Webmonkey has a pleasing write-up on Google’s Chrome OS
Google CEO Eric Schmidt showed up at Tuesday’s event to drive home his belief the time is right to release Chrome OS.
“We finally have a viable third choice for an operating system on the desktop,” he said.
I guess what he is trying to say is that Google is now ready to officially support a Linux distribution — their own? Maybe this does not matter. Apple does not say they officially support a BSD distribution. It is just OS X. I guess what I really find amusing is that the CEO calls it “finally” viable, yet soon after in the same article…
Google admits there is still much work to be done on Chrome OS, and the bug tracking page shows numerous stability problems and hardware shortcomings.
“We’ve made amazing progress but we still have a lot of work to do,” [Product Management VP] Pichia said.
If you want to try it out today, you can join Google’s developer program and install Chrome OS on a wide range of hardware. But as Google VP of engineering Linus Upson said Tuesday, the process is still rather hairy for non-geeks.
“The question is, how comfortable are you compiling from source,” he joked.
Finally!
An unstable operating system with limited hardware support that has to be compiled by source.
Yes, finally, Google has another (not yet) viable Linux distribution. I guess viability is in the eye of the beholder. Does an OS get a higher viability rating based primarily on the number of Chrome applications supported?
When I read Pichia’s statements on this project, relative to the claim of a viable desktop option, for some reason I am reminded Colin Powell presenting to the United Nations on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
In other words, the press release might have more accurately said Google is now purported, or alleged, to be working on a distribution of Linux. Evidence has not yet been found that this OS actually exists as a stable and usable release for desktops.
On the other hand, it could say that the Sun network computing model is finally viable because it now is connected to the Chrome Web Store that has launched already where you can download skins and plug-ins for your browser…err, I mean you can download applications for your browser. I mean operating system. I mean a store that makes your network computing OS viable. You can read the New York Times, for example. Finally.
All that being said, I do have to give the Google credit for forcing *.google.com certificates and secure pages on the Chrome Web Store. Nice touch; it could be a sign of changes to come. Wonder if and when encrypted Google search, etc. will be forced.