Internetling

I was initially reluctant to write a post about Chrome OS, seeing as  Engadget and the other heavy machinery immediately posted murky “details” about Google’s new lightweight operating system, even though everyone fully knew that any screenshots and technical data were most likely fake (as a side-note, I find Gizmodo’s “deep reading” Chrome OS article quite amusing).

It’s actually pretty cool, the shiny announcement and all, but where is the point of Chrome OS?
And why the heck is it named exactly like the Google browser? As if things weren’t confusing enough for new users already. The article basically describes Android on a netbook. How are they going to revolutionize computing? According to the description, all Chrome OS will be is a WebKit-based browser running on a Linux kernel, which is less than Android.

Tons of articles have been published about vendors like Dell successfully testing Android on different netbooks. You can even download a liveCD an try it out yourself.

OK, for the sake of argument, let’s suppose they are building something new. Let’s suppose it will be something revolutionary.

From the announcement:

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds.

Android. It is Linux based and boots almost instantly.

Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.

Android again. It has a WebKit-based browser, what Chrome basically is.

The only clear difference between the two in the announcement is that Chrome OS will be designed to run on netbooks and desktop machines, while Android is a mobile operating system that can run on netbooks. I am not a programmer, but what kind of a browser are they going to build that cannot be run by Android on a desktop machine? The biggest part will surely be Google Gears and WebKit. Since the kernel will be Linux and the whole OS open source (if they release it a promised), the whole solution seems highly impractical. Why build two when it is obviously possible to accomplish everything with Android?

Finally, despite everything I have written I am very excited to see what Google will do with Chrome OS. They probably do not want to ruin the surprise, hence the all-words-and-no-facts announcement. As a Linux geek, I am glad to see such a big company working with hardware manufacturers to bring Linux to the masses, because it will broaden the availability of Linux-supported hardware, so if I don’t like Chrome OS, I will be able to simply slap on any other netbook Linux distro.

Can’t wait for 2010!