Submitted by Google’s recent move of revealing the Chrome OS to a suspecting public has put a great many people on alert. Some say it’s a major privacy issue, some say Google oughtn’t to become more and more monopolistic, while others think that the wide array of popular Linux distributions shouldn’t become even more fragmented than it already is. “Google’s decision to create its own Linux distribution and splinter the Linux community decisively once again can only be seen as foolhardy and self-obsessive.
Instead of treading its own path, Google should have sought to leverage the stellar work already carried out by Mark Shuttleworth and his band of merry coders and tied its horse to the Ubuntu cart.”
There is not enough information available yet to jump to this conclusion. What would you say if Ubuntu picked up the new Google windowing system?
isnt that the whole purpose of linux? everyone has their own flavor. if that is what google wants to do then more power to them. if this causes more people to use linux, then they have created an alternative and that is great.
It may not be the purpose, but it’s certainly the consequence… and not just of Linux, but of FOSS in general.
How can you release your works to the world, and give them explicit permission (often times, even encouragement!) to modify and change those works, re-releasing them back into the world for others do to the same – and not expect fragmentation of the works.
I’ve got Ubuntu. No thanks. Google… let’s see what you offer.
i hope that google chrome os buries Linux kernel so deep that nobody actually notices it. i also hope they dont come close to gnome, kde, x whatever user space mess ever created. Then end users would love it, much more than ubuntu or any linux distro.
Plus, ubuntu would have no chance against Google once they sign agreements with OEM’s. i hope it happens.
It already is to anyone who isn’t a kernel developer.
In fact the whole point of a kernel is it’s the deepest part of the OS.
I can only assume from your post that maybe you have Linux’s user space tools like Bash confused as being the kernel. Please correct me if this wasn’t the case.
As soon as GRUB starts, you notice the Linux kernel because of the list. Non-technical users should never see that. It’s good to see that Ubuntu has limited the periodic file system check to the login display, instead of showing a scrolling display of text which will once again confuse the non-technical.
Again, that’s not the kernel, that’s the init scripts, which are user space.
Plus I don’t know which distro you’re using/used, but most desktop distros hide the output from the init scripts behind a graphical screen. In fact, graphical booting has been a included feature for many a distro for a good number of years now.
I know Arch and Slack have a text boot, but those are aimed squarely at the geeks who like to tinker and not the average home PC user.
Again, that’s not the kernel, that’s the init scripts, which are user space.
Plus I don’t know which distro you’re using/used, but most desktop distros hide the output from the init scripts behind a graphical screen. In fact, graphical booting has been a included feature for many a distro for a good number of years now.
I know Arch and Slack have a text boot, but those are aimed squarely at the geeks who like to tinker and not the average home PC user. [/q]
Maybe, the “Ubuntu” in my comment should have been a clue as to the distribution being used. Besides, where did I say that the GRUB display was the kernel? That list is certainly evidence of the kernel. The more things shown, the more confusion ensues, especially when they can no longer see their “safe” Windows in the list.
Nice “safe” windows is evidence of the kernel.
You can’t have an OS without a kernel so the fact the OS even exists is evidence of the kernel.
By the way, sorry for assuming you meant it was the kernel. the previous poster made referrence to the kernel so I assumed you were following on from the same thought.
Agreed. But like I said, the init scripts have been hidden from home users for years now and even the grub menu itself can be skinned, options auto-selected and shown for as long or short as the users / distro developers want. so the whole grub arguement is moot.
So this guy is saying that Google shouldn’t create yet another Linux distro but help Ubuntu get more market share because there is too much fragmentation in Linux already.
A few years ago, before Ubuntu even existed, Mandriva was by far the most popular Linux desktop. Applying the author’s logic a few years back, Shuttleworth should have never created Ubuntu. Instead, he should’ve used his financial power to help Mandriva become more popular.
Why exactly Ubuntu? Because Shuttleworth spends more money on advertising? That doesn’t make Ubuntu a better Linux distro, it makes it just more popular. So I’d rather see a better Linux distro become THE Linux.
Yes, but Google are already using Ubuntu (actually their own branded version called Goobuntu) internally and about 40% of the Google employees are using it. So why shouldn’t they leverage that rather than putting out yet another distro?
I hope it’ll be Ubuntu or debian based still…
“Canonical’s decision to create its own Linux distribution and splinter the Linux community decisively once again can only be seen as foolhardy and self-obsessive. Instead of treading its own path, Canonical should have sought to leverage the stellar work already carried out by Steve McIntyre and his band of merry coders and tied its horse to the Debian cart.”
