
A Head Start on Google’s Chrome OS - timr
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/business/09ping.html?hpw
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orangecat
Can somebody explain the point of Chrome OS and why it's allegedly
revolutionary? If I want to run everything in the browser, why can't I do that
today?

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michael_dorfman
Three words: Less is more.

No bloat, so it should run on low-end hardware, and blaze on modern hardware.

How many processes do you currently have running as you browse this? And, how
many of them are necessary to your being able to do so?

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orangecat
_How many processes do you currently have running as you browse this?_

Lots, but my CPU is over 95% idle so I don't quite see where the huge
performance increase is going to come from. It just seems like you could get
almost all the alleged benefits of Chrome OS with a simple shell for Windows
or Linux that runs the browser and nothing else on login.

~~~
metaguri
_It just seems like you could get almost all the alleged benefits of Chrome OS
with a simple shell for Windows or Linux that runs the browser and nothing
else on login._

It does seem so. And indeed, that's what Chromium OS is. Essentially a new
distro with their own browser-based desktop manager.

[http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-
docs/s...](http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-
docs/software-architecture)

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wallflower
How does ChromeOS handle swapping?

To me, swapping to disk (virtual memory) is the bane of operating systems.

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scott_s
Virtual memory is not a synonym for swapping:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory>

