bobpeers -> blog

Well like many people this weekend I was busy downloading and installing the Google Chrome OS VMWare image file.

It’s easy to use the file in Virtualbox using these instructions from Tech Crunch.

But also like many other people I was getting nowhere trying to log in using my Google Account username and password. The errors indicates that it’s a network problem so the comments suggest using bridged networking instead of NAT but that made no difference for me.

Finally I found a post telling me to use chronos as the username and a blank password, bingo now I could log in. When logged in found my networking was fine and it makes no difference at all if I use bridged or NAT, both work fine.

One final point is that the default keyboard is set to US so if you’re keyboard is set differently (mine is DA for Denmark) be aware of this.

I’ll leave most of the obvious comments on Chrome OS to others, as there’s plenty been said on the subject. But for those that dismiss the OS I think it’s way too early for that.

I may not want it on my main computer tomorrow but combine it with a new laptop running an ARM processor,16 GB flash drive and another year or so of development as well as an asking price that undercuts current netbooks by miles (maybe $100 in the US) and I think there will be a huge market.

It seems everyone has an opinion on the Google Chrome OS announcement (me included!). In the past week I must have read 30-40 different articles or blogs on the subject.

Opinion seems very divided on whether it’s a serious threat to Microsoft Windows, no threat, or rather ironically, a threat to Linux.

I see it like this.

1. Google will have a very hard time getting any market share if they only look at netbooks. Of course I’d be naive to think that they don’t intend to attack the desktop at some point.
2. It will be even harder to get any traction on the desktop. Most people still expect to download some .exe file and just install it. The familiarity and enormous installed user base of Windows is a major hurdle to overcome.
3. If it’s locked down to work with Google Apps then am I any better off then being locked into Apple or Windows environments.
4. As for the comments that it further splits the Linux community I can’t really see the problem. I view diversity in the Linux world as a good thing and any work done by Google on instant-on system will undoubtedly feed through to the wider Linux ecosystem.
5. At the end of the day Google were forced into this position. They must know that who controls the desktop also controls (or heavily influences) the online world. Microsoft constantly try to make our online experience a Microsoft-only one by changing the default browser without asking and search to Live Search (or Bing). There’s no way Google can rely on a future where visitors are fed to their apps using Microsoft tools.

Despite the obstacles, from a purely technical point of view, I’m looking forward to see what they come up with. Google have masses of smart people and if they can make a full OS boot and connect to a network in, say 5 seconds, I for one will be very impressed.