Quick, safe - and not finished until about one year.
Imagine if your PC is not fussed about the updates, installations with a claim for a restart and never gave blue screen. What if your files are not stored locally?
This will be the properties of the Chrome OS.
Google revealed a lot about its upcoming operating system during a session in the headquarters Googleplex, California.
Google has also released a movie that goes through the user interface in Chrome OS:
For the more impatient we can start by telling that Chrome OS not nearly finished. Not even the beta version, so many rumors had it.
- The launch will not occur until the close of one year, said product manager Sundar Pichai during yesterday's presentation.
The source code for the unfinished product is already released. From now on all development will take place in transparency.
Web services are currently unable to access local resources on your PC, and it wants Google to do something with. According Pichai, the goal is that web applications should have access to the graphics card.
Storage of data will mainly take place in the web cloud, just as the company's e-mail service Gmail.
Boots in seconds
Pichai stressed that the Chrome OS will be quick. The goal is to almost immediately be ready to work once the machine is turned on.
It now takes seven seconds to boot the operating system. Google says that they are working hard to shorten this time further.
He told me that they have optimized the system by peeling away all the unnecessary drivers and services.
All that now works in the browser will also work in Chrome OS, including support for video and Flash.
In practice, operating a clean browser, and all the software you want to run the regular web applications.
- All that creates web applications is Chrome the OS developers, Pichai said.
In the same crank it was emphasized that the software for Android, its mobile operating system will not work under Chrome OS.
Chrome OS will require a solid state drive (SSD). There is no support for hard drives over the head, according to development manager Matthew Papakipos.
In addition, Google has decided that they would specify what components and what kind of hardware to be supported.
It is not clear which PC suppliers they work with, but the Chrome OS will (at least initially) be a product of the smallest laptops, called netbooks. Google told little about the hardware requirements beyond this, but stated that both X86 and ARM architecture will be supported.
Isolated and safe
All of the programs you are allowed to run is referred to web applications (ie web services), running in the browser security model.
Every tab in Chrome runs completely isolated from other tabs, as well as the operating system itself.
Software will not be able to change settings or system files locally on the computer, though they never so much wanted it.
