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A Head Start on Google’s Chrome OS (nytimes.com)
21 points by timr on May 9, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments



Can somebody explain the point of Chrome OS and why it's allegedly revolutionary? If I want to run everything in the browser, why can't I do that today?


Three words: Less is more.

No bloat, so it should run on low-end hardware, and blaze on modern hardware.

How many processes do you currently have running as you browse this? And, how many of them are necessary to your being able to do so?


How many processes do you currently have running as you browse this?

Lots, but my CPU is over 95% idle so I don't quite see where the huge performance increase is going to come from. It just seems like you could get almost all the alleged benefits of Chrome OS with a simple shell for Windows or Linux that runs the browser and nothing else on login.


It just seems like you could get almost all the alleged benefits of Chrome OS with a simple shell for Windows or Linux that runs the browser and nothing else on login.

It does seem so. And indeed, that's what Chromium OS is. Essentially a new distro with their own browser-based desktop manager.

http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/s...


There will be no performance increase, but computers might cost just 5% of what they cost now (probably not quite, because of the display).


Assuming you can run all your needs in the browser, this will provide an OS with the browser as a front-end. Think security, speed, less-expensive computers.

If you are a developers or computer user who depends on applications to do work which can't be done on a browser, ChromeOS is not for you.

I think the idea is that you are not attached to your computer, but you are attached to the information in your computer. If the information can be on the cloud, you can log in to your account in any chrome browser/OS and resume your work from there.


gPad?


How does ChromeOS handle swapping?

To me, swapping to disk (virtual memory) is the bane of operating systems.


Virtual memory is not a synonym for swapping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory




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