Google announces operating system Comments by Tom Bramwell

its just a stripped down version of linux auto-booted in to Chrome, nowt games worthy in this, and i doubt it has Apple or Microsoft worried just yet.

Its not game worthy at all its a lightweight OS aimed towards speedy netbrowsing.

I'll give the inevitable desktop version a whirl [original release is only for netbooks], but unless it's compatible with Windows games then I won't be using it.

Chrome is a great browser, but an OS is a whole different kettle of fish.

It's just a Linux distro (well when it's released), I'd be intriguided if they can out do the likes of Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat, Ubuntu etc. Having said that they might, I just have concerns about using an OS from an advertising agency...

I'm all for this but: "completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

Yeah, good luck with that :)

will be for tech geeks, like their browser

its linux under the hood running the chrome browser as the main gui interface... hardly going to challenge MS / Apple on desktop/laptop - netbook yes, though will be interesting to see how it copes with pnp devices etc.

How is this remotely gaming related?! Are you going to report on Michael Jackson's death as well because he made a game a decade or so ago?

"any attempt to take Windows out gets my thumbs up :) "

Do you post on /. as well?

There are already plenty of Linux distro's coming with the netbooks, they work quite well, bar the odd litle thing which mainly comes from years of Win use.
My father bought one of this netbooks which came with a stripped down Fedora distro, and he only had a problem installing new apps like Skype as things are bit different from the usual "next; next; next", he got the hang of it (I hope).

Though, I have to agreem this has nothing to do with gaming. One thing these distro's are not aimed to, is gaming.

Cool. One interesting point though: in Europe Microsoft is forced to release Windows 7 without Internet Explorer, so that the user can choose his own browser. What if they demand the same from Chrome OS ... can you even solve that issue here, considering how integrated they are?

Personally I'm cautiously optimistic.

I'm not really a netbook person so I'm more interested in how it scales up to more powerful systems. There's also the question of what else it will be able to do other than web browse & use google apps based on the web. What about games and media?

but I have to say that I do not like the chrome browser. I like some of the tech behind it but I just can't use it as a browser. Not sure if that's a bad omen...

its linux under the hood

that makes it pretty much the same as macos.

Whether there is any impact for gamers depends on its popularity initially, followed by whether a distribution system for putting native-code games on it is added. Remember, there was no app store when iPhone came out at first.

MS will slash the cost of their OS to compete with it if it gains some momentum.

I second all who question the relevance of these, admitedly interesting, news on a gaming website.

Basing my opinion on the Chrome browser, this upcoming OS will be designed based on an obsession on speed, and remain slim on features. While I appreciate that, I certainly don't expect it to run any games at all any time soon.

I just hope it will have an intuitive API. :)

its linux under the hood

that makes it pretty much the same as macos.

MacOS is based on FreeBSD, not Linux. There are a lot of similar features and they are partially compatible, but the implementation is different. And most important, the BSD license is, unlike GPL, not what business people call "viral".

Only recently got into MAC (for Iphone stuff), and just loving it. Apple add so much quality software for free, while MS gives you mspaint and other crap that hasnt changed in years, while keeping the cost up.

I think anything that can make MS sit up and take notice that their OS has pretty much stagnated for 10+ years and is very expensive, then all the better. I dont expect Google OS to be that good to begin with, but maybe after a few iterations it will allow games and maybe even a Virtual PC type situation etc.

MS is in danger of being fucked over.

Apple own the portable media market
Nintendo own the console market
Firefox/Opera/Google are making massive inroads in the browser market

Can MS support a 360, Zune, Windows OS and Live Anywhere market with equal focus on all four? Something has to give, or they will all become integrated completely.

The same weakness Sony had with too many interests and too many challengers is going to see MS challenged in what is their biggest market by who is undeniably their biggest potential competitor.

Can't wait.

wow. now (soon) I can do everything with Google, I am sure they'd love that. They can then generate targeted adds on my desktop and in chrome as well as in my gmail account... can't wait for google to tell me what I like.

