ChromeOS Zero Released 232
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."
May the competition begin. (Score:5, Funny)
BRING BACK WANG TERMINALS!!! (Score:2)
And install them with ChromeOS!
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Why? Who needs a Chrome Wang?
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Because Linux^H^H^H^H^H ChromeOS has fairly low "Hardware" requirements, It should work on just about any type of Wang.
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according to this link [arstechnica.com], they still have some way to go..
0% Sugar Content (Score:4, Funny)
Chrome Zero, your first sugar free OS.
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Chrome Zero, your first sugar free OS.
Good grief! I hope not [healthychoices.co.uk] :-O
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Wake up MS. There another new kid on the block as rich as you.
Google is not nearly as rich as MS.
Microsoft [wikipedia.org]
Google [wikipedia.org]
OK. I need a Karma whore. (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. (Score:5, Informative)
So he's basically doing the job of a Linux distributor. He builds the ChromeOS packages from source, then you can download his binaries and install them. This is probably easier and quicker than building them yourself.
That's all there is to it.. if ChromeOS Zero was Slackware, this guy would be Patrick Volkerding.
Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. (Score:5, Funny)
Well shit, that analogy cleared it right up.........no wait......which one is the car?
Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. (Score:5, Funny)
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Chrome is on the bumper of the car. Sheesh, haven't you ever seen an older model car?
Its the wheels of my car. Probably a better analogy too.
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Chrome is on the bumper of the car. Sheesh, haven't you ever seen an older model car?
Nowadays it's not called "chrome" anymore. We prefer "bling".
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Bling? Oh, I have heard about that! This is a search engine on the inter-net, right?
ChromeOS Zero - what's so special about it? (Score:4, Funny)
ChromeOS Zero - is the first OS API with no functions.*
*Not a low-calorie OS.
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Considering what some other bloated major operating systems have become, that might not be such a bad thing.
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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
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Ah!, an unstructured threaded combinator language.
Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. (Score:5, Informative)
TFA says it is ChromiumOS. Chromium is the is the open source version of Chrome.
Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. (Score:5, Informative)
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Chromium OS is the development version [chromium.org] of Chrome OS which, when released during 2nd half of 2010, is also going to be completely open source. [wikipedia.org]
That's great and all but I'm afraid I'm going to have to say having entered the real world and been working a real job, I was deluding myself into thinking OSS was the way to go.
There needs to be a deadline, set features, and programmers getting paid full to time to write code that they don't want to write, for important things to get done in the OS. I hope Google will provide this?
Example would be that mouse-over-button bug that was in bugzilla for 6 years before somebody got the nerve to go unpack the pro
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Example would be that mouse-over-button bug that was in bugzilla for 6 years before somebody got the nerve to go unpack the problem and rework the bits of the code that needed to be reworked so that a window with a button in it that was drawn under where the mouse currently was would actually automatically hilight the button and let you click it. Before this guy got the balls go and fix it, it sat there. And bugged the hell out of me for 3 years while I deluded myself into thinking the OSS development model was superior.
Superior to the commercial model where similarly irritating bugs routinely get ignored for years because overworked teams are busy working on $NextLayerOfCruftyFeatures as demanded by marketing instead of fixing their damn product ?
In that case you're right, it's not always superior. It mostly depends on the team managing the project (in both worlds, be it OSS or commercial).
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Google will provide this.
My understanding is that Chrome OS will be the "official" build of google's Chromium OS open-source project.
Just like Chrome the browser is the "official" build of google's Chromium open-source project.
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The fact that anyone can access and modify the code doesn't mean it must only be provided by volunteers.
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It's just as useful and has the same meaning now, the only difference is you'll be bombarded with Avatar-related jokes every time you use the metaphor.
(BTW, the magical tunneling machine in The Core was also made of unobtanium, so Avatar wasn't the first to make use of it - and The Core is a total shit movie that makes excellent comedy fodder for geeks.)
Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OK. I need a Karma whore. (Score:5, Informative)
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?
These builds take the ChromiumOS source provided by Google, and just improve upon it and deviate slightly from the direction Google is going in. Google is tailoring to a very limited set of devices, but really, there are a lot of people on a very wide range of hardware who would like to use ChromiumOS, and so I'm trying to make it more accessible/usable. I'm also providing updates automatically with the launch of the updater beta, to remove the need for frequent reimages to stay up to date.
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Community?? Slashdot?!! It's more like a demolishion derby of open source (and heavily forked) memes *lol* ...
