Google OS

At first I was kinda iffy on it, now my mind has really changed about it, when they open it up I would be more then willing to put it onto my netbook.

Linky

I'm building Chromium OS right now. I'm going to build a VMWare image so I can test it in a VM. I'll let you know how it goes and post up some screenshots if it all works out.

I'm excited about Chrome OS, I do fear though that the entire OS becomes useless when you have no internet connection.

Go google

I remember about 5 years ago I had heard this idea from someone at Sun micro systems at a conference. In the same conference, Bill Gates addressed this and said that people would not give up the power of their personal computer ...

Verdict is out on this one for me. Google does online beta really well, but can they pull off an OS people don't feel uneasy about when there is no internet? I'd like to hope so.

The fact that offline storage is even an issue is a huge concern of mine (I know a certain someone will agree with me). On top of this, I read that Google wants to emphasize the power of Flash. Flash, as many of you may know, is the bane of my technological life.

Flash kills netbooks and MacBook Airs. Clicktoflash is one of my best buddies.

So, whom exactly fits the bill for target audience here ? Just people who watch Youtube vids, listen to severely compressed music and keep photos on sites which severely compress their pictures ?

Oh... I'm so in.

This OS will be a complete failure within about 3-5 years of its release unless they re-think their strategy. People first have to be technologically savvy enough to know why this OS has been created. And most of the people whom aren't, don't care anyway. People don't care that their OS takes 45 seconds to boot or more. Well, not unless their geeks... and the average geek isn't who this is being marketed to.

Your average geek might think the concept is cool, but will then realize how much computing power is being hindered because of it at the same time. I don't see myself running this OS and thinking, " Man, if this only ran CS4 and Lightroom. Oh well. Who needs to work anyway."

Doug

I will just say this and trust me, I have talked to some pretty knowledgeable people out there. This is the way they want computers to end up. An Appliance with no drives, no nothing and everything in the cloud. First it will be business's then homes. It will take a long time especially in the home to take over, but that is the plan according to many people in the know.

And yes Van, I am against it for any of my data. Actually in another thread here where I mentioned it, many others are not for all your data, apps, on the net either.

dtravis7 said:

And yes Van, I am against it for any of my data. Actually in another thread here where I mentioned it, many others are not for all your data, apps, on the net either.

Click to expand...

How did you find out that I was referring to you?

Doug b said:

This OS will be a complete failure within about 3-5 years of its release unless they re-think their strategy. People first have to be technologically savvy enough to know why this OS has been created. And most of the people whom aren't, don't care anyway. People don't care that their OS takes 45 seconds to boot or more. Well, not unless their geeks... and the average geek isn't who this is being marketed to.

Click to expand...

The world wide web and the browsers responsible for delivering the web to consumers is nowhere near powerful enough to meet the needs of the power user. As this is the case, Chrome OS is targeted at netbooks and people that buy netbooks aren't power users (or don't use their netbooks for "power usage"). This might more than meet the needs of individuals who do light web browsing.

I can't say that it will be a success or not but from what I've heard, a lot of people have returned Linux netbooks because it can't run their Windows programs. If it can't run any non-web programs, Chrome OS isn't going to go far. The consumer market isn't ready to move away from the client-side application computing paradigm and this isn't going to change with one OS release.

vansmith said:

How did you find out that I was referring to you?

Click to expand...

I can read your mind! Actually I hacked the non existent backdoor in OSX and put a mind reader in your OSX.


Sorry, in a crazy mode tonight.

dtravis7 said:

I can read your mind! Actually I hacked the non existent backdoor in OSX and put a mind reader in your OSX.

Click to expand...

Hmmm...I do remember entering my password earlier to give access to "dt_mind_rdr".

