Google Chrome OS available as free VMWare download | Hacker News Reader

Google Chrome OS available as free VMWare download

engadget.com

69 pointsiamelgringo38 comments

Not much to see here. It's the Chrome broswer, filling your screen, and nothing else.

Can't change screen resolution. Can't change keyboard layout. Can't even find those "cards" they showed in the demos.

Here's a torrent with no login:

http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5172101/Chrome_OS_Image_for...

Here's instructions and links to get the image. They have released images for VMWare and VirtualBox too. Download requires a gdgt login.

http://discuss.gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/general/Download-Ch...

> Download requires a gdgt login.

Guh. Who's gonna take one for the team and free those downloads from captivity?

Here's the VirtualBox image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/136177/chrome-os-0.4.22.8-gdgt.vdi.z...

and here's the VMWare one: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/136177/chrome-os-0.4.22.8-gdgt.vmdk....

EDIT: Looks like you lot broke my dropbox public folder:

"Hi Hrishi,

This email is an automated notification from Dropbox that your Public links have been temporarily suspended on account of generating excessive traffic. Your Dropbox will continue to function completely normally with the exception of Public links.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line at support@dropbox.com.

- The Dropbox Team"

I'm taking down the files now. If anyone from dropbox is reading can you please reactivate my public links? Thanks.

Do the DropBox guys define what "excessive" is?

The VirtualBox image just hangs at a black screen for me (using Virtual Box 3.0.4) - anyone else have this problem?

Yes me too actually. The techcrunch article said it could take a few minutes, but I've been waiting for a while now. I don't have Vmware, so I guess I'll build from source tonight.

Don't waste your time. It's just the Chrome browser. And you can't even change the screen resolution/keyboard layout.

Reboot your machine, seems to fix the problem.

(I'm the one who built these gdgt images.)

Reboot the virtual machine? That hasn't been working for me so far. Disabling USB doesn't do anything else either. Perhaps you can post the VirtualBox XML file that describes the settings used for this VM, or tell us your platform and versions?

No reboot your actual machine. Usually fixes the black screen issues.

It didn't work for me. Thanks for trying, though.

what virtualbox settings did you use? The vdi seems to do nothing.

http://i.imgur.com/Fwd4v.png

Yep, same here on Linux x64 2.6.31 and VirtualBox 3.0.12.

Yea same for me. Nothing after 20 mins

Virtual Box 3, Osx 10.5

TechCrunch is also linking to a virtualbox image of the Chrome OS: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5170843/chromeos-image-999.9...

VirtualBox can read (and write to) VMWare images, FWIW.

I have the same problem as some commenters on this link point out: http://discuss.gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/general/Download-Ch...

Doesn't work for me on VirtualBox on OSX. I cannot login to the OS, saying there's no internet access/no offline login available.

I was getting that too. I rebooted, then left it at the login screen for about 20 minutes, then came back and now it's working.

Never did get logged in. I left it running (VMWare) for 2 hours, tried a few ways of fiddling with the network connection.

Beware.. the login box only allows 29 characters as a username and the throw away account I created is longer than that! (No thanks to the "googlemail.com" requirement in the UK..) So make sure your full Google username is shorter than that.

There has to be a way to get a command prompt. It might be commented out in this build, has anyone looked through the source?

http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os

There doesn't appear to be any sort of "usage" notes yet, however http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/how-tos-and-troubleshoot... has a list of keyboard shortcuts. CTRL-ALT-T should give you a shell.

Works good in VMWare Fusion 3. Does anybody know how to change the screen resolution?

how to install it?

now I need to find another computer to stick it on to test...great...

No you don't:

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

Don't you know what VMWare is?

There's no need to give an attitude [1], she might not be the only one with this question. Just explain what VMWare is: it's a way to run a virtual machine inside of your main box, so that you don't need another computer to test operating systems out on. And linky: http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

1. Remember the guidelines: Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.

That was me being civil :)

Consider: If OP was trolling, I was trying not to feed them. If OP was serious, I was trying to point in right direction. Either way, I was trying not to waste much time doing it.

Edit: Wow, there's a great way to tank someone's comment score. Show up late to the thread and accuse them of being rude. Thanks for that. Judging from the upvotes, most people seem to think that your lesson on civility is the most insightful part of the thread. sigh

Re: edit: hah, sorry about that - I certainly wan't out for your karma. But the community response is encouraging: it's important to value politeness in an anonymous forum, as that's the most endangered requirement for constructive conversation.

older computers, new at this, and would rather learn all this stuff the hard way. I do know what vmware is, I don't want to screw up what I have

That's the point of VMWare, so you can virtualize another system inside of your primary one, in effect "sandboxing" the guest OS so you don't screw anything up.

How could running Chrome OS in a VM "screw up" anything you have?

I use virtual machines and am happy with them. However to be fair to the grandparent poster there have been issues with USB devices and VMWare.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Vista64bitBlueScreensWithINTER...

Running an OS in a VM per se is unlikely to. But if the host system has poor package management and the virtualization software proves problematic (some of them install files all over the place, including kernel extensions), restoring the host system to its previous state can be difficult. It's not an unreasonable concern.

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