> Driver support will likely be a weak point. We’ve heard at various times that Google has a legion of engineers working on the not so glamorous task of building hardware drivers.

I was under the impression that Chrome OS would be Linux based (which would make this a non-issue).

Graphics drivers under Linux are not a "non-issue", as I for one know from painful experience. And as I understand it, Chrome OS is not running X, so they need specific graphics drivers.

There was a very interesting article on LH a while ago about the problems of linux graphics. A bit (very) offensive though, so if you're a fanboy who gets upset easily, don't read it: http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/06/nitty-gritty-shit-on...

How do you know it's not running X?

no kidding. I'm running Ubuntu Jaunty and I still can't get decent drivers for my Radeon X1550

Most of netbooks like EEE PC based on i945G or its relatives, and it works well. And it's always possible to get drivers from intel's moblin2.

But I think it will be something like chromium on frame buffer or even directfb.

Linux does have some minor issues still in the Netbook arena. So this could be where it stems from.

Personally if this is true:

> nd we’ve also heard conflicting rumors that Google is mostly relying on hardware manufacturers to create those drivers.

That's awesome! Even if that is all Google manages to achieve with Chrome it would rock - getting manufacturers to produce Linux compatible drivers is something barely anyone else has managed!

No, that's terrible — do you have any idea how ridiculously terrible these Taiwanese companies are at driver development?

That is what I thought. Do you think that Chrome OS will help to improve the availability of drivers for other GNU/Linux systems?

No. Every device that you might find in a netbook either already has a driver or will never have a working driver (FSVO never).

I think power management will be an issue. Personally I've never had an acceptable experience with Linux on laptops. Not sure how much progress has been made here over the last few years. It definitely helps that netbooks use such similar hardware across the board. If OEMs can be bothered to do some QA testing when the bundle Chrome OS it should be fine. Installing it on "unsupported" hardware could be more of a problem.

If they had the Chrome browser also take over most of the functions of the Window Manager, then they'd get most of the kind of functionality a user would consider a "Chrome OS"

That is not the realm of graphics drivers, that's just window management.

I think you might be abstracting simplicity in where none exists.

I don't see why you can't merge browser tabs and a taskbar together. Especially if items in the tabs are really processes.

Hmmm... wonder if it's going to be reporting your usage habits back to google, like the Chrome browser. I'm not going to be touching it with a 30 foot pole till I know for sure it doesn't report back to big brother.

you can opt out of that

I think he has 'opted out' by using another browser.

well obviously; I was just pointing out that it was optional in case it wasn't apparent!

Indeed I have. Besides, I miss my extensions too much.

When I was reading about Go the other day, I wondered whether Google could be the new Bell Labs... as far as I know, it goes as far as the 80/20 rule for work/project stuff (so no open-ended research ???), but not sure exactly how that all pans out behind the screens.

And then I thought about Chrome OS - a blank slate OS-wise (coming from Google it only really needs to be internet capable) and wondered if the OS could be something along the lines of Plan9... dreams are free, applying Occam's razor suggests linux / bsd though. Guess we'll see soon enough!

I always assumed if they were making a system OS it was more for netbooks and would be somewhat like Android where it would be specially released with netbooks or notebooks that used it. I could see them maybe making a Xen or VMware version, though.

That was my thought as well: Google would just concentrate on getting first class drivers for the machines it ships with and let the community hack together any other support that it cares to.

Google keeps amazing me. Chrome OS could mean many different things, but if it really means a polished, complete OS it will have huge impact.

We have brilliant manufacturers like Asus creating cool netbooks. But they can't really compete with Apple because they don't have a world-class OS.

And making such an OS is an enormous project.

They have Windows and Linux. Linux is great on servers. Linux is great on my workstations. But OSX outshines it greatly in completeness and polish.

This could ignite a wave of competition and innovation. Asus should be very excited. Apple should be nervous.

Everything points to Chrome OS just being a Linux distro with a custom window manager tied to the Chrome browser with all apps "in the cloud"--nothing else.

Not exactly a Mac OS X competitor, but a nice addition to our options.

I wish Google would solve the drivers issue by doing something along these lines:

Simply do not issue "works with Chrome OS" stickers/certification to hardware with closed drivers.

After the device ships, most hardware manufacturers don't want to continue paying developers for maintenance, and making sure it keeps working after OS upgrades, etc. And they seem to want to protect "secrets" of some sort by not releasing the source. I think Google has the power to fix this particular problem that's plagued Linux for a long time.

It is not an OS is it? It's the userspace set of Google libraries and applications, to put it more precisely. I wouldn't call it a PC operating system as the article suggests.

can anyone point me to something more about what they've done with the windowing system? I've heard they're not using X, is this official?

Nothing is official. Applying Occam's razor, I predict that Chrome OS will use Xorg with a custom window manager (Moblin-style).

Which distribution its going to be based on? My choice would be Debian.

I believe it was confirmed that it will be based on Debian.

Am I the only person here that plans on booting Chrome as my primary OS?

Most likely, considering the fact that no one outside google actually saw it yet, let alone used it or have any fair judgement on how it actually performs.

Am I excited? Yes.

Am I going to use it as my primary OS?

Why would anyone even ask this question, at this point?

I don't know. I can only tell you that I plan to use Debian.

No But I would love to test. I think there is a need for something lightweight depending on what you think the primary need of an OS is.

I'm still hooked on my solid collection of Firefox extensions. If this is indeed an "OS" in any sense of the word, I would expect it to support switching Chrome for Firefox.

If not, it's pretty much DOA to me.

Somehow I don't think the target audience is hackers who with large collections of firefox plugins. I see them targeting netbooks and tablets for the average user as well as a lightweight browser centric OS for schools, libraries and users who don't need 'software'

The Chrome browser is supposed to support extensions in it's next (major) version.

It's actually there to test now, if you don't mind using unstable versions. You need to switch the dev channel[1] and start the browser with --enable-extensions switch. There's a number of sample extensions already[2].

I've been running the dev channel builds for a while now and never had any major issues, only the occasional minor issue.

[1] http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel [2] http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensio...