I suppose I'll have to download and install to be sure, but it really looks like a version of the Chrome Browser, which is designed to run on the new Chrome OS.
That said, looking at the Screenshot, I can see some "OS" like features, such as the clock, or maybe a button in the browser which launches other applications..
I think I see why they're calling the OS Chrome. It's not that they're re-using the name, they're just adding basic windowing and app launching to the Chrome Browser.
If you ran it "Chromeless" (Ie, without the Gnome dock, etc), you could use this as a.. Sort-of OS.
That's very much not what I had imagined for a "Chrome OS", which would be much more like the fake demo video we say on Techcrunch a few weeks ago, but this would be a very Easy project to put together.
chrome-linux.zip contains a 532MB executable called "chrome". My guess is that this is the entire OS outside the kernel compiled into a single executable (there are a couple of libs, likely these internally rely on the library mechanism).
To use this you would need to create a disk image with a bootloader (grub), add an appropriate linux kernel (drivers?), and configure the kernel to launch "chrome" instead of initd. You might be able to cheat by starting with one of the unofficial disk images floating around the net and copying these more official looking files into it.
After my investigation, it turned to be a debug version of Chromium-for-ChromeOS. If you open it with a hex editor you can see a ELF mark at the beginning.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 35.3 ms ] threadAm I missing something?
http://forum.ubuntu.org.cn/download/file.php?id=80451&mo...
That said, looking at the Screenshot, I can see some "OS" like features, such as the clock, or maybe a button in the browser which launches other applications..
I think I see why they're calling the OS Chrome. It's not that they're re-using the name, they're just adding basic windowing and app launching to the Chrome Browser.
If you ran it "Chromeless" (Ie, without the Gnome dock, etc), you could use this as a.. Sort-of OS.
That's very much not what I had imagined for a "Chrome OS", which would be much more like the fake demo video we say on Techcrunch a few weeks ago, but this would be a very Easy project to put together.
http://linux.solidot.org/linux/09/10/13/0921225.shtml
via Chinese Ubuntu forum
http://forum.ubuntu.org.cn/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=231866
Screenshot by a blogger:
http://li2z.cn/2009/10/13/chrome-os/
(Chromium is the open source version of Google Chrome, Google's web browser.)
To use this you would need to create a disk image with a bootloader (grub), add an appropriate linux kernel (drivers?), and configure the kernel to launch "chrome" instead of initd. You might be able to cheat by starting with one of the unofficial disk images floating around the net and copying these more official looking files into it.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2009/10/chromeos-pictures-google....
I suspect Google will put more attention into the usability (easy programmability) of a data-driven desktop shell.