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Chrome OS source code

src.chromium.org

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Cool! The window manager is super tiny. And uses Clutter apparently:

http://src.chromium.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=chromiumos.git;...

But just naively judging by the amount of code here this doesn't feel like the bombshell the tech press is expecting.

judging by the amount of code? What kind of metric is that?

The vision of the browser as the OS is huge.

It might be huge but it's all more than a bit scary coming from Google. Also I question the adoption rate of something like this. All my stuff in the cloud == EVIL as far I'm concerned.

The only things I still keep local on my drive:

music my family pictures my email, contacts and calendar work files

If you imagine a tablet/netbook with GoogleOS, I'm still scared to death of losing the network. There is some talk of offline storage, but the details are super-fuzzy.

On a plane: where is my music or my videos? At my grandparents' place, where Interent is still not quite reliable In the middle of visiting Death Valley

have a look at dropbox. It's not an either/or decision. You can have both.

"All my stuff in the cloud == EVIL as far I'm concerned."

How is storing data in a certain place EVIL?

May life never throw you a deadline in Montana.

How is "the cloud" a certain place?

you're making my point for me. If it isn't a certain place, then how can it possibly be evil?

Because those who control the cloud can potentially see or mess with your stuff.

a lot of our stuff can be seen anyway. Anything that currently goes over the internet. Doing email on the cloud isn't much different from sending an email from outlook.

Second, you can encrypt things in the cloud

Also if you have the data in the cloud, you no longer have direct control of it. So what if it goes down. What if they get hacked? This is why the US keeps uber-top secret stuff disconnected from the internet.

" So what if it goes down. What if they get hacked?"

For most people, this is more likely to happen to their local pc!

"This is why the US keeps uber-top secret stuff disconnected from the internet."

Are you suggesting that people not connect their computer to the internet? Otherwise, I have no idea what point you are making.

> Are you suggesting that people not connect their computer to the internet? Otherwise, I have no idea what point you are making.

No. I'm saying that being connected to the internet has inherent risks. Being in the internet 24/7 like the cloud would obviously have as much, or more, risks.

>For most people, this is more likely to happen to their local pc!

Statistically speaking, maybe. But we all think that we can keep our data and stuff safer than other people can. At least people have control over something on their computers. Plus, by putting our data in more places, we increase the risk of it being stolen. You will probably already have a local copy. Keeping it in the cloud just adds another point of failure.

Some people were saying the same thing about computers 30 or 40 years ago. Most of the gloom & doom did not come to fruition. Google, or any other cloud service provider, has a huge financial incentive to keep your data safe and private. Ultimately it's a personal choice. Paper files didn't disappear when the computer was popularized for example. Desktop apps won't disappear either. A company that simply chooses to offer a service that some people do want is not EVIL in my opinion.

It's simply an enhancement to the way we use computers. But regular OSs will always have their place. I'm not sure it's so huge that it's what we will all migrate to though.

Also at the same time, there seems to be live blogging sessions happening on the "Google Chrome OS" Event:

* Live Webcast: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/annc/20091119_chrome_os_...

* Looks like TechCrunch is covering the event, best: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/19/chrome-os-event/

* Matt Cutts: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-os/

* Danny Sullivan: http://searchengineland.com/liveblogging-the-google-chrome-o...

Youtube's GoogleChrome Channel has 5 new videos on the Chrome OS.

http://www.youtube.com/user/googlechrome

So, silly question here (and feel free to point me to a URL where I can learn the answer): at one time there was some buzz about being able to install Chrome OS on an old-ish laptop, and use it for web browsing. The implication was that it would perform better than, say, Windows XP with Firefox.

Is this still a goal, anyone know? (I have a few old laptops laying around, and that sounds pretty neat to me...)

They've said they're only targetting netbooks for now, specifically ones with SSDs.

Huh. That's understandable, but unfortunate for me.

I wonder how hard it would be for someone to make this work on other machines. Would that mean strapping on some drivers, maybe grafted on from linux or something?

You'd probably just have to reconfigure the kernel to load the drivers you'd require. I haven't looked through the code yet myself, but it shouldn't be too difficult.