I'll skip this... + as has been said before, this is hardly games related news... It would be if it said "Google OS will support all games from the start"... which it won't.

This is going to be a sales disaster for Google, just like all the Linux Netbooks get returned once Uncle Jim can't plug his camera in to upload photos to Facebook. It's going to be hilarious watching Google slink away from this in twelve months.

I see the MS fanboys/viral marketers are on defense mode judging by the pattern of post ratings here.

Quick, someone evangelise natal!

MacOS is based on FreeBSD, not Linux

They're all just different flavours of Unix. Source licsenses mean very little to end-users.

"MacOS is based on FreeBSD, not Linux"

Linux is a kernel, FreeBSD is an environment.

MacOS X is based on the Mach kernel, with a FreeBSD environment.

Linux uses the GNU environment.

Hooray for pedantry.

@ Lord: touche :)

I'll give any new os a go, I have issues with windows, osx and fedora (admittedly I use core6 which is pretty out of date now).

@rhubarbandcustard

Google Search - best search engine for recording what porn you're looking at
Google Chrome - best browser that doesn't have enough features to challenge Firefox
Google Chrome OS - best operating system for doing what Linux already does but nosing through all your documents while it does it

Fixed those for you. ;)

/Kent Brockman/ I for one welcome our Google overlords

"This is going to be a sales disaster for Google"

It's free!!

That's the point!

"It's free!!"

There is no free lunch
Milton Friedman

Given that this in the long run could alter what your games are played on, I think this is relevant enough. Chill out people!

People - to begin with, browser based games on Netbooks will work just great, I'm sure.

They should run better on the same hardware than they would on XP due to there being less overhead from running the OS.

Google Linux is definitely interesting...

@PatAU
I see the MS fanboys/viral marketers are on defense mode judging by the pattern of post ratings here.

Quick, someone evangelise natal!

Yes, that's right, it's all "the man", man! Nice tin-foil hat btw.

I'd love to see a lightweight (and preferably free) gaming OS so that I don't have a ton of random OS shite lagging up my PC but it's highly unlikely that you could pry the devs away from windows so it'll have to do for now.

And it'll be paid for by Google ads most likely.

makeamazing: Only recently got into MAC (for Iphone stuff), and just loving it. Apple add so much quality software for free, while MS gives you mspaint and other crap that hasnt changed in years, while keeping the cost up.

The problem is when MS include quality software like Internet Explorer or Media Player the EU give them a big slap for being anti competitive. I wonder if the EU will come down hard on Google if they don't allow you to use different browsers or if their search engine defaults to Google.

^ that was really stupid, though I wish I could read those characters, they're sexy.

@RexRunti

did you just list internet explorer as quality??

makeamazing: You complain about cost and then continue on about how good apple stuff is. I'm also interested in what all these supposedly free - just to humour you we will assume that there is such a thing as free in this world - applications are.

"and i doubt it has Apple or Microsoft worried just yet."

I bet it bloody has (well, not so much Apple, as they operate a closed platform and don't generate a significant proportion of their revenue from their OS). Everything Google has touched so far has turned to google, I see no reason why this should be any different.


@Garulon

"It's going to be hilarious watching Google slink away from this in twelve months."

Yeah, like they did before when they.... oh.


Seriously, gamers predicting the failings og Google on a games website forum is mildly ludicrous. Google are one of the strongest "new tech R&D" companies on the planet right now. If they decide they are going to start developing ANYTHING new, you can bet every other tech company working anywhere near that area will sit up and take notice.

"Apple add so much quality software for free, while MS gives you mspaint and other crap that hasnt changed in years, while keeping the cost up."

Terrible example. OS X doesn't come with a bitmap image editor, which is a pain. It'd be a step up if they included an MS Paint equivalent.

"MS is in danger of being fucked over.

Apple own the portable media market
Nintendo own the console market
Firefox/Opera/Google are making massive inroads in the browser market

Can MS support a 360, Zune, Windows OS and Live Anywhere market with equal focus on all four? Something has to give, or they will all become integrated completely.