Google should do as it pleases, it’s open source software after all.
Did this guy (Renai LeMay, who wrote the linked article) even bother to read what Google was planning to build? Chrome OS sounds NOTHING like “Yet Another Linux Distro”.
It may sound logical to most people to say that the linux kernel is the defining characteristic of a “Linux Distribution”, but I don’t think that is correct in reality. “Linux” isn’t the most important part of that term, “distribution” is. The defining characteristic of a distribution is that it is a Unix work-a-like. Solaris, FreeBSD, even OSX are likely going to be many orders of magnitude more similar to a run of the mill Linux distro than Chrome OS will be…
Chrome OS will most likely hide away a large part of the underlying nuts and bolts, much like their mobile OS does. No X, no native code execution, etc. It doesn’t even qualify as a distribution imho. A “derivative” sounds like a better label to me.
You may or may not like what they are trying to build, but Ubuntu (or any other Linux Distro) is a totally different beast.
It seems to me that there are more GNU/Linux distros than there is users: all the arguments about which distro is best is mute if it doesn’t amount to much. I understood that Google has been using an Ubuntu fork behind corporate doors: so now they’re coming public with it? Good for them. Are they going to fund development? Sure they are! Their success depends on open source adoption: if their upstream supply dies so do they. If Chrome OS succeeds so does Ubuntu and Debian (and whatever else is tied to this tree). Sign me up: where can I download the ISO? need beta testers?
Last I checked Google is a for profit company.
They can do whatever they heck they want. They don’t need to help Ubuntu out of the kindness of their hearts.
It would have been a nice move considering that some 40% of Google employees are using an Ubuntu fork. You now it works best when it’s a _give_ and take.
Why is everyone touting Ubuntu as the savior for Linux? They contribute barely anything upstream, and their idea of innovation is a friggin notification system, give me a break.
Google looks like they’re actually going to do something revolutionary, that can possibly change the game. It’s all going to be open source too, so how can you say they’re continuing their monopolistic ways?
Lets not forget that the technologies Ubuntu gets credit for originated at either Red Hat or Novell, with most of the hardware stuff – Project Utopia results – spearheaded by someone that already works for Google.
Most of the best minds in open source – including the maintainer of the 2.6 branch of the kernel itself – have joined Google, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with when they don’t have to restrain themselves with the status quo.
Personally I’m sick of working in the same interface paradigms that existed when I started using computers 20 years ago – in systems that were designed without even supporting TCP/IP natively! Google always seems to bring a fresh perspective, and I’m ready for one!
for an incomplete list, see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Website/Content/UbuntuContributions
I more or less agree with the rest of your post, just ubuntu gets a bad rep about contributing back, when they actually do quite a bit.
Sour grapes on the part of proponents of distros with a less realistic grasp on reality of what new users need to get started, and less marketing competence.
Usually what happens is that Ubuntu’s contributions are either ignored, or arbitrarily cast in a negative light. The same folks who would trumpet the useless and pointless pile of bugs that is PulseAudio tend to trash truly useful advancements like Upstart. Another approach, preferred by folks like GKH, is to tunnel-vision in on statistics from their own pet project as though it were representative of the entire Linux desktop landscape.
How is upstart useful?
I reboot MAYBE every couple weeks, I really don’t care about a boot up sequence. They still haven’t even delivered on the promise of upstart though… still using sysvinit based initscripts mostly.
Most of Ubuntu’s contributions don’t amount to much, and nothing they’ve done is significant in any way. Their hardware tool obviously doesn’t help if you ever hang out in #ubuntu for instance. Every release that channel is packed with users who have had it fail.
As for their random patches, would be nice if they did a little more than just throwing them up on a site out of the way – expecting upstreams to go to that page regularly. As for things like UFW, lol… worst firewall implementation I’ve ever seen.
You state that I just dislike Ubuntu because of its marketing and the like? Aren’t you doing something similar stating that Ubuntu based technology is supperior?
On my current system, I’m neither using PulseAudio, or any of the worthless crap Ubuntu has come out with.
EDIT: Also, lets note that GKH’s reports were based on the kernel itself. Ubuntu is always praised for its hardware support… guess what? Without contributing to the parts GKH’s results studied, they have absolutely NOTHING to do with that. All Ubuntu does is provide mashed together interfaces supposed to make things easier… they do nothing to make things BETTER.