It's just a Linux distro that launches Google Chrome on startup. You can run this on any standard x86 machine.

Any builds out there yet for me to throw into Virtual Box?

They said it works under virtualization already, so you could just go to chromium.org and download it yourself. The build process isn't too bad.

http://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/build...

found a couple posted here:

http://www.technixupdate.com/direct-download-links-for-unoff...

I don't think this is Chromium OS, I think it's SUSE + the Chrome browser, as per http://www.getchrome.eu/. Confusing though.

What is clone URL of the git repos? Not familiar with gitweb and not able to guess the repo URL

This is a cloneable URI: http://src.chromium.org/git/chromiumos.git

Here are complete instructions to download and build the source: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/building-chromium-os

And Google's Matt Cutts is liveblogging the annoucement webcast (includes links to other blog coverage): http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-os/

Looks like they are inviting submissions now also:

http://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/build...

IMO, one interesting thing is about the native support for SSDs and elimination of long known & trustworthy HDDs. Clearly the sign of things happening!!

SSDs, HHDs: Could I get some clarification on those TLAs? :)

Solid-state drives and hard-disk drives. HDDs are mechanical devices with spinning platters. SSDs have no moving parts; it's all silicon. (HHD is not what he mentioned, but it's a hybrid hard drive; solid state cache with normal disk drives.)

SSD = Solid State Device (Drive) HDD = Hard Disk Drive

One thing that hit me watching the webcast was that Linux is going to get first-priority treatment from the Chrome browser guys.

Already Chromium on Linux is decidedly more stable than Chrome on Windows

http://src.chromium.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=chromiumos.git;... Maybe Official builds is Chrome OS Continuous builds and developer hand-builds is chronium OS

It's a nice concept. But I'm still paying out of my ass for broadband and I come close to, if not hit my limit every month.

I couldn't imagine working with everything in the cloud, not for a few more years ;)

Chrome is open source yet seems to have a bunch of restrictions - no standard hard drives, no native apps, etc.

What's to keep a third party from changing those restrictions?

Prolly not a lot.

If you modify it then it's not Chrome OS™ any more; it's merely Chromium OS.

Well all hail Chromium OS, then. Screw google...

Nothing. It's BSD licensed.

Nothing at all. I'm sure it will happen. If someone forks Chrome OS to add functionality it's very likely it will still be built on Google services. Google isn't interested in developing a full blown desktop OS themselves. If the community wants to add stuff maybe at some point in the future Google will fold some of it back into their official Chrome OS releases. Ultimately it's a product they're giving away for free so they clearly don't intend to make money directly off Chrome OS (or Android) so if you choose to get a Chrome OS variant from another source it doesn't really matter.

It uses X11, gdk-2.0 and clutter-1.0 for drawing, and gtk-2.0 widgets. All from your Ubuntu system on which you would build an image.

So, it us just a layer on top of Ubuntu's "core" (glibc, X11, gtk, dpkg) with custom kernel, pam_google (!) desktop manager, window manager, installer and updater.

Good coders code, great - reuse. This seems like Google's favorite mantra.

update: http://src.chromium.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=chromiumos.git;... - to those who understands =)

"Good coders code, great - reuse."

This would work if the reusable stuff had been made by good coders.

How many times is this going to get posted?

That's not Chrome OS, it's the source code for the Chrome OS port of Chromium.

Take a closer look at the projects listed on the right-hand side. There's much more than Chrome.

True. Have a look at chromiumos.git, ibus, login_manager.git , pam_google.git, syslinux.git and kernel.git

I assumed what you did, but looking closer, this is definitely the real deal, complete with the Google-patched 2.6.30 kernel.

What I find interesting here is that ChromeOS has its own window manager for X. I was under the impression that the video system was something new. Does this mean that they still support X running on their own video subsystem?

I predict that someone will start releasing self-compiled ChromiumOS builds running very soon.

http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/s...

According to that it looks like they are definitely using X.

They seem to have made a lot of tweaks to low level firmware too.

I was under the impression...

You got suckered by completely unfounded rumors. (Don't feel bad, so did almost everyone else.)

Eep - I apologize for making the assumption that this was another "Chromium for Chrome" post.

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