblin was because of its fast start up, about about 20 seconds.

    Another distro xPUD boots in about 10 seconds, but flash doesn't work out of the box.

    However, while youtube runs beautifully in moblin (including fullscreen!) other flash games are too slow and there is still no shockwave, so what I want is a linux that boots fast, runs flash ok and runs shockwave somehow (maybe with wine?) and the more of these features that run out of the box the better, for anything else I can use the terminal.

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