A Linux distribution inspired by Chrome OS | Hacker News Reader

A Linux distribution inspired by Chrome OS

lifehacker.com

5 pointsmatthodan13 comments

It's not even a working "Chrome OS". It is a fan based unstable linux distro revolving around the Chrome browser. One might as well make chrome and open office the only two apps on his or her computer and call it chrome OS....

Putting quotes around the name doesn't make this title less misleading.

This is not related to the official Chrome OS in ANY way. The key sentence here is "this early stab at a fan-made Chrome OS".

Maybe the quotes do nothing to make the title "less misleading" but the word "Unofficial" was a big hint for me.

I thought unofficial just meant not sanctioned for public consumption by Google, not that it wasn't actually ChromeOS at all.

ReactOS is _not_ an unofficial "Windows".

Stripped-down linux distro with easy access to Google desktop and web apps. Maybe useful to set up grandma's cheap Linux machine?

Yeah, grandma loves Alpha-quality distributions

This isn't very good. gOs at least looks nice and is simpler. http://www.thinkgos.com/gos/index.html

Doesn't have chrome but then again chrome on linux is fairly unstable for normal use. That said I use it normally :)

Wow, gOs looks like someone figured out Apple's secret sauce and they're applying it to a user-oriented Linux desktop. That is: keep it simple, avoid surprises, make it all just work.

I'd be careful with this. I find it a bit suspicious this project is named "Chrome OS" and hosted on Google yet it has nothing to do with the real Chrome OS or Google. Seems very suspicious to me. No one would be dumb enough to create this type of confusion by accident. Would they?

Yes.

Why is a desktop even necessary for a Chrome OS? Why not put everything in browser tabs? Want to run OpenOffice? Just lick an icon, or select a bookmark, and run it in a tab. If a tab has its own process, why have the Taskbar and tabs? Just have a tab per application, plus some sort of Expose-like thing within each tab.

If one developed a plug-in for VNC, this would be relatively easy to do in open source. Just run each app in its own virtual image, with the window manager tweaked to send an event asking for fullscreen to the first window that opens.

My girlfriend ran across a man-on-the-street survey, and it turned out that a big percentage of users aren't really clear on what a browser is anyways.

I am very, very curious to see the actual design for Chrome OS. I'm optimistic for something revolutionary and I am hoping to use it as my primary OS.

a linux distribution inspired by Chrome OS, that's all...

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