Trying to work around real issues in the Linux world does not make things better, it just hides the issue, making it less likely that people will look into the technical issues that make it necessary.
Edited 2009-07-08 22:07 UTC
I shutdown my netbook if I’m not going to be using it for more than a day. And when I decide to use it, I don’t want my boot times taking forever. It is definitely useful for some people.
Thing is, no distro these days takes longer than around 30 seconds to boot… so what is so special about upstart? Ubuntu weren’t even the group that pioneered faster bootup, it was mostly Red Hat and Novell, and Ubuntu kinda came along for the ride.
“Sour grapes on the part of proponents of distros with a less realistic grasp on reality of what new users need to get started…”
This is pure BS. Ubuntu is the Microsoft of the GNU/Linux world. They will more than happily put closed source, proprietary drivers into the operating system to make the “user experience” better. *This* is why Ubuntu is popular. Not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is the easy thing to do.
This doesn’t have anything to do with realistic grasps of reality at all. It has to due with the laziness of the Ubuntu user base and people in general.
Most of the crap that GNU/Linux takes flak for is not because of the desktop, not because of stability, but because it’s hard to get those pieces of shite components that no one write documentation for or provides specifications for to work adequately at least not without that blob (Intel, Broadcomm, nVidia).
People install Ubuntu because these garbage binary blobs are provided as part of the *default install*. Oh yeah! It’s a pandora’s box of blob work, just look at the restricted drivers that are provided by default.
Making things easy is not necessarily always a good thing. I suppose it is depending on what side you are coming from, but Ubuntu is nearly a total 180% from what the GNU project and the GNU/Linux community set out to do many years ago.
Ubuntu is for the mindless and lazy. All software available for Ubuntu is also available for any other GNU/Linux distribution. Proponents that Ubuntu is the *ultimate* GNU/Linux distribution, screw it.. I’m just sick of it!
Your… err… response demonstrates the point I was making most clearly. Even more clearly, in fact, than Lunitik’s response previous to yours. Thanks.
Edited 2009-07-09 03:23 UTC
“Your… err… response demonstrates the point I was making most clearly. Even more clearly, in fact, than Lunitik’s response previous to yours. Thanks.”
How many Ubuntu systems do you maintain? I maintain 7000 hosts and in the enterprise Ubuntu deployment sucks! Suse Autoyast and RedHat Kickstart kick that crap out of Ubuntu. Actually Ubuntu PXE files don’t even support the hardware that the CD does! Most people are only deploying it on a handful of machines, by hand. These people don’t have a clue what it’s like to deploy systems and services for a large enterprise let alone the likes of Google or Yahoo!
All the more power to Google!
For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that I believe that you really maintain 7000 hosts in the enterprise.
Is your post somehow supposed to be relevant to the topic at hand? The article is about a netbook OS. Ubuntu works quite well in that area. It would hardly surprise me if RHEL and SLES had better enterprise deployment tools. (In fact, I find kickstart to be invaluable for some things that I do.) But what does any of that have to do with this topic? I get the impression that you are simply casting about for anything you can blather in disparagement of a distro which, I suppose, you feel threatens your favored distro.
You do realize that we’re talking about an OS configuration which is going to be rolled out preinstalled on netbook *clients*, and later, desktop *clients*. And not about rolling this out on preexisting hardware at Google and Yahoo. Did you even read the article?
Edited 2009-07-09 04:17 UTC
“For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that I believe that you really maintain 7000 hosts in the enterprise.”
Thank you for understanding, and yes I do. GNU/Linux CentOS, Ubuntu and SLES at a major university.
“Is your post somehow supposed to be relevant to the topic at hand?”
Yes, it’s that Ubuntu, while a great OS, is not the pancea that people make it out to be.
“session that you are simply casting about for anything you can blather in disparagement of a distro which, I suppose, you feel threatens your favored distro.”
Hahaha, I could care less. I use Ubuntu on my desktop and laptop. Why, because I’m lazy, but on the other hand I can also use LFS and know GNU/Linux, BSD and UNIX pretty darn well. I use CentOS/RHEL/Suse at work on the desktop and in our HPC installation. I’ve used most variations of GNU/Linux, BSD and UNIX since 1993, so no, it doesn’t threaten my favorite distro. More or less I’m pointing out that Ubuntu isn’t all that great.
“You do realize that we’re talking about an OS configuration which is going to be rolled out preinstalled on netbook *clients*, and later, desktop *clients*. And not about rolling this out on preexisting hardware at Google and Yahoo. Did you even read the article?”
