14 DAY TRIAL // Holding your breath for the Windows killer from Google? Maybe it will be a good idea to exhale, if you haven’t done so sooner this year, when the Mountain View-based search giant unveiled Chromium OS. As more and more Google Chrome OS details are released to the public, it is becoming increasingly clear that Google’s own breed of a Linux open source operating system is incapable of replacing Windows, and that it wasn’t designed as a substitute for Microsoft’s proprietary operating system. Approximately a year ahead of Chrome OS’ general availability date, the platform is destined to at best coexist alongside Windows; however, Windows 7 and Windows 8 after it will continue to be the operating systems of choice for consumers.
“Google Chrome OS is not a conventional operating system that you can download or buy on a disc and install. As a consumer, the way you will get Google Chrome OS is by buying a netbook that has Google Chrome OS installed by the OEM. Google Chrome OS is being developed to run on new machines that are specially optimized for increased security and performance. We are working with manufacturers to develop reference hardware for Google Chrome OS. These netbooks will be available in the fourth quarter of 2010,” reads an excerpt from the Chromium Developer FAQ.
Ultimately, what separates a non-conventional OS from a fully-fledged platform is the lack of customer choice. As mentioned in the quote above, restrictions start with the actual hardware. Customers simply won’t be able to buy a new machine off the shelve, or build their own computer from scratch and slap Chrome OS on top expecting it to work seamlessly. While Chrome OS binaries can be obtained from the Chromium OS project, they won’t be coming from Google, but rather from third-parties, they won’t feature update functionality, and it won’t be officially supported by the Mountain View company.
“Google Chrome OS will seamlessly auto-update so that users have the latest and greatest features and fixes. Google Chrome OS will be supported by Google and our partners, whereas Chromium OS is supported by the open source community, but they fundamentally share the same code base. Google Chrome OS also has some cool firmware features, verified boot and easy recovery, which require corresponding hardware changes and thus also don't work in Chromium OS builds,” Google stated.
But this will be the Google Chrome OS that will only start being available with new notebooks at the end of 2010. And by the end of 2010, Microsoft would have already delivered the first service pack for Windows 7, and be neck deep into the development process of Windows 8, the next iteration of Windows. And while Google Chrome OS binaries are already up for grabs in the wild, including a version from Dell, Google is telling end users that the platform is not ready for “public consumption.”
“If you are the kind of developer who likes to build an open source operating system from scratch, you can check out Chromium OS, build it and experiment with it. A number of sites have also posted pre-built binaries of Chromium OS. However, these downloads are not verified by Google, therefore please ensure you trust the site you are downloading these from. Keep in mind that Chrome OS is not yet ready for general consumer use,” the search giant added.
However, Google clarified some issues related to hardware support. Although initially it appeared that Chrome OS and Chromium OS won’t be playing nice with traditional hard disks, this is not true. Google noted that it preferred solid state drives (SSDs) to hard disk drives (HDDs), for performance and reliability reasons, and that OEM partners would equip Chrome OS notebooks with the first. However, Chromium OS does work with conventional HDDs, but users will suffer a depreciation of performance. Moreover, additional hardware products and devices with existing open source/Linux drivers can be tailored to work with Chrome OS/Chromium OS.
But perhaps the largest downside of Chrome OS is related to software. “Google Chrome OS is a web-centric system, so all applications are web applications; this provides powerful and simple manageability and security. To write applications that will benefit from native code execution we recommend using NativeClient, an open source project that allows web apps to run native code securely within a browser. Of course Chromium OS is open source, and it's Linux. This means that as a developer you can do pretty much anything you want, including installing any Linux application,” Google stated. Yes, if you’re a Linux developer. But are you? I know I’m not.