Chrome OS Revealed

At last, Google presented its much awaited Operating System Chrome OS!

First of all, just like Chrome was born from Chromium Open-Source, so does Chrome OS in regard to Chromium OS.

Before advancing further, you can start downloading a ready to use Vmware Chromium OS image via torrent and start playing around with it right now. (If you don't what the heck Vmware and virtual machines are all about, check this detailed Chromium OS installation guide.)

So, what is Chrome OS all about?



Exactly what you'd expect it to be... Everything on the web/cloud.

It's arquitechture is light and simple:

Pretty much like what I had predicted a long time ago, right? ;)

This allows it to be quite fast, and even faster with Chromium OS fast boot.

This helps understand why the "real" Chrome OS will only be available pre-installed in select devices - those will be highly optimized for instant-on, with customized BIOS and flash-based Chrome OS installs. You'll be able to get to the web in a couple of seconds.

For everyone else, you'll be able to toy around with Chromium, or simply use the Chrome Browser in your regular operating system just like we've done till now.


As you'd expect for a could based OS security is a major point, with auto-checking on every boot to ensure the system wasn't tampered with, and transparent daily updates without you having to worry about it.




How does Chrome OS affects our future?

Although you'll be able to use Chrome OS in "offline" mode (seeing cached videos, reading and writing emails, etc.) no one denies it really needs "always-on" internet connectivity to truly shine.
This might be something some people will point as a major flaw - but let's speak frankly... Doesn't that happen right now? How do you feel when you turn on your computer and have no internet? It suddenly seems like your computer is kind of useless, doesn't it? So... that's the real issue: most of us simply can't live without Internet anymore - no matter what OS we're using.

Other will say there are a lot of thing you simply cannot do inside a web broswer window. Well, allow me to tell you that simply isn't true anymore. There's is nothing you can't do inside a browser window. You can watch HD video, you can use multitouch interfaces, you can do image editing rivaling Photoshop, you can do video editing, you can play high quality 3D games - either locally or via streaming - you can even run a virtual OS inside your browser window! And with newer HTML implementations and even faster javascript, things will only get better (not to mention all the possible plugins you might use: flash/silverlight/etc - if needed.)

Chrome OS is only a tool, the real revolution will be these Web Apps becoming our main Apps for everything we do.