Google today hosted a Chrome OS event, where they discussed details of their upcoming operating system. It’s not ready yet, and Google warns it’s only for a specific set of users – and hardware – but if you like the idea of living in the cloud, then Google’s Chrome OS may be right for you. We’ve got a breakdown of the major features for you here.
If you’ve used Google’s Chrome browser, we’ll just answer your question now – yes, it’s pretty much the same. If that seems to make sense, remember that we just told you the entire operating system is fundamentally the same as a browser. If that now makes you scratch your head, that’s the point. This new operating system – which Google is actually calling Chromium OS – is 100% browser-centric. Let’s talk about what that means.
Google has released a friendly video that explains that, for most people, the browser is the most important piece of software on their computer. They even have a little animated folder complaining that it doesn’t get clicked on much anymore. Google figures, loading up all this junk is slowing down the computer in the one task people care about – using the internet! So they have scrapped local storage and pared down everything as much as they can to try to give you something fast.
But they aren’t really removing features. You can still have multiple windows open – they just open in tabs. You can pin applications to the top left, where they will function like a tab but take up less space (kind of like a quick start taskbar). There is a Chrome Menu, which is more or less a Start Menu, that contains easy access to your other applications, which then open in new tabs or small “panels” that attach to various parts of your screen (like a music player that you tell to be “always on top”). Yes, you’re in a browser, but Google has designed it so it feels surprisingly like you’re not giving anything up.
Thanks to HTML 5, Chromium OS does still make use of your computer’s native hardware though. The technology is there now to let web apps take advantage of your computer’s resources in a way they never could before, and will help make the web apps (which is all Chromium will run) feel more like local apps than the web apps you’re used to running in your standard browsers today. So you’ll be storing everything online, but access to it shouldn’t be much slower for all that. In fact, if Google comes through as advertised, it will be considerably faster.
Chromium OS is all about speed for mobile web users. They have applied many more restrictions than you usually hear about Google products, all in the name of efficiency. For example, HDDs are forbidden – SSDs only, please. Google is also handpicking the hardware components it will certify as good enough for its OS. The initial target for the OS is netbooks (their demonstration ran off an off-the-shelf Eee PC), which is a natural choice for a lightweight, internet-focused operating system.
Google’s Chromium OS controls each tab with a process and claims to verify its own code upon each bootup, restarting itself with a fix if it detects any mal-intentioned code somewhere inside itself, so it should be secure. New windows can be opened up as an equivalent of virtual desktops, although certain windows – like chat windows, for example – can stay on top regardless.
Google has today released the code and made it open source. It’s still in a very early stage – we’re not even in beta here, and Google loves its betas – and not due to be released for general use until this time next year. Still, this represents a potentially large shift in the world of operating systems. Google has confirmed that it will run on x86 chips (like your Core 2 Duos) as well as ARM chips (like the ARM11 in your smartphone), and that it will be free and NOT loaded with advertisements or anything like that, beyond the setting of Chrome as a default browser anyway.
So what do you think? Are you excited? Are you going to pick up the first open source build that’s thrown out there in the upcoming weeks and months and hack it onto your computer, or are you afraid this will generate the same large buzz but ultimately small effect that Chrome did as a browser?
Check out Google’s blog post for more info, and check out the video here.
(lead picture source: here)
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