My Chromium Attempt

For a long time I had a question in my mind - "what is google chrome OS?" Is this the much rumoured ghost OS of google? Well, all these thing sought wings of my imagination and I thought that may be we will finally have a low cost solution to the problems we face while operating Windows (The best solution is obviously a Mac, but it's costly). Well! I was wrong Google finally announced the arrival of the Chrome OS and they came up with a video which tells us what exactly Google chrome OS is going to be.

Seriously, this was not a real pleasure to know that a browser is going to replace our trusted Operating System. In-fact, it was hard to believe. Then, I thought may be it is my inertia that stops me to accept something which is new. I come from a suburban town near Kolkata and I realized that if I go home, I won't be able to use my computer. Computer is not synonymous with internet. Yes, we do spend a lot of time on the net, but thats not all. I mean I do some photoshop, I play games (high quality games) and I trust Microsoft Office for all my office suite needs... I know google docs is great, but it is nowhere near, MS office or iWorks or even open office. Also, lets face it... we don't have great broadband connection here in India.

Yes! I knew that Google's Chrome OS is not going to a great thing... not yet... may be it will be the next big thing... but not yet.  But when I came to know that Google has announced the availability of the Chrome OS source code, I decided that I got to have it. I searched youtube for their chrome demo so that I get a feel of the new thing... (So what even if I don't have it I can still see it )

 After seeing it, I decided that I have got to have it. So all I did was a search of Chrome OS and I got a link to download a version. Some geeks have already compiled the chromium source code and got a version of Chrome OS running. I immediately downloaded a vmware image and tried to run in in virtual box. But, luckily enough I already had a copy of VMware Fusion 2. Installing was easy! All I had to do was to use that .vmdk file as an existing virtual machine. 

And thats it! Chrome started running... here is the first screengrab:

Chrome OS uses Google username and password. But I thought why take a chance!... this might have been built by some random hacker... so, I created a new gmail ID just to test this chromium OS. I had to set up my computer just as I am used to do in Windows or Mac or Linux (Ubuntu). 

Google has added few good apps to this OS:

Overall, this OS is not bad (especially keeping in mind that it is just a developer preview and not even from Google) and in fact, it is a pretty good OS for a netbook. But I will never let go of my mac for this chrome os (because it is nowhere near). I will rather like to run it virtually as a collection of apps (the feel is just like my iTouch running inside my Mac). But, I will run it for sure... and I am also eagerly  waiting for the finished product come out.

P.S. It is not that fast when you run it virtually (don't expect a 7 secs boot as promised) and the speed they talked about also depends on the kind internet connection you have. 

This was originally posted in The Products of a Rustic Mind