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aww and you just don't feel it anymore 'n that makes you all grumpy! Instead, you've just got slashdot without the excitement... ouch. I think I might actually cry!
ChromeOS ? (Score:3, Interesting)
ok... (Score:5, Funny)
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Heh, It's ok to make mistakes so long as it's an even number of sign mistakes!
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Arrr! (Score:2)
This guy should distribute this as a VirtualBox machine or so. Do I really want to *boot* into something that is just a browser without an OS and without apps? Gimme something to use and to play with on the side and I may have fun with it. Pulling my teeth would be more fun than booting into Chrome on a real machine, sorry.
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Ya know, Joh, if I laid down a pair of pliers and a Chrome CD, I have a feeling which one you would really pick.
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Uhh, a quick google search [lmgtfy.com] shows these links:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/12/04/how-to-convert-hexxehs-chrome-os-build-image-to-a-virtualbox-v/ [downloadsquad.com]
http://www.unixmen.com/news-today/706-chromium-os-zero-released- [unixmen.com]
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This guy should distribute this as a VirtualBox machine or so.
Why? Isn't Chrome available for your OS? ChromiumOS in a vm seems like a lot of work to just run Chrome/Chromium.
Do I really want to *boot* into something that is just a browser without an OS and without apps?
Apparently not. Fortunately, no one is demanding you do so.
Gimme something to use and to play with on the side and I may have fun with it.
Just run Chrome. If you find playing around with alternative OSs (including something as limited as ChromiumOS), I'm sure you won't have trouble installing it in virtualbox yourself.
Pulling my teeth would be more fun than booting into Chrome on a real machine, sorry.
No need to be sorry. Chromium isn't meant for "real machines" (whatever that really means anyway). It's directed at netbooks. I'm unaware of anyone suggesting
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This guy should distribute this as a VirtualBox machine or so.
Why? Isn't Chrome available for your OS? ChromiumOS in a vm seems like a lot of work to just run Chrome/Chromium.
=
You are right, of course. By the time I have downloaded an ISO, and told VirtualBox to create a new machine which will boot from that ISO, I am exhausted. I've spent AT LEAST 10 minutes inside of GUI's setting up the download, then creating the VM. At this point, I'm ready to take the rest of the week off.
Tell us, Node3 - how much
Re:Arrr! (Score:5, Interesting)
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
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Re:Arrr! (Score:5, Insightful)
And enjoy the ad revenues, you deserve them!
I'm putting money from the ads back into paying for the server/bandwidth, more users means more bandwidth for the updates, and bandwidth isn't free. I do this because I enjoy making/doing something people find useful, not to make a profit. And maybe to see if I can get noticed by some companies, that too. ;)
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Well, you are clearly orchestrating the distribution of copyrighted items to millions of internet users, AND the ads on your website are going to bring in a bit of money, so you should be expecting a call by the MPAA/RIAA or similar in a day or so ... ;)
Focus on the A levels (Score:2)
I hope it gets better... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Does you netbook by chance have a Turbo button?
And the point of this is ... ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
If my ADSL connection is down for thirty minutes, I can't do anything with the piece of hardware and software sitting on my desk. Since all the apps are on ... the Internet.
So ... WHY would anybody use this???
Anybody remember GMail's outtages ... ???
Looks like vendor lock-in to me ... all depends on Google. If Google ever goes bye-bye, all your data goes bye-bye too.
Can anybody explain to me , please ... Why???
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Because Google has been working on Google Gears and HTML offline functionality? If that stuff is working, you should be able to run Gmail, Google Docs, and other applications without a connection.
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If you don't like it, just don't buy it...
That's not an ellipsis, I just wanted to follow the parent's example with punctuation...
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I remember GMail outages. But if your ADSL is down, what is your local email client going to do for you that GMail wouldn't?
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You mean like... (Score:2)
You mean like, say, Linux?
I suppose new Linux distributions get featured here too from time to time.
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A question for your question. Must every conversation be about Linux?
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"Just"? I thought that was the whole idea.
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Yes, except there's a chance this might actually be the Year of Chrome OS on the Desktop.
Not a big chance, but better than zero.
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Well - don't tell anyone, or it may turn some people off. The dirty little secret is, Chromium is Linux. Go ahead, download it. Mount the image. Look around the file system. Any *nix nerd will feel quite at home. It's just Linux without the furniture. Add your own furniture, and you can have a full blown, fully functional Linux distro.
The year of the Chrome desktop really IS the year of the Linux desktop. Or, net top - or whatever.
