Quote: Original post by GMuser
Back in the day people used to be verbally stoned for calling this kind of thing an operating system. The google linux doesn't seem to have anything new to offer, and I don't like how they can say with a straight face that you can obtain content any faster through a google chrome browser on google linux, as though you wouldn't still need to boot up google linux and load the google chrome browser. "Don't worry about setting up new hardware"- lol, we are still talking about linux vs mac and windows?

Linux can cold-boot in less 5 seconds and hardware compatibility simply isn't a problem these days. It's been years since I've encountered an unsupported piece of hardware on Linux (unsupported meaning I have to download drivers manually) - even my networked printer/scanner is picked up automagically.

I wonder if Google is planning to design and sell its own hardware (like Apple) or they'd rather release their system for other vendors to integrate (ala Microsoft). Their Android platform follows the Microsoft model, but they might wish to have better quality control with Google OS.

Now, what I wish to see is a high-res e-book reader with web-browsing capabilities and good battery life (24h minimum). It doesn't even need to have a keyboard, a touch-pen would suffice.

Taking linux and putting a new GUI over it?
Someone should probably have them talk to Apple...

I'm not happy with the whole "the web is the platform" idea if that means that every app is going to be based on HTML/CSS/AJAX/&#106avascript/Flash. I absolutely hate web development in its current form because IMO these technologies are tedious to work with. Programming business logic in &#106avascript is not my definition of fun. Also the lack of "push" possibilities from the server (ie: have the server control the client/UI, rather than have the client ask for updates from the server all the time) makes these technologies not my weapon of choice.<br>So, I hope they develop a nice client/server platform for their OS and a way to run binaries, else I'm going (to try) to steer clear of it.

Quote: Original post by Structural
I'm not happy with the whole "the web is the platform" idea if that means that every app is going to be based on HTML/CSS/AJAX/&#106avascript/Flash. I absolutely hate web development in its current form because IMO these technologies are tedious to work with. Programming business logic in &#106avascript is not my definition of fun. Also the lack of "push" possibilities from the server (ie: have the server control the client/UI, rather than have the client ask for updates from the server all the time) makes these technologies not my weapon of choice.<br>So, I hope they develop a nice client/server platform for their OS and a way to run binaries, else I'm going (to try) to steer clear of it.<!--QUOTE--></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE><!--/QUOTE--><!--ENDQUOTE--><br><br>Having caught a large amount of trojans with firefox today, and being assigned a large amount of AJAX development at work today, I am so very very very much in agreement.

Quote: Original post by Andrew Russell
Then again... Gmail can open Word documents in Google Docs. So perhaps we're seeing the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

It takes a stab at opening Word docs in Google Docs. A slow, rusty farm implement stab. In the nutsack.

Quote: Original post by Structural
I'm not happy with the whole "the web is the platform" idea if that means that every app is going to be based on HTML/CSS/AJAX/&#106avascript/Flash. I absolutely hate web development in its current form because IMO these technologies are tedious to work with. Programming business logic in &#106avascript is not my definition of fun. Also the lack of "push" possibilities from the server (ie: have the server control the client/UI, rather than have the client ask for updates from the server all the time) makes these technologies not my weapon of choice.<br>So, I hope they develop a nice client/server platform for their OS and a way to run binaries, else I'm going (to try) to steer clear of it.<!--QUOTE--></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE><!--/QUOTE--><!--ENDQUOTE--><br><br>While I do agree with you &#111;n the relative HORROR that is web development, I do have to stick up for &#106avascript a little here. I think it's actually a neat little language <i>if learned properly</i>. Unfortunately, most people learn it from snippets they crib from other people's websites, which ends up being hackneyed poop &#111;n the Pope himself. It's got procedural, object oriented, *and* functional features, which puts it ahead of a lot of languages. It also includes a lot of really neat dynamic stuff that you can do with adding methods to pre-existing classes that makes for some really neat stuff.<br><br>Unfortunately, most people suck at it.

a friend of mine sent me this article on techcrunch and asked my opinion of the whole thing. I had to call out a number of quotes in the article:

"This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its post, "However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web." Yeah, who do you think they mean by that?"

