Last week, there was a well sourced news that Google could be launching a part of Chrome OS. On 17th November, they announced an event to be held at their headquarters, Googleplex, Mountain View, California, to give a ‘technical background’ and some demos.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s VP of Product Management and Matthew Papakipos, Google Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS did the honours. They took the audience through the key features of Chrome OS. It was also announced that the source code for Chrome OS would be made open source calling it ‘The Chromium OS open source Project‘.
It’s all about the Web
This was no secret. Infact, this is the basis of the Chrome OS. Since people spend most of their time on the web, it does away with Native Apps. All apps are web apps. The entire OS is essentially a browser that controls the entire system.
Different applications run as different tabs would be in the regular Chrome browser.
Security – Chrome OS doesn’t trust anything
Since there are no Native applications, they are all treated as if they are hostile. Similar to the Chrome browser, different tabs (apps in this case) are locked down and separated by sandboxing. So unlike a regular OS, where applications can quite easily harm your machine, apps on Chrome will have a tough time trying to do any damage.
The OS partitions the drive into separate regions. A read only root, which contains system specific information. An encrypted user partition to hold user data. Applications will have access only to this partition. The file system will be auto updated.
The Google blog goes on to say that OS does not even trust itself. Everytime the computer is switched on. An integrity check is performed on the root and the kernel. If it detects a security threat, it reboots to fix itself. This is called a Verified Boot.
For a better understanding of its security, watch : -
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9WVmNfgjtQ
Obsession with Speed
As always, Google is obsessed with speed again. To the extent that it is likely to dictate the materials used for the hardware to ensure maximum speed. It will do away with all unnecessary processes to ensure the quickest possible boot time. (in the demo it took about 7 seconds and they plan to reduce it further)
It will also lay stress on optimization of processes and powerful parallel processing.
User Interface
The user interface is expected to change between now and the launch of the actual OS. But key aspects are likely to remain the same.
All apps will be similar to tabs in a browser. Panels have been used for activities such as chat and basic file operations. Media will open in new windows
For more on the UI concept watch : -
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ57xzo287U
Hardware
It was also announced that Chrome OS would use only solid state memory.
As expected, not all news on the hardware front is good. Largely because all the focus is on software for now.
To get it working, you will have to buy a new machine.
HTML 5
Once again Google underlined the importance of HTML5 in Chrome OS. They want web apps to run as well as they would have run natively. To have the access to the systems resources for audio/video playback.
Stress on Netbooks
It seems for now that the main aim is to make a bigger, better Netbook. These devices are estimated to be market ready towards the end of next year.
And finally the source code
This is where you can find it! You can also sign up for news related to the Chromium Project here.
