Submitted by I quite like Google’s Chrome operating system (OS)–a Linux variant that use the Chrome Web browser as its interface–but as it’s being shipping today, Chrome OS has problems. Fortunately, in the latest Chrome OS stable channel release, Google is finally addressing some of these rough spots.
People are getting upset over nothing.
The biggest problem is the printing. And the lack of the favourite consumer apps like Skype and iTunes. The Chromebooks are a neat experience and is something that has a market. I am very impressed.
I can’t wait to see what batch 2.0 of the Chromebooks will look like. I’m not a fan of Atom performance laptops.
As an iTunes replacement you’ve got Grooveshark and for the US – Pandora, Amazon Cloud Player, Google Music.
The biggest problem is that ChromeOS is a web browser pretending to be an operating system. Of course, people like SJVN will be cheering for it just because it comes from Chrome and Linux is lurking somewhere on its internals.
Now, if a system locked in to a single browser came from that M…soft company, it’d be a completely different story.
Agreed, there is a scary trend around using web technologies everywhere as if it was the pinnacle of what’s out there.
In fact, HTML, Javascript and CSS are a terrible platform for writing apps. I know first hand because I do it every day. It’s very fulfilling to have a working web app because of how painful it is to get it to work in the first place. But because almost every platform under the sun has a web browser, the web has become the least common denominator.
Even Google knows how painful this is, which is why they write their web apps using the GWT which “compiles” Java to JavaScript.
Hilarious thing is they’re basically stealing Microsoft’s original concepts for Active Desktop.
When I tried out a live ChromeOS live CD a while back, all it looked like to me was a Linux distro running the Chrome browser full screen with a battery and clock widget and no way to run local apps (and no local desktop either). In what way is that even equal to a netbook running the Chrome browser (which can also do a lot more outside of the browser)?
Also, losing 90% of your functionality when you have no net connection isn’t much use either – I really can’t see ChromeOS ever taking off unless there’s free wi-fi in every place you ever go! A situation tailor-made for the phrase “epic fail” methinks…
Well, one advantage would be that users of the “Let’s click on this Asian_Babes_in_Crocodile_Leather.exe file and say OK to every security dialog !” kind cannot install malware on their machine.
That being said, they would still fall for fishing on the internet, moreso if all their software is online.
The question was Linux+Chrome vs Chrome OS. Not Windows+Chrome vs Chrome OS. Last time I checked, Linux didn’t execute any .exe-files. Did Linux and Wine get so intertwined that malware.exe will now work on Linux as well?
Hopefully you were just referring to the “auto-restore to fixed state” of ChromeOS, which is, IMHO, really the only plus of ChromeOS. A plus that can easily be achieved on any computer with a “Reborn/Reboot”-card or similar software version.
What I wanted to say was that if Linux grew popular enough, linux-specific malware of the “rm -rf ~/*” and “gksudo rm -rf /usr” variety would begin to spread. Linux is not intrinsically much more secure than Windows, afaik, it is mostly protected by the fact that it has a small and computer-literate user base with good security habits.
ChromeOS is, afaik, immune to this kind of attack, noticeably because it does not let users run executable out of the web browser sandbox and (as you said) enforces that the system remains in a fixed, known-good state on boot.
Edited 2011-08-14 18:59 UTC
There isn’t enough oxygen in the OS market for both ChromeOS and Android — and thus far, Android is eating ChromeOS’s lunch. You have to wonder how little coordination there is at Google between the two platforms. Typical of a company that is run by borderline Asperger’s syndrome-driven engineering geeks. I give it about 2-3 more years of internal development before Google throws in the towel on it. Nobody is buying it.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/12/16/0412220/Gmail-Creator-Says-…
Haiku with a Chrome port, and something like OpenOffice, would make a great desktop.
ChromeOS is not doing anything extraordinary and there was no need to reinvent the wheel anyways.