

Google Chrome OS and How the Web Went Nuts Over It - anoopengineer
http://www.dailygyan.com/2009/07/google-chrome-os-and-how-web-went-nuts.html

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noamsml
Just random braindump from reading the article:

> 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!

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jacquesm
>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.

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).

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noamsml
I think he means "good OS that works on lots of machines well".

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tjogin
Having an OS work on lots of machines is not really a requirement of a good
OS.

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.

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noamsml
If it's sold in boxes, it should work well on many machines, otherwise it's
going to get bad publicity, but you're right that if it's bundled with
machines, it only needs to worry about some hardware (though it still needs to
worry about all peripherals).

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tjogin
It's not going to get bad publicity if it works well on the hardware it's
supposed to work well on. The OS is meant for _netbooks_ remember?

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jsz0
I can only think of two major hardware support issues:

-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.

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aj
Good sum up. Amazing amount of hysteria. Especially liked the comment by The
Register on Techcrunch..

NB. Wanted to comment, sucky comment box, did not bother trying to figure out
why it is wonky.. Simply gave up.

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TomOfTTB
I don’t see what’s amazing about the amount of hysteria. Let’s be honest with
ourselves here this news is entirely entertainment at this point. Google gave
virtually no concrete facts, specs, etc... So no one could have any of their
important decisions influenced by this even if they wanted to. This whole news
meme is based entirely around idle speculation for entertainment’s sake.

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.

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aj
Heh. You probably misunderstood my post. I essentially agree with you. By
hysteria I meant that everyone is getting oh so excited about chrome without
too much detail calling it the windows/office/full scale OS killer

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ujjwalg
I love the way the author picked all the essentials from everywhere around the
web and combined them together in a comprehensive format.

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