Again, a general comment towards Ubuntu and not this product at hand. Yes, I read the article, I understand where this is going to be deployed, but again, why does it have to have *anything* to do with Ubuntu. If it wasn’t for Debian Ubuntu wouldn’t even exist unless Shuttleworth decided to use a different distribution and build from there! Oh wait, that’s what Google is doing! Screw Ubuntu it doesn’t matter!
You are implying that you can get the same easy to use results that Ubuntu provides without using those evil binary blobs. I’m sure that if there was a good opensource replacement for those blobs that Ubuntu would love to use those instead.
Do you know something that other people don’t?
The reason I like Ubuntu is because they make a usable desktop OS without me having to hunt for scripts to fix all the flaws I see in(for example) Fedora.
Ok, what is specific to Ubuntu that makes it a great Netbook OS? I’ve already informed you that very little of what goes into Ubuntu is specific to Ubuntu, so why can’t Google take those same parts and take their superior development team and create a better product?
I think it would be almost trivial for anyone to create a better system than Ubuntu currently has, simply because there are already many examples. Couple that with Googles superior enterprise muscle, and I could foresee marked improvements done in a proper way, rather than just bandaged up…
Ubuntu relies on companies like Red Hat and Novell to further their software stack since they don’t contribute anything meaningful to it. Those two companies are worth combined around 20x less than Google. I think it doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that even for the most die hard Linux fan, having Google contributing much more due to depending on Linux code more than ever will benefit everyone.
Lets not get into the development model too much though, I’ll just say that having 100% of the market as a userbase will be quite a draw for developers. Every system currently has internet or intranet access, and that is exactly the medium ChromeOS will be leveraging! Last I checked, 100% market share is greater than 90% so I believe eventually everyone will just write apps based on web standards, porting native code just isn’t cost effective, especially when there needn’t be any performance hits from doing things in the cloud. Google has many technologies to ensure that performance is not effected already, and I foresee many more examples over time!
For someone who claims not to care, you are certainly inclined to write paragraph after paragraph, post after post in disparagement.
OK. Attitude toward users.
Codeina. One of those (in)famous Fedora projects. What happened with it? Ubuntu provided it to users. When the user desired to play video or audio that required a codec which was not intalled, Ubuntu would offer to look for a codec. If it turned out that the required codec was possibly patent encumbered, it would inform the user of that fact, explain a little about what the implications were, and trust the user to make their decision as to whether to install it. (OK? Cancel?)
Meanwhile, the Fedora devs decided that Codeina was immoral and pulled it from Fedora. Thus the hapless user would end up in Fedora’s forums looking for help playing a video, where they were more or less equally likely to be ignored, abused, or helped. (Enduring the tender mercies of the Fedora Forums crowd is not something I like to think of my friends having to face.)
Of course, as Ubuntu’s popularity took off, the Fedora devs were forced to either start paying attention to the needs of real users (as opposed to their ivory tower, idealized view of users) and restore Codeina to their distro or… get left behind even further with regards to popularity.
So that’s just one example of how Ubuntu does a good job walking the line between what users want and need, and providing users with the information they need to see how their decisions might affect the computing world around them.
I actually came from the Red Hat and Fedora camps. (Well, AT&T Unix ‘386 and AT&T Unix for 3B2, and Xenix, originally, back in the mists of time. But my Linux life began in the Red Hat camp back in ’96.) But I have found the advantages of Ubuntu, both professionally as an admin, and on my own personal desktop, to be so compelling as to convince me to migrate (mostly) over into this “Debian World” over the last few years, even though I’ve never really liked Debian itself.
As you have pointed out, RHEL and CentOS can sometimes have some nice features for enterprise deployment. (Kickstart is really nice. Ubuntu supports it. But I’m not sure how well as I’ve not had occasion to use it.) But when it comes to user interaction, Ubuntu just beats anything in the RH camps hands down. Last I looked, netbooks were not enterprise servers.
Edited 2009-07-10 00:46 UTC
I’m pretty sure “garbage binary blobs” are not part of the default install, although they are available for install afterwards. Like in loads of other distros, only that with a specific wizard.
If it was up to binary blobs and proprietary stuff being bundled people would be installing Mint and not Ubuntu.