I've given Chromium OS a try. I built the entire thing in an Ubuntu VM and it was surprisingly easy and quick for a VM. I successfully built a VMWare image and gave it a whirl last night in VBox. I wasn't expecting much as it says the following on the build instructions page: "Note: The VMWare image may have missing functionality (e.g. no virtual terminal, slow keyboard response, etc). We suggest that developers obtain development hardware." It did have a VT but it was awfully slow. Nonetheless, it was everything that I expected. It is entirely browser based - the chess "app" for instance is just a link to a Flash (argh!) based chess game.

dtravis7 said:

I will just say this and trust me, I have talked to some pretty knowledgeable people out there. This is the way they want computers to end up. An Appliance with no drives, no nothing and everything in the cloud. First it will be business's then homes. It will take a long time especially in the home to take over, but that is the plan according to many people in the know.

Click to expand...

I have been looking at ' the cloud ' as well ( from a security and data protection perspective ) and my gut feel says that businesses are not ready .
This requires a serious mind shift and a lot of lawyers will break their brains on getting the contracts sorted out.
The topic of data protection is an interesting one as there is a risk that ' the cloud ' maybe hosted in countries that do not have data protection laws ( or less quality ones )

I think ' the cloud ' can be good if it is positioned correctly and aimed at the right audience. For the next 10 years, I doubt if there will be any FTSE 500 businesses accepting the model.

Just my 2 cents.

Cheers ... McBie

I'm not sure if this plays a role in this either but what if I wanted to save something to this "magical cloud" that was legal in my country but illegal in the country in which my data was stored? How would that play out?

vansmith said:

I'm not sure if this plays a role in this either but what if I wanted to save something to this "magical cloud" that was legal in my country but illegal in the country in which my data was stored? How would that play out?

Click to expand...

Or the other way around

And what about storing your personal data ( which is a legal definition ) in a ' lawless ' country.

I think we all need to talk about this over a beer, maybe two.

Cheers ... McBie

McBie said:

Or the other way around

And what about storing your personal data ( which is a legal definition ) in a ' lawless ' country.

I think we all need to talk about this over a beer, maybe two.

Cheers ... McBie

Click to expand...

Good point. That would be a perfect example of having easy access to material that was illegal in one country while not actually possessing it. I'm not a lawyer so I won't try to figure all of this out. Although, talking it out over a beer or two might be a good idea!

I agree with vansmith storage would be an issue and how the access and laws play into effect, but I have to say this would be great for netbooks or other embedded devices.

Remember the second large issue that will plague widespread adoption of such a computing paradigm: a lack of completely pervasive wifi. A cloud centric OS is useless if you don't have wifi and while there are some offline capabilities thanks to Gears and HTML5 (I think), how much is the experience going to be hindered if you don't have a connection? I don't like the idea of being dependent on a wifi signal and I have a wifi signal 99% of the time I use my MB.

I compiled this from the source today on a MacBook Air 1.86Ghz Rev B 128GB SSD 2GB RAM, running Kubuntu 9.10 via Virtual Box 3.0.12. Though it took quite a while, it completed successfully after a few tweaks and some substitutions in the limited documentation available. I then converted it to a VM and ran it in Virtual Box. The Google OS is not something I see myself using anytime in the near or distant future by choice. It's sort of reminds me of Windows 3.x and a web browser mixed together. Though it's a Beta, and understandably not robust yet, I don't feel I can live on Google applications, some plug in's, and web applications exclusively. Since I can do all of that, and much more on any Windows/Linux 2.6/Mac OS 10+ release, I am basically losing my current applications for little pay off. Just my humble opinion. I'm sure this would be a good choice for someone out there who lives on the web 99% of the time. That person is just not myself.

Take aways from the experience:
1) The MBA hardware can do quite a bit more than some folks give it credit for.
2) I like playing around with Linux, an OS I can use to build another OS, much more than I have in quite a while
3) Chrome is not an OS I will spend much time with as, whatever it is suppose to do very well, does not appear to be things I personally do with any regularity.

Thanks Xj-linux it was as I kinda thought more built towards those that use netbooks or small web enabled devices.