Google announces Chrome OS

[pimanac]

Originally Posted by microchip8

That's cheating!

or are you apply the strategy of "keep you friends close, but keep you enemies closer?"

probably because killing it is as easy as

rm -rf /home/me/vmware/windows7rc

[techfan80]

Bill gonna pay some bills for this!! But the plain truth is this Most Guys out there don't know what Linux can offer. Is there a person or a Group out there who can introduce it in Schools, Hospitals, Labs, Cars,Mobile, Offices,bla, bla bla?

The first time I installed Linux it was 9.0 Suse, quite late indeed and do you know how many of my friends since then use Linux? 15 and how many use MS Win(XPSP3, Vista and 7 combined)? 56+

The adverts of Linux and supportive wares I see in shops, mobile, Screens, Bill Boards here in my Place are virtually NONE. I mean I know little to my own ranks but guys here call me a pro!! Grotesque to me

[saahne]

When I read the initial announcement I thought that's exciting but the more I think about it I'm not so sure. Sure we get the Google brand which is more likely to capture consumer interest than some other brand of Linux OS. But what else do we get that we can't get elsewhere? A lot of the promises are so much vaporware at the moment and well behind other efforts like Moblin. Also, they can spout on about open source and community as much as they like but this looks an awful lot like it is about Google being in control, i.e. being very Microsoft. This seems very different from the way Moblin is being developed.

Reading between the lines somewhat, a rather pointed post by Novell's CMO:
Google Chrome OS - Welcome to the Party

The Google announcement may sound familiar in another way. If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then Google Chrome OS is a tremendous validation of Moblin, the Intel-led, Linux-based operating system designed specifically for next generation netbooks. Moblin is already seeing support from major netbook manufacturers, and Moblin is available now.

[saahne]

More criticism:

Google's Linux fork may not trouble Microsoft

Google has now lifted the covers on its Google Chrome OS, "an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks." That's funny. We already have Several of those, each of them running the same code powering Chrome OS, as Glyn Moody reminds us. They're called Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Moblin, and...you get the point.

Google ChromeOS: Have people taken leave of their senses?

Not much by way of facts to back up the stories. Nor any rational analysis of what’s going on in the market. Pure opinion with zippo to make sense of the story other than what appears to be a Wisdom of Crowds attempt to parse Googles’ smartly worded announcement.

[microchip8]

Chrome OS does not interest me much and honestly, it they intend to mimic some of the other mobile Linux solutions, they're just wasting time and resources...

[saahne]

More cold water:

What Google Can Learn from Microsoft About Operating Systems

We just learned that Google has decided to enter the operating system business. Microsoft, as of this writing, has not commented. I can only wonder, however, what thoughts are going through the heads of the people at Microsoft. (I imagine there’s a certain amount of laughter going on.)....Creating office applications that run in the Web browser is one thing. Creating a full-fledged operating system is another thing altogether. Can they really do it? How much thought have they really put into this? Personally, I’m incredibly skeptical that, from both a technical and business perspective, they can make it happen. It sounds more like a cool Google Labs project but not necessarily a viable business model.

Will ChromeOS make Google more loved or hated in open source world?

Dreamy. This should be exciting stuff for open source backers (and for the rest of the world) but few in the community are celebrating. Google’s commercial strength and market power have always undermined its efforts to get support in the open source sector. For many, Google is simply the next gen Microsoft pretending the carry the open source banner but not really abiding by the core principles of the movement. In its first year on the market, for instance, the open source Chrome browser has amassed only less than two percent market share while Firefox, the original open source browser, rocks at almost 23 percent share. It’s still too early to judge which one will reign but most in the open source community would prefer Mozilla’s success.

[hito_kiri]

I know I would rather have Google or at least someone competing with MS. Even if Google isn't the best company to support open source, they are at least a little closer than MS. I don't see Google's OS taking complete control, I do see it (whether from marketing or actual usefulness) becoming popular enough to force competition from MS, which is a lot better than what we have now. Who knows though? In the end MS and Google might switch places; MS becoming the search engine gurus with Bing and Google becoming the OS Monopoly.

[suse_tpx60s]

I have mixed feelings over this and will reserve judgement. I think one positive thing to come out of this is the list of partners they claim to have on board

Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba

At least with those manufacturers supporting "Linux" we can hopefully expect to see better support and drivers for the hardware. The odds are that more manufacturers will get on board and that can only be good for Linux.

I just hope Google don't try bully their way around the open source community and try steer or manipulate development to suit their gain. But it's nice to see someone take on Microsoft.

[ken_yap]

I don't think there is much in it for desktop Linux users. If you look at the market they are targetting, netbooks initially, it will be hardware bundled with the Chrome OS. And since they will be ARM devices, no chance of Windows usurping that market. Simply put, this is Google's way of putting devices that use web services on the market, bypassing Windows note/netbooks and iPhones. You can probably hack the hardware and put your own version of Linux on it, but most buyers will be using it a portable web appliance.

It's not a revolutionary new OS, as said, the kernel is Linux. Probably there will be some neat hacks that will be fed back to the kernel sources.

People who say Chrome, what's that? are missing the point. The truth is, a person who wants to find the nearest restaurant from gmaps, doesn't give a f*** what the browser is, whether Chrome, Opera, Firefox, or even IE. The browser is just the means of delivering the service. Expect browser support canvas for gmaps, HTML5 video features and that sort of thing. Chrome is just the way for Google to ensure that a suitably capable and safe (e.g. separate processes for each tab, eliminating cross-scripting attacks) browser is available to connect to the service.

I don't think it's competition for Moblin, as initially the hardware will be designed for Chrome OS. No doubt enterprising people will take the code and port it to other platforms, just as people have taken Android to run on netbooks.

So I would say that most hopes and fears are overblown. The main point to take away is that Google is not out to promote Linux, make a business from hardware, or even challenge M$ on the desktop. They just want lots and lots of devices out there that will use their services.

[lwfinger]

suse tpx60s wrote:
>
> I just hope Google don't try bully their way around the open source
> community and try steer or manipulate development to suit their gain.
> But it's nice to see someone take on Microsoft.


I don't expect Google to try to bully anyone. BTW, you might be
interested in the statistics in
http://remword.com/kps_result/index.php, which lists the contributors
to each kernel upgrade by "company". Hobbyists are the largest group,
but Google has a significant presence in the list.

The number of lines changed by their employees are as follows:

since 2005 - 52696
2.6.31 (so far) - 1847
2.6.30 - 2040
2.6.29 - 7545
2.6.28 - 8909
2.6.27 - 2887

By my reckoning, this is a non-trivial contribution.

I am also very proud to be contributor #21 in the hobbyist group for
changes since 2005. That amounts to over 21,000 lines changed.

Larry