The pragmatic exception being when the blob is absolutely necessary for first boot. But even so, machines with, for , NVidia video chipsets, come up using the Free “nv” driver. Shortly after first log in, the user is informed that there is a nonfree driver… educated a bit on the meaning and potential downsides of nonfree software, and then is allowed to make his own moral decision. One thing I like about the way Ubuntu does things is that it educates the user, without being overbearing, and then respects the user’s decision.
This differs substantially from distros like Xandros and Linspire, which don’t bother the user’s pretty little head about such things. And from distros like Fedora which refuse to lift a finger to help the user do anything that its devs don’t, themselves, approve of.
Some computer users WANT an alternative to Windows, but still would like the OS to be appliance-like so having codecs and restricted stuff easily available is neccessary for these users. Myself I use Linux Mint
revolutionary? Hardly.
That poor word is losing its meaning
I must first of all confess I have not looked into this too deeply.
But it seems to me that this distro will offer much the same features we’ve already seen in gOS.
gOS still uses a fairly standard Linux operating system, so conceptually this will be very different.
Also, I’m pretty excited about O3D which is part of Chrome already – maybe we’ll finally be able to play a wide variety of decent games on Linux.
Also, they can control the direction of the browser much more, and continue to make more innovations in that area. gOS mostly just takes what is already available, and offers it to OEM’s and end users… nothing too exciting at all.
With the innovation Google has already presented in the past, I am very much looking forward to seeing what exactly they come up with.
So far as I can tell, Google just said they were using the Linux kernel.
This might end up being a whole new OS like SkyOS/Linux
Is Chrome OS just another Linux distro? If it’s just the Linux kernel with a browser on top doubling as a desktop environment, then I’d say it is. Kind of like Windows 3.1 running on top of DOS, albeit probably a bit more stable
I can’t remember the name. Can anyone find the osnews article on that? It was I think at least a two page review.
Also boohoo, another linux competitor that is this time based on Linux.
By the way I love the heading at the top. Those zdnet guys are funny. What were the discussions, or whining that people had when Ubuntu came out? What was the result, a distro that a lot of people love, because they aimed to get it right.
So what is wrong with Google Chrome OS?
Edited 2009-07-09 00:56 UTC
Non-Linux users who bought Linux netbooks, generally returned them or installed Windows. They did this because the OEMs had preinstalled terrible, restrictive distributions that had no obvious way to add applications – and if you did get to the package manager, you often had a very slim selection of packages to choose from.
Google is going to release a netbook operating system that is basically restricted to being a web browser. You might be able to add Android applications, whoop-de-doo. How is this any better than Linpus Lite or Xandros? Google is wasting its time; anyone who buys a netbook like this will return it or reformat it.
By contrast, Dell shipped an unrestricted operating system on their netbooks – Ubuntu. Dell and Ubuntu have had the most success in Linux netbooks so far.
Does that mean Red Hat, Debian, Slackware and all other distro’s have a rumble to decide who has the right to be called ‘Linux’?
Fragmentation doesn’t hurt, Not everyone wants to be locked down,
You forgot that for the mainstream IT press, Ubuntu is largely already a synonym for Linux
.
Lesson learned: it is all about perception. Pour enough money into marketing and hype, lure enough Lenin’s “useful idiots”, and technically lesser product can be made superior in terms of market share.
Some cynical people would even say that this applies to Linux generally… (Or Windows? Apple?)
Edited 2009-07-09 07:21 UTC
At the moment. It wasn’t that many years ago when Red Hat was synonymous with Linux. And in a few years time there will probably be some new darling distro will be the new synonym for Linux.
Oh no ! Let me guess ! aaah yess
I got it on the tip of my tongue !
Could it be noo , hmm
Google Chrome OS perhaps ?
Edited 2009-07-09 19:57 UTC
“Red Hat” is still synonymous with Linux on the server. “Ubuntu” has become synonymous with Linux on the Desktop. That fact reflects a broadening and maturation of the market. It represents more than, for example, the sequence of distros which have been at the top of the distrowatch stats over the years, etc. Clear leaders in two completely different areas have coalesced out of the churning sea of Linux development. I don’t think you can just dismiss that with “Oh, it’ll just be some other distro next year”.
Edited 2009-07-09 20:13 UTC
Leaders in terms of market share, but hardly both leaders in terms of technical innovation or excellence. That is the sad part, you know, the part that frustrates us geeks whose labor both distributions are eager to exploit.
What a bizarre comment. Out of curiosity, who do you consider to be the leaders in terms of technical innovation and excelence? Gentoo and Mepis? And it seems pretty weird to be “frustrated” by having distros package up the work nicely into an integrated whole, and applying decent marketing to get the fruits of that labor actually out there and *used* by people.
