Mesanna's Weblog

Google hosted an event for the press today about their Chrome Operating System. Further details on the system are now available.

The Linux-based system will initially be released as the “Chromium Operating System”. This release will be open-source, which will allow non-Google developers to participate in the project. (This is similar to the Chromium vs Chrome web browser, where the Chromium version is the open source development branch, and the Chrome version is the officially-branded Google release.) The code for the Chromium release is available now, however the official “Chrome OS” will be available in about a year.

As expected, Chrome OS will initially be targeted at netbooks. Google say that may change down the line, but for now the OS will run on netbooks only. A surprise for me is that Chrome OS will only run on flash-based storage devices, like solid state drives or memory cards. This will ensure fast boot speeds, but I guess those netbooks with hard drives will need to run Chrome from a memory card. The system has been optimised for speed and they are claiming boot times of around 7 seconds (from when you hit the power button). Now that is fast!

When the system starts, you log in directly to your browser and ALL applications run from there. There will be no Open Office or GIMP on this system (at least not at the start). Obviously the push is towards Google web-based applications like Gmail and Google Docs. Although storage will primarily be cloud-based (i.e. on Google’s servers), there will be a local backup on the netbook. This is already in place for many of Google’s web applications, with the offline versions of Gmail, Calendar, Docs etc.

There is some emphasis on security. Every application is sandboxed, which means it runs separately from everything else (Chrome browser already does this). In addition, the whole user partition will be encrypted. The system will also check its own code every time it boots for discrepancies.

There are a few videos explaining the project in greater detail, which I’ve embedded below.

A (slightly dumbed down) introduction to the idea behind the Chrome OS (good to watch if you’ve never head of this project before).

Some more detailed videos from the Chromium people below:

More information on the project is available at chromium.org.

Update: See this post for screenshots and some additional info.