I'm sorry... wait... you're talking about casting off Windows because it was "designed in an era where there was no web (even though Windows 2000 and Windows Vista were both rearchitected), and your solution is to build an OS off of Linux? Linux? Linux, the early 1990's clone of MINIX, the mid 1980's clone of the UNIX, first released in 1969? This is your choice for an operating system that wasn't "designed in an era where there was no web"?

"Google says the software architecture will basically be the current Chrome browser running inside "a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel." So in other words, it basically is the web as an OS. And applications developers will develop for it just as they would on the web. This is similar to the approach Palm has taken with its new webOS for the Palm Pre, but Google notes that any app developed for Google Chrome OS will work in any standards-compliant browser on any OS.

What Google is doing is not recreating a new kind of OS, they’re creating the best way to not need one at all."


So they aren't actually doing this "redesign of the OS with the Web in mind". They're just ignoring the OS and making it so all it can do is access the Web. This is like saying that our current road infrastructure was designed in a time when oil resources were abundantly plentiful, needing to change that, and then just telling everyone to stay home as your "fix".

Quote: Original post by capn_midnight
So they aren't actually doing this "redesign of the OS with the Web in mind". They're just ignoring the OS and making it so all it can do is access the Web. This is like saying that our current road infrastructure was designed in a time when oil resources were abundantly plentiful, needing to change that, and then just telling everyone to stay home as your "fix".

I think it's more along the lines of just making the OS be in charge of the hardware and nothing else - just make the computer work behind the scenes, applications will take care of the rest.
Also, from the sounds of it they've changed the parts of the kernel that deal with the file system, permissions, security etc... I'm picturing a simpler system aimed at sand-boxing applications within their own areas on the PC.

Their main goal is to try and break the links between OS and application, which is a disruptive market tactic. MS has always thrived on and encouraged applications to be strongly bound to operating systems, so this is a sharp offensive against that.

I've always thought that the OS, Windowing system and Application SDKs were always too tightly connected, personally.

While I agree with others that the web is a terrible platform for application development, the fact that (from current hype-speak) their OS makes no attempt to connect itself in any way to the application layer is very cool. It's bad, but right.

Making an OS where any apps built for it can also run on any other OS without recompilation is no easy feat. Given this challenge, the terrible choice of "web apps" seems a sensible solution.
Maybe a Java/C#/Mono/CLR based OS would be another solution?


P.S. Yes JS is also cool when used properly, but again with the evils of web development, there are too many slightly differing implementations/dialects!

I think it's stupid. There's a reason the netbook market quickly turned away from its original premises and into tiny general purpose laptops: the netbook concept sucks. Even if we assume the battery problem (which is a total deal breaker as it stands) were to be solved, that all netbooks were equipped with 3G modems and that 3G didn't suck, why would anyone want to lug around something that doesn't fit in their pocket and isn't really usable without sitting down, just to access the Internet?

I already have a mobile communications device. It's called a cell phone, and it does pretty much everything a netbook does, and far better, albeit on a smaller display and without a QWERTY keyboard since it's a budget model. Additionally, I can make phone calls, send text messages and it fits in my pocket.

The netbook as just a mobile internet device was a stupid idea to begin with. However, Google is now taking this one step further, ensuring the total lack of compatibility with pretty much everything else and forcing prospective developers into the horror that is web application development, thus ensuring slow development, buggy applications, annoyed developers and a guarantee that there won't be any applications more complex than WordPad (which is about where Google Docs is) for the platform.

I'm puzzled. Do they really believe that their brand name recognition is enough to push this on people, or are they just trolling the world?

Quote: Original post by Hodgman
P.S. Yes JS is also cool when used properly, but again with the evils of web development, there are too many slightly differing implementations/dialects!

Most of the differences are in DOM objects that are exposed by the browser, so that's technically not the language but the data that the browser is supplying to the language. I have JScript code originally written for Internet Explorer in 2002 (wow, has it really been 7 years?) that runs as intended, across multiple browsers to this day.