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:2005-07-24
For the sake of argument, let's pretend that I believe that you really maintain 7000 hosts in the enterprise.
Is your post somehow supposed to be relevant to the topic at hand? The article is about a netbook OS. Ubuntu works quite well in that area. It would hardly surprise me if RHEL and SLES had better enterprise deployment tools. (In fact, I find kickstart to be invaluable for some things that I do.) But what does any of that have to do with this topic? I get the impression that you are simply casting about for anything you can blather in disparagement of a distro which, I suppose, you feel threatens your favored distro.
You do realize that we're talking about an OS configuration which is going to be rolled out preinstalled on netbook *clients*, and later, desktop *clients*. And not about rolling this out on preexisting hardware at Google and Yahoo. Did you even read the article?
Edited 2009-07-09 04:17 UTC
Member since:2007-06-07
"For the sake of argument, let's pretend that I believe that you really maintain 7000 hosts in the enterprise."
Thank you for understanding, and yes I do. GNU/Linux CentOS, Ubuntu and SLES at a major university.
"Is your post somehow supposed to be relevant to the topic at hand?"
Yes, it's that Ubuntu, while a great OS, is not the pancea that people make it out to be.
"session that you are simply casting about for anything you can blather in disparagement of a distro which, I suppose, you feel threatens your favored distro."
Hahaha, I could care less. I use Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop. Why, because I'm lazy, but on the other hand I can also use LFS and know GNU/Linux, BSD and UNIX pretty darn well. I use CentOS/RHEL/Suse at work on the desktop and in our HPC installation. I've used most variations of GNU/Linux, BSD and UNIX since 1993, so no, it doesn't threaten my favorite distro. More or less I'm pointing out that Ubuntu isn't all that great.
"You do realize that we're talking about an OS configuration which is going to be rolled out preinstalled on netbook *clients*, and later, desktop *clients*. And not about rolling this out on preexisting hardware at Google and Yahoo. Did you even read the article?"
Again, a general comment towards Ubuntu and not this product at hand. Yes, I read the article, I understand where this is going to be deployed, but again, why does it have to have *anything* to do with Ubuntu. If it wasn't for Debian Ubuntu wouldn't even exist unless Shuttleworth decided to use a different distribution and build from there! Oh wait, that's what Google is doing! Screw Ubuntu it doesn't matter!
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!
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Member since:
2007-06-07
"Your... err... response demonstrates the point I was making most clearly. Even more clearly, in fact, than Lunitik's response previous to yours. Thanks."
How many Ubuntu systems do you maintain? I maintain 7000 hosts and in the enterprise Ubuntu deployment sucks! Suse Autoyast and RedHat Kickstart kick that crap out of Ubuntu. Actually Ubuntu PXE files don't even support the hardware that the CD does! Most people are only deploying it on a handful of machines, by hand. These people don't have a clue what it's like to deploy systems and services for a large enterprise let alone the likes of Google or Yahoo!
All the more power to Google!