Tag: os

Google Chrome OS

We’ve all heard the rumors about Google secretly building an operating system…or was it just my imagination? 😉

Now that the news about Google Chrome OS is out, I’d like to be the first to start a few new names for the operating system.

From the Unix side of the naming ideas I come up with Google ChrOS which would be pronounces Google Crow-S (similar to the idea of BeOS). It could be shortened to read GOS, making it “short and cool” like Mac, but it just doesn’t have the same cool ring to it. Or how about Google COS? Or GhrOS?

I’m not a big fan of the current name Google Chrome OS. Some would say that this is a very Mac naming system, but I think Google OS 1 would have been perfectly fine. Even if Chrome is later evolved to a point in the operating system that later barely resembles Chrome as we know it today it could still continue with this naming system as Mac OS did with 8/9 and then X which was completely different.

News of Google Chrome OS has been spreading like wild fire through my Google Reader feeds and even via Twitter reaching at least 6th place on Trending Topics.

With Google’s experimental project called Native Client (NaCl) in the works, it appears that Google is attempting to do something similar to what Microsoft attempted to do ages ago with ActiveX. Where Microsoft has (in my opinion) failed, it appears that Google’s Native Client may succeed at allowing support for web browsers to natively execute code for a deeper integrated position with…Google Chrome OS.

With all of this news about Google finally graduating their entire suite of web apps (from what seemed like and eternal Beta stage to what is now considered final and safe for public usage) it seems all too clear that they have an evil plot to take over and dominant the PC world.

The general idea of Google Chrome OS is similar to what I have been want to create for nearly two years now. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t originate this idea, but then again neither did Google. 😉

Basically, Google will be using the Linux kernel to start up and run in the background and to handle hardware and software interactions. That is all in the background, things you won’t see all that much of.

What you will see is that when you turn on your computer, instead of seeing the dominance of applications in the sense of executables, your applications will be web based applications that integrate nicely with the rest of the system.

In fact, if Google is able to implement this operating system as I would love to have been able to do myself (had I of been able to of found the time) then it will integrate so tightly with the web applications that you will (hopefully) not notice a difference between the two.

This is important for any operating system. The sense of integration is clearly important. Take a look at Mac OS X for example and their strict code of proper layout and design with a balance of clean and elegant user interfaces. If Google Chrome OS is able to bring this level of integration from the web and merge it with the general set of tools and applications provided then it just may be a success.

With so much of our time being spent on the web already, will it really be that difficult to make a move to a web based operating system?

Several tools are also available straight from the web, just proof that the web is the future! Take this web based screen recorded for screencasts provided by Screenjelly!

You can watch most anything video-wise from the web already! The one thing that I’m really waiting for is for large amounts of storage in the clouds for a super cheap price!

Just a neat little cartoon to leave you pondering. 🙂

google-chrome-os-cartoon

Windows Vista Ultimate: The last Microsoft “Ultimate” I’ll buy

This is the last thing that I will be buying from Microsoft that is supposed to be the best possible package. Honestly, I don’t even use the BitLocker feature. I bought Ultimate because I thought that there were going to be a lot of “Extras”…but I was clearly wrong.

I bought Vista pretty much right after it came out and I really enjoyed using it at first just because I thought to myself, “Man…this is the new Windows…how awesome!”, but now that I got tired of it crashing and I switched to Ubuntu for about a year and a half….well, I’m just not impressed anymore.

There really weren’t any “Extras” available when I installed Ultimate the first time, but I expected to find a list of available “Extras” when I installed it last night (over a year later).

What a freakin’ scam! Microsoft should be sued for this! Seriously! There’s basically nothing better with ultimate, nothing! I am glad to be able to run the “Best” version of Windows along side what is in my opinion one of the best operating systems ever…Ubuntu. It’s interesting to see how I work differently in each operating system and how the system can in some cases control you rather than you controlling the system.

I find myself being controlled more when I’m in Windows than I do in Linux, which is weird to me because I used to assume that you couldn’t do much in Linux other than hack and code things. Linux has really evolved these days though! Linux can honestly be as easy to use as Windows XP/Vista or Mac OS X.

In fact, you can even make your installation of Linux look and feel exactly like Windows or Mac if you want. It’s actually very easy and the familiar feel alone will increase the ease of use with not just Linux…but you and your computer.

I find myself coding more efficiently and faster in Ubuntu than I can in Windows. I think the biggest thing that helps me and makes me faster is the fact that I can have so many workspaces and easily switch between them instead of clicking and hunting windows and tabs all the time.

I really like the visual upgrade that comes with Vista (compared to XP), but honestly it’s nothing more than XP with a new theme and optimized a little (or say they say it’s better??). I’ve actually heard buzz around the Internet for a long time now that XP runs games better and faster than Vista.

Well, one thing is for sure. Ubuntu and several other Linux distros use Compiz Fusion for the eye candy and I think they found the sweet spot when they decided to add them into the operating system the way they did. It’s amazing how an open source project like Ubuntu can be leaps and hurdles a head of Microsoft Windows, but at the same time it’s kind of expected that Microsoft isn’t going to ever use their money and power to just “Wow” us when they can just do enough to try to hold us.

It’s cheaper for them to just hold us than it is to run out of the “Wow” material too quickly and try to find something new and honestly most Windows users don’t even realize that the operating system *should be* so much better than it currently is.

Oh well, what are we going to do? Does Microsoft really listen anyway? I know Apple listens. It seems to me that Apple is really good at feeling around to see what users really want and not always just what they know of either. Apple is very innovative and they are good at making something new work very well. The key, I believe, to their success is the fact that they let their products mature before releasing them and they also push for reasonable release dates.

Microsoft had an unreasonably long delay between Windows XP and Windows Vista. Call it what you will, but I call it laziness. I think they just wanted to sit back and see how long the world would buy copies of Windows XP before we realized that everyone else was still progressing (Mac, Linux, etc.).

Microsoft definitely rushed Vista and even had to cut out several features or upgrades that were planned. One upgrade that I was really looking forward to was the new file system that Vista was supposed to have. The new file system, dubbed “Win FS”, was supposed to be worked into Vista, but was cancelled do to problems and delays on releasing Vista.

Why release a product that isn’t finished? Actually, bad question…no software is ever finished, only abandoned. Rather, why release a product for a release date and not for a maturity stage in the developmental process? Wouldn’t you want your products when they have reached a certain level instead of just reaching a certain age?

Sure it sucks waiting for updates and upgrades, but if Microsoft can’t get their employees to work faster then we should still just wait for a proper update. I don’t like downloading a browser or messenger that crashes all the time when they could have spent a little more time to iron out the kinks.

Vista is still using the file system NTFS that we probably all remember from XP. The thing you might not know is that NTFS was released along side Windows NT when I was 7 years old. Windows NT was more of a networking configuration anyways and never really hit the public much.

The point is that NTFS was released in 1993 and is now a little over 15 years old (to the public). Most Linux or UNIX platforms use ext3 which was released in 1999. That’s still 6 years newer than Microsoft’s! Apple has been looking into upgrading from HFS Plus, which was released in 1998, to a 2004 file system called ZFS.

If you want to look into these file systems and compare them then Wikipedia has a great page for that! I’m actually looking forward to ext4 which has some very good strengths, but it’s not exactly stable yet.

So for now I guess I must be content with Vista (it’s the best it will ever be I suppose) and just log back into Ubuntu when I need to. I seriously hope that Microsoft speeds up and releases something good soon so I can use my NC State privileges to get the latest operating system for free. Hope this very opinionated post was at least fun to read. 😉