Clearly, if the marketing had all been left up to, say, Debian, Linux would still be a cult phenomenon for weekend hobbyists.
Edited 2009-07-11 14:44 UTC
Red Hat qualifies highly well, but not Ubuntu, in humble and bizarre opinion. Note the word “both” in the sentence you quoted.
Just the common upstream vs. downstream view here.
Sure. And by all means, I am a developer by trade as well as by hobby, but I do not write software for average Joes nor do I like my software to be part of something that aims to take over the world, ideologically or otherwise. See, there are still us who value the community, open source development model per se, collaboration, etc., without the need for marketing, hype, market shares, and money. And furthermore, we do like to seek technical excellence, preferably without being constantly surrounded by hype or being accused of not taking usability and the new breed of idiot users into account.
Edited 2009-07-11 16:18 UTC
no, thanks, i don’t use a distribution who have only marketing people…
sorry contribution is important
I can’t help but be amazed, though I shouldn’t be, at the level of heated debate all across the interwebs, built upon what is nothing more than ambiguous speculation, concerning the impact of Chrome OS.
From what I gather, this is nothing more than a lightweight OS optimized for internet use. Sure, they’re going to release it in the wild for users to install, but the real goal is OEM installation on netbooks, probably partnered with regional mobile service providers. I guess we’ll have to wait and see, but I can’t for the life of me see the advantage of replacing your existing OS with Chrome OS, when you can simply run Chrome on your existing OS.
Seems to me that they’re basically trying to solidify the perceived niche between smartphone and rich-client desktop, though I’m not sure that’s a niche that truly needs to be filled. Companies have been trying for more than a decade now, and failing badly. Frankly, by the time the devices hit the market, the line will probably be blurred with the capabilities of next-gen smart phone platforms anyway.
Regardless, there’s nothing for MS shareholders to really be afraid of here. Netbooks are popular, but I doubt the beancounters in Redmond can even measure the incremental impact that licensing has on their revenue. And there’s certainly no reason to believe, or even an indication, that Google will target enterprises with Chrome OS. This will ultimately compete with the Windows desktop in much the same way that iPhone OS or Android competes with the Windows desktop, in that it won’t. Not really. Cutting through the buzz, Google is aiming for an internet appliance, not redefining the desktop paradigm, which is far outside of what a single browser can accomplish.
Beyond that, I found this article in El Reg amusing:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/09/dzuiba_google_chrome_redux/
A little harsh, but since it basically articulates my opinion over this whole event, I’ll leave it at that.
Just my 2c…
Thanks for that link. It made my day.
I am looking forward at seeing what Google does, as I find the desktop environments available for Linux (Gnome, Xfce, and KDE) to be lacking, which I why I use just a basic window manager and terminal emulators when I use Linux.
I also think it will be interesting to see how Google replaces X11.
Of course, I might not end up liking any of what Google comes up with, but at least I’ll have an option to use something different.
Chrome OS is not going to be the same thing as Ubuntu or any other “user friendly distro” out there. It’s going to be the Linux Kernel on top of Google’s custom user land and GUI. I don’t know about the rest of the world but I spend most of my computing time inside firefox reading articles and corresponding with friends and colleges via the internet. I imagine if I owned a netbook thats what I’d be doing with it except instead of sitting at a desk I would most likely be on the road with it, at a friends house or even in the back yard and thats where Chrome OS takes over. We’re not talking about high powered multi core desktops with terrabites of storage. We’re talking about netbooks running atom and arm processors with solid state storage and a gig of ram and a light weight operating system build for web browsing and taking advantage of online services.
No thanks Google?? How utterly stupid.
Ubuntu an the Chrome OS are totally different beasts with little overlapping, beyond the kernel.
I don’t think Google is going to be using much more than the Linux kernel and the bare essentials to provide hardware support. I would not be surprised if Google completely forked the kernel with absolutely no intentions of remaining compatible on the application level. Replacing X certainly makes this seem like an obvious option ( though they may never need to fork the kernel ).
This means all you peeps thinking this is somehow dividing “Linux” are absolutely off-base. Whereas Chrome OS may garner a significant share of Linux installations ( or may not ), the significant investment and code sharing on behalf of Google can only be good for competing distributions ( unless Google asserts too much control – but I doubt the kernel folks would let that happen ).
–The loon