Maybe he'll make Chrome OS useful! (Score:2, Insightful)
As it stands, Chrome OS is pretty useless for most people. From what we've seen so far, Chromium OS is so locked-down and artificially limited that it's just not worth using. You're better off just using Chrome on Ubuntu. At least then you're not stuck using just shitty web apps.
Independent distributions like this are the only way we'll see Chrome OS be made useful, when the distribution creators remove the artificial limitations that Google has introduced.
Re:Maybe he'll make Chrome OS useful! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, that shitty old Gmail has sure made my life hell. Same with that crappy Google Voice number that I use. And don't get me started on pile of steaming feces Google maps is. I just wish there was a good web search that I could use to find replacements.
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I just wish there was a good web search that I could use to find replacements.
Let me see if I can think of an alternative search engine..............
Bingo! I've got it!!!
Have you heard of AltaVista [altavista.com]? I hear its a groovy search engine that works in a far-out happening way. All the cool kids are using it.
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Re:Maybe he'll make Chrome OS useful! (Score:5, Funny)
Well okay, but aside from free voicemail and call forwarding, a free tiling map engine with some of the best map data there is, and the best web search engine, what has Google ever done for us?
The aqueduct? (Score:2)
Well okay, but aside from free voicemail and call forwarding, a free tiling map engine with some of the best map data there is, and the best web search engine, what has Google ever done for us?
The aqueduct [google.com]?
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I have used:
mail ...and probably a few more MUAs to read my e-mail through the ages.
Emacs
pine
mutt
Netscape
Evolution
KMail
Thunderbird
Squirrelmail
IMP
Zimbra
Mail.app
Outlook
Outlook Express
Exchange's poor excuse for web mail
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.
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Re:Maybe he'll make Chrome OS useful! (Score:5, Insightful)
GMail is fantastic. And by "GMail", I basically mean how it can be used as an SMTP server and IMAP server by a real mail client. The only people I know who use its shitty web-based interface are people who don't have the brains to set up Thunderbird, Evolution, Apple Mail or even Outlook to access their account.
Or the millions of us who simply want to access their email in the same way across multiple systems without having to pointlessly rely on another client-based program to set up, read, and send email. It's bad enough dealing with ISPs that ONLY allow you to send through their SMTP gateways, let alone dealing with firewalls that filter IMAP/SMTP connections in both directions and content filters that block web-based email services altogether. All for the sake of running your own email client? Thanks but no thanks.
It doesn't take "brains" to realize that sometimes simplicity is key, and the web interface is good enough, and in some cases(search speeds) is superior to damn near any client. And a mail client is a mail client is a mail client. None of them are the next coming of email.
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Exactly
Some of the main reasons I use gmail in the browser. May not be applicable to you.
* one less application to run and my resources are limited on the machine
* I have integrated chat. One less application to run as well (I seldom use other protocols)
* I can switch apps very easily with alt+1 as gmail is always in my first tab
* search is faster than in the thunderbird version
* I have the same browser experience no matter where I am. I.e. if I am using someone else's computer, I have the same interface. I
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woosh
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You remove the artificial limitations that Google has introduced, and you just have Linux. The point is just to have a thin web client, with no excessive overhead. It's something I've often pined for when waiting for a full-fledged Mac or Windows Desktop to log me in in an Internet lab. I anticipate that Chrome devices will be instant-on, and completely blow any sort of standard "unlimited" desktop out of the water for browsing purposes.
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While I don't agree with everything you said, that was too good of a rant to be posted AC. Well done.
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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 Sovi
Friend, I am about to destroy your arguments. (Score:5, Informative)
Where to begin, where to begin... You are so full of shit and misconception that it's difficult to start tearing you and your pathetic arguments apart.
Using X tunneled over SSH, I already have access to my main desktop system. I can access it from work, I can access it from my smartphone, I can access it from my netbook. I don't use other public computers, because I can't trust their security. Only a fucking moron would dare use a public computer for anything that requires a login.
The "Cloud" that you worship is full of shit. I've been working with computers and networks since the early 1970s, and we saw all this "Cloud" crap back when mainframes were king. I know you're probably just a teenager, and don't have any experience with large systems and networks, but there was a reason we moved away from mainframes towards PCs. Mainly, it was because centralization of any sort is a very dangerous thing. And yes, your precious "Cloud" is centralized. Even small failures of centralized infrastructure end up being very costly.
The moment you lose Internet connectivity, and it will happen, you're absolutely fucked. You can't access your files, for instance. If you're using web "apps" then you can't even access the applications! You're beyond fucked at that point. Now your fantastic netbook running Chrome OS is nothing more than an expensive way of displaying a "Cannot connect to server" error message.
