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Introducing the Google Chrome OS

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Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#92

Post by mooneater »

koepked wrote: post #66

I'm not sure if I like implications of a web-centric OS, especially when its producer is as rich and powerful as Google. I see the market for it, and I think it will be a huge benefit for the average user. However, I see the transition from desktop-based software to web-based as a loss of user control. Today, when governments decide that mp3 sharing, porn, articles of political dissent, or news from non-national sour…

Agreed, this is just too convenient for, say, the Chinese govt. (as just one example).

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#93

Post by blasdel »

rythie wrote: post #78
Micand wrote: post #67

If ARM and x86 are targeted, this means no Flash (not surprising, given how poorly it runs on Linux), which presumably means YouTube will be operating in full-on HTML 5 video mode by the time these devices launch. If netbooks continue their meteoric ascent, and if Chrome OS grabs a significant share of the market, we may finally see the realization of the mythical Year of Linux On the Desktop. The ironic aspect, of c…

Flash has a few small problems on Linux, but generally is usable.

Problems like crashing my browsers 10x a week, and using 50x the CPU that mplayer uses to play the same video.

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#94

Post by brown9-2 »

jeffspost wrote: post #4

Interesting. The one missing piece--a RAD development environment that's as efficient as Visual Studio is at producing fat clients. The business world will only embrace the webcentric model when it becomes as efficient to code in as .net click-once fat clients. The idea of simple, cheap, rugged hardware is very appealing. But programmer time is the #1 cost--businesses go for easy drag/drop fat client apps. Software w…

Huh?

They don't need application vendors to target Chrome OS in order for this to be a success - the whole point is that it just runs web apps, period.

Its targeted at consumers and netbooks, not those that want to run heavy duty, CPU-intensive applications. The whole idea of a netbook is to be small, light, quick, and primary a web browsing device.

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#96

Post by davidw »

tc wrote: post #9
mcav wrote: post #2

Key Data Point: > The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.

If their approach to Android is any guide, much of the work will consist of eliminating any GNU or GPL components from the (userspace) runtime environment.

Yeah, they definitely prefer the Apache license, but the "userspace" in Android mostly consists of Dalvik and a bunch of stuff written for it/on top of it. Since they're trying to save space, they went with a smaller libc and don't include much at all in the way of 'standard unix tools'.

In other words I don't think they care too much about gpl stuff since they built their own UI and bytecode interpreter where most of the action is anyway...

Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS

#100

Post by davidw »

trezor wrote: post #84
cdibona wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't tried out the chromium nightly desktop builds, they're actually quite nice. The team is still nailing down the plugins, but the browser itself is wicked fast and pretty stable (given its alpha nature)

Even for a minimalistic web-browser Chromium is still rather lacking. While what used to be butt ugly font-rendering has gotten better, at least to the point of readable, as far as I can tell there is still no plugin support. The only way you can fully configure the browser is still trough running gconf-editor for some parts, and configuring Firefox and then importing settings from there. That being said, my biggest…

> horrible ... unstable

Wow - completely opposite from my experience. What are you running on? I'm on Ubuntu 8.10 right now, using the nightly builds.

I've had a tab lock up once or twice, but in general it's very nice, way faster than FF 3.0, and pleasant to use. The key bindings are the only thing that seems a bit wonky, but I'm generally happy and at some point may start using it as my main browser, if FF 3.5 isn't significantly better.

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