Don't underestimate the power of simplicity.

Simplicity is worth a LOT of fuss.

If I can't use it as a programmer's workstation as well as a simplified desktop, its of no use to me. I realize their target audience may be thin consumer devices, but if they want good stuff dev'd on it, developers need to work directly on it as well. Time will tell.

"... but if they want good stuff dev'd on it"

I think this completely misses the point. Applications are web apps. You're not supposed to dev for the OS.

Edit: formatting

nope, wasn't missing the point at all.

Imagine if you will, I'm developing a webapp. I want to target ChromeOS users. I could run a separate VM to test on, but no, I want to dev and test on one system for the most part. I want my app framework stack and all the tools running on this thing and use the web browser to look things up on localhost, right.

Also, if this is to end up being a good open source citizen and google doesn't expect to do _all_ the work, developers need to be able to work on the platform as developers and not use it remotely to test and debug.

Thats' what I 'm talkin' 'bout ;) I get the whole HTML 5 and Web 2.0++ thing.

For testing you use Chrome on a real OS.

I probably didn't make myself very clear in the last post.

Lets say ChromeOS gets put on netbooks and is a solid option compared to a Windows 7 or Linux netbook. Am I, a hacker, going to use such a device? No, I have more to do than just use webapps. So as a hacker, its of little interest to me unless I can also use a good subset of linux dev tools.

Right, so iphone and android devs develop directly on the phones, otherwise there wouldn't be any apps...

I see your point now, thanks for elaborating. As it stands, I use my desktop for dev work, which I wouldn't think of putting Chrome OS on, but, I still am eager to put it on my laptop.

Uhm...it runs linux.

cd emacs && ./configure && make && make install

yes, but it may not resemble the linux you've come to know and love. they've already said that it has a custom window manager, i.e., not X11. so who knows what else they've left out.

X11 is not a window manager. X11 provides the low-level API for drawing to the screen and for interfacing with input devices. Metacity (GNOME), KWin (KDE) etc. are window managers. IIRC, X11 does offer a very basic window manager, but nobody actually uses that.

A new window manager shouldn't be a problem. If it behaves properly, you will hardly notice the difference.

It will actually be interesting if they manage to replace X11. AFAIK, many people hate X11 to the core. Heck, the Qt and KDE developers refuse to work around X11 bugs, hoping that pressure from users will somehow cause the X11 devs to fix them. Of course, I don't know the full situation, since I stopped paying attention to politics in the Linux world a while ago.

Yes, X11 does come with a very very basic window manager.

It's been a LOONNGGG time (I switched to windows XP) since I have had to install one, but I believe you can see it by by taking

     exec $foo

out of your x11rc, then running startx. Right clicking will get you an xterm, and you can launch things that require a GUI from there...

yeah, i know that. but if they took out X11, then it stands to reason that all the standard window managers went with it.

Let's not forget that the Chrome Browser and therefore the Chrome OS will come with a lot of HMTL5 features build into the browser.

This will enable a lot of cool applications to be built that can be run on very cheap and efficient OS/Hardware combinations.

<sarcasm>I know, very exciting I don't think any browser other then Chrome will have HTML5</sarcasm>