Given the amount of data that various "Cloud" providers are dealing with, it's very doubtful that they have appropriate backup solutions in place. The cost to do it properly would be astronomical, even if you factor in their economies of scale. I trust myself to back up my own data much more than I could ever trust some admins at Amazon or Google or some lesser host.
So it's 2010, and we can play games from 1996 in our web browser using Flash? That's not an accomplishment, you stupid dumbfuck. But yeah, the potential is really amazing. Just think, in 2025 we'll be able to play games from today! SO MUCH POTENTIAL!
I do a lot of consulting for large and small clients, and very few use web apps for anything serious. You never see POS systems implemented as web apps, for instance, because they're too unreliable. (Oh, and since I know you've got absolutely no industry experience, "POS" stands for point-of-sale. We're talking about the software you see running on cash registers.)
If you ever manage to get a job, you should try to see how large companies use web apps. You'll find out that most don't, or if they do, it's for some near-meaningless task. One insurance company I works with does use an ASP.NET app. Do you know what it does? It maintains the roster of their goddamn company baseball league. A small finance company I know of uses a JavaServer Faces-based web app to schedule who is going to get coffee for the office. They wouldn't trust anything serious to a web application. All of their serious applications are desktop applications.
I'll give you credit for having the balls to try and defend some of the shittiest technology (yes, even worse than Microsoft Windows) to ever come along. I sure hope your post was just an exercise in devil's advocatery. But if you do take yourself seriously, I sincerely hope that you never get into the computing field. You and your stupid ideas will be torn apart in the real world, and unlike the pain I've just delivered to you here, it will hurt you and your pathetic "career" a whole lot more.
Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
You really need to get laid.
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Those "artificial" limitations are the whole *point* of ChromeOS. If you remove them, what do you have except yet another Linux distro?
The point here is that if you want a slimmed down, web-centric/web-only OS, there's no better choice than ChromeOS. If you want a Google Linux, just pick a distro and install Chrome.
It sounds like this won't appeal to you, fair enough. But it's a mistake to think that it needs fixing, and further, that that fixing is to simply make it into a clone of your OS of choice.
Person
Re:SlowNewsDay? (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of that Finnish college kid who was too cheap to buy a copy of minix and tried to make his own operating system back in 1991. Whatever happened to him?
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There, fixed that for you: (Score:2)
but this OS is still a newborn.
.. but this new OS is a stillborn
couldn't resist
Re:What is this? (Score:4, Informative)
They are different in that google only releases the source.
If you have ever installed linux from scratch or some similar OS, you can install chrome. As far as I understand, google has no plans to release chrome OS binaries, They expect anyone installing Chrome OS to be able to compile code from source.
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The plan is installed by the manufacturer.
The only other place that seems to be installing chrome OS is as an upgrade to existing thin clients.
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there going to get, very, very little market share if they don't provide a reasonable install option.
I don't think Google gives a fig about ChromeOS gaining market share as an aftermarket OS. That market is a pretty barren cow anyway.
Google is going to work with manufacturers to produce ChromeOS-based netbooks, nettops, tablets etc. which will come with the OS pre-installed and optimized for the hardware.
ChromeOS only makes sense if its stripped-down and tailored for specific thin-client hardware - otherwise, you might as well just install the Chrome browser on your current OS. A "one size fits all" inst
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I was testing an earlier ChromeOS build in VMWare and although it worked OK when at home, on a network with proxy went to click the option to configure proxy, it opens up another tab in the browser - "Page cannot be displayed" - the proxy page couldn't be displayed unless I already had an internet connection working, and without setting the proxy I couldn't get an internet connection.
You need to do it via terminal right now sorry since there's no UI in place, edit /usr/bin/chromeos-chrome-login and chromeos-chrome-loop to add the --proxy-server flag to the bottom.
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True to its Linux heritage, you need to manually edit a file to effect a basic settings change :)
Which gets a bit old sometimes, and then you go back and spend a bit of time in a proprietary OS (take your pick), and realize that in many cases there is no file to edit. Until things get better (and things are gradually getting better), I prefer the open way.
I wonder why Google is placing config files in /usr/bin instead of /etc or /opt.
Placing an editable configuration item in /usr/bin is a bit whacky....
Whacky indeed.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Funny)
Funny
Insightful (Score:3, Insightful)
Insightful!
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Informative.
Re:Offtopic (Score:4, Funny)
Insightful (Score:2)
Insightful