14 DAY TRIAL // Chrome OS is very much in the early stages and the release we saw last month is likely very different from the one we'll be getting about a year from now. So, it's no surprise that things, even fundamental ones, are changing sometimes significantly so. Recently Chromium OS, the open source project on which Chrome OS is based, developers introduced a brand new login system using the web browser to manage the process rather the built-in, Linux-based one with which Chromium OS came when the source code was released.
The plans to move the login from the operating system to the browser were being fleshed out even before the source code was released, but have only recently the actual code was added to the project. “Using Chrome as our login manager has a number of potential benefits. Explore these tradeoffs and decide what to do about the login manager,” the first entry read inviting developers to add their opinions.
“An early version of this change is finally in. It's not ready for daily use yet, and we haven't gotten the network picker on there or anything yet, but at least we've got a baseline in there. I'm filing issues for the follow-on work,” reads the announcement that the code was available in the Chromium OS repository.
There are a couple of advantages of using the browser to handle the task and it simplifies the process quite a bit for the developers, but the biggest reasons for the change has more to do with 'ideological' aspects. For a web-based operating system which boasts the fact that everything has been stripped out, with the only native app being the browser itself, it makes sense to have the browser handle this task as well.
Until now, logging into Chromium OS required a Google account and the user would then be logged into all Google products as well. So, from a functionality point of view, for the user things are rather similar. Still, it's clear that this is the direction that Google is taking and at one point it may take it one step further by enabling Friend Connect logins.