Chrome OS will come a year from now. So, Here’s what we know:
Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks” and “most of the user experience takes place on the web.” That is, it’s “Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel” with the web as the platform. It runs on x86 processors and soon on ARM processors too. It’s more secure than any Browser has ever been.
What Exactly it is
• Basically, just a browser: There are no native applications, everything is the browser. It’ll be based around preexisting web services like Gmail, Google Docs, and so on. There are going to be no conventional applications, just web applications—nothing gets installed, updated, or whatever. Seriously.
• Runs web apps, only: It’s going to integrate web apps into the operating system deeper than we’ve ever seen before, meaning that a) they’ll seem more like native apps than web apps and b) they’ll be able to tap into local resources more than a typical web app in Firefox, for example. They’re web apps in name, but they’ll have native powers. If you run some hardcore apps like Photoshop, Eclipse, VisualStudio, forget chrome os.
• How, exactly?: With HTML 5, and other marvelous features of Chrome. This is the next version of HTML, which gives the browser more access to local resources like location info, offline storage—the kinds of things you’d normally associate with native apps. More on that here.
• “Chrome” Experience: The user’s experience with Chrome OS will basically be synonymous with their experience on Chrome Browser. Technically speaking, Chrome OS is a Linux-based OS, but you won’t be installing Linux binaries like you might on Ubuntu or some other Linux distribution. Any “apps” you have will be used within the browser. Chrome OS is effectively a new version of Chrome, that you can’t leave. There are a few reasons Google’s pushing this, which we’ll get to in a bit.
• And as you’ve probably guessed, it’s super-light. It starts up in a matter of seconds, and boot straight into the browser.
• Normal hard drives not supported, just solid state storage. Hard drives are dying, sure, but this is pretty bold. Hardware support sounds like it’ll be pretty slim, because:
• Chrome OS Hardware: You might be able to hack this thing onto your current machine (atleast for now), but you won’t just be able to install it to replace Windows, or opt for it on your next laptop, for example. You’ll have to buy hardware that Google approved and consulted on. With a small hack, we would be able to run chrme OS on VirtualBox.
• For now(atleast), it’s for dedicated netbooks. It’s not intended for desktops, to the point that Google is saying that the first generation of Chrome hardware will be secondary machines. But a hack will make it possible on any device.
The User Interface
• It looks like Chrome browser—specifically, like the leaked shots we saw before. As in a browser, you have tabs—these have to serve as a taskbar as well. To the left of the tabs, you have a sort of start menu, which opens up a panel full of shortcuts. These are your favorites. These are your apps. (Get used to this weird feeling, btw. That Google whole point here.
• You can pop-open smaller windows integrated into the main window like chat windows or music players, to sit above your tabs at all times. Just like you do it in GTalk web chat
• Apart from Tabs, you get virtual desktops. This means is multiple “windows” of Chrome OS to switch between, each of which is a different set of tabs.
When
Google’s on talking about dates yet—it’ll be sometime next year (mid or late). Executable builds will start appearing online, soon and for the time being, it would work in a virtual machine app like VirtualBox.
Verdict
With Chrome OS, Google is taking (or forcing) the operating system to go totally online in the Cloud. The idea here is to make the browser powerful enough to render the rest of the operating system, and its native apps.
It’s more pure than a lot of people expected: When Google said that Chrome OS would be centered around the web, I think most people just assumed it be a lightweight Linux distribution with deep integration for Google web services. It’s not that. It’s nothing more than a browser for a normal user.
But it’s a browser that runs different processes for each tab, that will have access to local OS resources, will to some extent work offline with caching. It’s not really a “browser” in the sense that we use the word. More verdict after a break.
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What do you think ?