The same weakness Sony had with too many interests and too many challengers is going to see MS challenged in what is their biggest market by who is undeniably their biggest potential competitor.

Can't wait. "

Yeah because Sony and MS have comparable size/earnings.

Oh wait, they don't.

"Seriously, gamers predicting the failings og Google on a games website forum is mildly ludicrous. "

Though, some gamers can be, sysadmins in their non-ludic activities? Anyway, while in the consumer electronics they might have some impact, I fail to see Google with their buisness model based on advertising getting a foot in the datacenter or even in smaller buisness where vanilla *nixes are trully free and detached of any need of steady income. Those Google boys do not work for free, as much as we like to think they're some sort of Paris Commune. That means a fail? Not really, true.

@miiiguel

I'm not sure being a sys admin really qualifies someone to predict the future business successes of Google.

I suppose what this boils down to is that if anyone states with certainty "this will fail", I tend to presume them to be not very knowledgeable on the subject :)


"I fail to see Google with their buisness model based on advertising getting a foot in the datacenter or even in smaller buisness"

But that isn't their target market right now. They are clearly using netbooks as a test bed for the forseeable. That said, they have been talking about security and stability, which are things that datacentres care about very much - more than almost anything in fact.

I wouldn't be surprised if they started off with a free OS, but then provided a chargeable version in the future with more business-centric features AND decent support services. We have seen that happen in Unix and Linux circles, and Google are as capable as any company out there of setting up a solid mission critical support structure (indeed, they will already have such a service for their own interbal operations).

The software architecture is simple - Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel

It's Linux with Chrome running permanently. In other words, you boot up your netbook, you immediately see Chrome and that's it. Nothing else. For the sake of emulating it, set your OS to boot your browser at start up and hide the task bar. That's all. If it was going to ruin Microsoft it would have to do more than this, as online apps haven't destroyed desktop apps and I can't see them managing it.

Are Google desperate to get bought out by MS or something?

"@miiiguel

I'm not sure being a sys admin really qualifies someone to predict the future business successes of Google. "

That's not what I meant, what I meant was the opposite, being a person who likes to play video-games (gamer became offesive, imo), does not disqualify someone to have an opinion.

I take your point, but I don't see this as the limit of their activities. Rather its the beginning.

And I don't think the significance of a Google supported Linux OS package should be under estimated. Its all very well saying "its just sitting on a Linux kernel", but what makes the difference in business is (simplified) who will patch that Linux kernel (or shell) should something need fixing. Initially, the answer might be "nobody anytime soon" 'cos its free and non-critical, but I don't see it staying that way.

It might make a nice 2nd OS to boot on a PS3.

HTML 5 with video streaming support and open standards, works well with Google Mail, Calendar etc. and lightweight could be a winning combination for the Sony system (for those who can be arsed to install it that is).

@miiiguel

Whoa there, I'm not saying someone isn't qualified to have an opinion. Not a bit of it.

Let me try again.

I suppose in my usual arsey way, I am just dismissing off the cuff suggestions that Google will bugger this up. I figure that anybody who knows anything about the business Google are in (and are looking at entering) will know that due consideration is the very least that any of their competitors will be giving it.

EVERYBODY is entitled to voice an opinion, but whether that opinion is fact, informed speculation, or wild and inaccurate hypothesis depends on their knowledge of the subject (and perhaps their objectivity).

I didn't mean to use gamer a a negative... well, ok I did but I shouldn't have. I suppose the reason I did it is because these pages have a habit of producing some oddly self-confident statements that have no real basis in knowledge. You know the sort of thing I mean, comments that usually start off "Its simple, company X should just do blah blah" and so on.

Google are a company that almost sprang out of nowhere, and yet they are now one of the biggest technical concerns on the planet. And they got there by a) developing brilliant technology and continually investing in R&D, and b) predicting what a market needs (or even creating the need themselves) and investing in serving that need.

For someone, anyone, to just read an article about one of their new ventures and state with all certainty "They can't compete with MS or Apple" just seems woefully naive to me.


I've got a big mouth and a big head though, so sometimes I don't express myself in quite the way that I should :)