Google Chrome OS and How the Web Went Nuts Over It
dailygyan.com
dailygyan.com
> 1. It’s very hard to get all the hardware makers to create drivers (or create them yourself) for your OS.
This is simply wrong, because Google isn't building an OS from scratch; they're using Linux.
> 2. It’s very hard to get all the software makers to create versions of their software that’ll work on your OS.
Also wrong. Many applications exist that already run on Google Chrome OS. They're called webapps. That's sort of the point.
>First of all, nobody seems to appreciate how goddamn hard it is to make an operating system. You don't just wake up one day and fall out of bed and make one.
Does NOBODY read the press releases? It's based on Linux! They have most of the work already done for them!
Wrong. They are using the linux _kernel_ which does NOT include drivers for all (or any) hardware devices!
<i>Also wrong. Many applications exist that already run on Google Chrome OS. They're called webapps. That's sort of the point.</i>
That's sort of the point that you did not get. A lot of apps are NOT available as a web-app. Photoshop class image editing/creation app definitely not..
<i>Does NOBODY read the press releases? It's based on Linux! They have most of the work already done for them!</i>
You must be NOBODY since you obviously did not read the PR. It is the linux kernel only. While the kernel is a very important part of the OS, it is not the only part. Especially for a consumer centric OS, it definitely is not!
Ugh. The kernel includes the drivers either in the kernel image itself (hence monolithic) or (more likely these days) as modules, most of which are part of the vanilla kernel source. ANYONE who's ever compiled a kernel knows this, because it's right in the config menu — which drivers to include and which not, which should be part of the image and which should be modules
> That's sort of the point that you did not get. A lot of apps are NOT available as a web-app. Photoshop class image editing/creation app definitely not..
Which is why Chrome is going to start as a Netbook OS — Netbooks are for people who won't be using photoshop. I say "start out" because with Chrome's ever-improving V8 engine, it may be possible at some point in the future to write a good image editor for the web using HTML5 canvas.
>You must be NOBODY since you obviously did not read the PR. It is the linux kernel only. While the kernel is a very important part of the OS, it is not the only part. Especially for a consumer centric OS, it definitely is not!
They said the Linux kernel (which apparently includes more than you thought it does). They didn't say only the linux kernel. I imagine glibc (or eglibc) stays. In fact, I suspect most of the GNU devland libraries will be present, if to be used only by OS developers and not by app developers. The only truly new thing we know about will be the X11 replacement, aside from that it could be debian or fedora all the way down.
Right I'll go tell NVidia/ATI to shut down their driver department and dust out my 15 year old dot-matrix printer. And please note, this is not from the perspective of the Chrome OS but from the point of kernel including all the drivers which it honestly cannot. There are a LOT of hardware devices/printers whatever. If the kernel included drivers for ALL the hardware available out there (how about the zillions of cheap chinese devices) then I think it would be bloated even more than Windows! What I do accept is that the kernel does include generic drivers for essential hardware (VGA or generic video drivers, k/b, monitor, mouse/touchpad etc)
<i>it may be possible at some point in the future to write a good image editor for the web using HTML5 canvas.</i>
Sigh.. That was just an example. There are a lot other tasks that users expect out of a even a basic system that say windows/linux netbooks CAN do that chrome (from what information is available) will not be able to.
<i>They said the Linux kernel (which apparently includes more than you thought it does). They didn't say only the linux kernel. I imagine glibc (or eglibc) stays. In fact, I suspect most of the GNU devland libraries will be present, if to be used only by OS developers and not by app developers.</i>
From the official announcement: <quote>The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform.</quote>
The announcement clearly states: The basis is clearly the kernel. Assuming it as targeted at consumers, I doubt glibc or the various compilers or development libraries never to be used by the consumers will be included. And the last sentence, The platform for app developers is the web. It is not targeted at OS or app developers so it would not make sense to include those libraries.
2. You keep assuming that because they say the linux kernel they mean only the linux kernel. You mentioned printing — why do you think CUPS won't be present? Also, I didn't say app developers would use glibc, but the chromium port will use it.
And even that is total nonsense, I wrote my own os about 15 years ago, it took about a year to get it to work. It is definitely possible to write an operating system, if an individual can do it a company with the resources of google could certainly do it (but they chose to leverage the linux kernel, and that's a good decision, even if personally I'd have liked to see google throw they weight behind some foss micro kernel).
While they needn't go the Apple route with all-proprietary machines, they neither need to go the Microsoft route and have it run on everything.
Maybe a middle of the road approach is best for this niche of the market.
-Graphics drivers. Google won't be using X so that will require some work. I imagine both Intel and NVIDIA will be happy to comply. Intel has a strong commitment to OSS drivers and NVIDIA can ship a closed source driver. No problems there.
-iPods. This one is tricky. They could rely on the existing OSS code but they risk breakage or support for bleeding edge devices. Google would be wise to approach Apple and try to work something out.
Everything else should be well supported by Linux. I was impressed that Ubuntu 9 fully supported my celluar data card including a nice setup wizard. Google should definitely keep this in mind for ChromeOS as 3G cards are probably among the most common devices attached to netbooks.
NB. Wanted to comment, sucky comment box, did not bother trying to figure out why it is wonky.. Simply gave up.
Basically people are getting riled up for the sake of getting riled up (and the general public is riled up because all these big sites don’t post on a topic several times in a week if it isn’t driving the traffic)
So given the entertainment based nature of this isn’t a site like Techcrunch just doing its job by piling on the hyperbole to get their audience that much more emotionally riled up. I’d be willing to bet almost everyone who is denouncing the "hysteria" now passed up a bunch of professionally titled articles at the time and read Techcrunch’s "Google drops a nuclear bomb" post first.
I do tend to agree that a web based OS is the way to go. Its not going to happen tomorrow, next year or 5 years down the line. But it will be the future. Every piece of software you use will be a web app with bunch load of analytics/monitored with a recommendation engine. I know it will go through a lot of skepticism for privacy reasons, but there will be laws amended to make sure that google or no one owns it. The web apps will be such that they are centric to mobile based smart phones and adobe air like software at the start and slowly adapt. Its the future, and I for one is already working towards achieving it for our apps. :)
-Ujjwal