ChromeOS Zero Released

charliesome writes "Hexxeh, a student from the United Kingdom, has been the source for ChromeOS builds since the release of the Google operating system. He's just released ChromeOS Zero, a small build designed for speed and aesthetics. He recently did an interview with The Chrome Source."

Interesting

[colinrichardday]

interesting

OK. I need a Karma whore.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get who this guy is. He was the source for ChromeOS builds?!? Google dropped it?! How does this guy handle Google's builds?

I don't get it.

ChromeOS Zero - what's so special about it?

ChromeOS ?

[Funnnny]

This is ChromiumOS, and the open source he has is Chromium OS too. There's a differrent between Chromium and Chrome, like the browser. Corect me.

Re:ChromeOS Zero - what's so special about it?

[PopeRatzo]

the first OS API with no functions

Considering what some other bloated major operating systems have become, that might not be such a bad thing.

I hope it gets better...

[absurdist]

...because as it is now it's slower than Windows 7 on my eee701.

Re:Maybe he'll make Chrome OS useful!

[shaka]

I have used:

mail
Emacs
pine
mutt
Netscape
Evolution
KMail
Thunderbird
Squirrelmail
IMP
Zimbra
Mail.app
Outlook
Outlook Express
Exchange's poor excuse for web mail ...and probably a few more MUAs to read my e-mail through the ages.

Gmail is the best interface for e-mail, for me, so far. Actually, the only one that comes close is probably mutt with procmail, but it's hard to compare since spam wasn't really a problem back then.

Re:Arrr!

[H3XX3H]

At this stage (nconsidering it's a one-man show) you still need to roll your own: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/12/04/how-to-convert-hexxehs-chrome-os-build-image-to-a-virtualbox-v/ [downloadsquad.com]

Conversion is broken in Zero, you'll need to download Cherry for that, I'm working on it, but like you said, one man show and I have college too. :/ http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/ChromeOS-Cherry.torrent [hexxeh.net] for the cherry build. Thanks for the slashdotting, guys. :D

Re:Maybe he'll make Chrome OS useful!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't you want hop on any computer, login, and have access to everything you need? If your hard drive crashes, ya lose everything. If you're backups fail, ya lose everything. It is much more likely that your cheap ass newegg hardware fails than an entire cloud with numerous amounts of redundancy to simply lose your data. I think people need to start putting more trust in to the cloud because it is a fucking hell of a lot better than what 90% of computer users have. Which is nothing as far as backups are concerned. Yea it's not perfect for everybody, but I honestly think people need to give it a try. Gamers worried too? Shit, you'd be surprised at all the awesome games that have been ported to Flash. Look at Quake [silvergames.com] for example. I know it's old, but think about the potential. That is the point of all this. It's not about what it can currently do (which is still a pretty large amount of shit), it's rather what it will become (which will be even more incredible). "Shitty Web Apps" fuel most of the fucking small businesses in this entire country. Did you ever think about that? Look at PSA and CRM software like ConnectWise. Multi-million dollar software companies that use ASP.NET apps. All they need is a toolkit and a web browser. If it can help small businesses (which is does), then it will help everyone else too.

Re:Maybe he'll make Chrome OS useful!

[thejynxed]

Wake me up when Adobe can get 64-bit Flash out of Alpha for Linux/BSD and ported to other platforms.

Then I'll take another nap while waiting for their programmers to fix their program so it doesn't constantly crash Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera or any other browser I run it in on a 64-bit OS.

I can't take a nap waiting on this cloud garbage though. It's already painfully obvious that if you leave it anywhere in the cloud, someone who isn't you is already pilfering it from some province in China or a former Soviet-Block state.

So, yeah, shitty webapps can suck a fat one.

Re:ChromeOS Zero - what's so special about it?

[squidinkcalligraphy]

Yeah, well, firefox (actually, phoenix or firebird or somethings) was mozilla with all the crap stripped out of it. Now it's evolved back to square one. ChromeOS is just the same principle on the OS level. Wait 5 years and it'll be bloated like the rest of them

Re:Friend, I am about to destroy your arguments.

[Anonymous Coward]

You somehow confused the fact that you're old with the idea that you know anything. Good thing you're old, though. You'll die before you have to adapt to changes you aren't willing to believe are coming.

Re:Maybe he'll make Chrome OS useful!

[Anonymous Coward]

The mail client built in to Opera is very, very similar to GMail (tags rather actual folders etc), although when I first got a GMail account Opera didn't play so nicely with it (because of the weird way Google had made IMAP work).

Re:May the competition begin.

[fredrik70]

according to this link [arstechnica.com], they still have some way to go..