Linked by Jordan Spencer Cunningham on Wed 8th Jul 2009 18:34 UTC, submitted by rlem6983
Google's recent move of revealing the Chrome OS to a suspecting public has put a great many people on alert. Some say it's a major privacy issue, some say Google oughtn't to become more and more monopolistic, while others think that the wide array of popular Linux distributions shouldn't become even more fragmented than it already is. "Google's decision to create its own Linux distribution and splinter the Linux community decisively once again can only be seen as foolhardy and self-obsessive.
Instead of treading its own path, Google should have sought to leverage the stellar work already carried out by Mark Shuttleworth and his band of merry coders and tied its horse to the Ubuntu cart."
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Member since:
2005-08-07
Ok, what is specific to Ubuntu that makes it a great Netbook OS? I've already informed you that very little of what goes into Ubuntu is specific to Ubuntu, so why can't Google take those same parts and take their superior development team and create a better product?
I think it would be almost trivial for anyone to create a better system than Ubuntu currently has, simply because there are already many examples. Couple that with Googles superior enterprise muscle, and I could foresee marked improvements done in a proper way, rather than just bandaged up...
Ubuntu relies on companies like Red Hat and Novell to further their software stack since they don't contribute anything meaningful to it. Those two companies are worth combined around 20x less than Google. I think it doesn't take rocket science to figure out that even for the most die hard Linux fan, having Google contributing much more due to depending on Linux code more than ever will benefit everyone.
Lets not get into the development model too much though, I'll just say that having 100% of the market as a userbase will be quite a draw for developers. Every system currently has internet or intranet access, and that is exactly the medium ChromeOS will be leveraging! Last I checked, 100% market share is greater than 90% so I believe eventually everyone will just write apps based on web standards, porting native code just isn't cost effective, especially when there needn't be any performance hits from doing things in the cloud. Google has many technologies to ensure that performance is not effected already, and I foresee many more examples over time!