Google announces it's new operating system project

Choice is good!? Not that we don’t have a lot of operating system choices these days. Even so, Google has just announced it’s new operating system project — the Google Chrome OS.

According to Google, the new operating system, which is scheduled to be released next year, will focus on netbooks and desktop PC’s. The operating system will be an open source software based on Linux. Google Chrome OS will focus on lightweight, speed, simplicity and security as the driving force in the creation of the operating system. It looks like Google has already been talking to several manufacturers to come up with netbooks using the OS.

When it comes out, Google Chrome OS will be able to run on both x86 as well as ARM chips. The architecture is simple. It will run the Google Chrome web browser on a new windowing system on top of the Linux kernel. In doing so, you will be able to run Gmail, Google Apps, Google Maps and also other web-based software applications.

It would be nice to see how it plays out in the market with all the other Linux-based operating systems running on netbooks. I think the key thing here is how easy people can adapt to the new Google Chrome OS compared to the majority of users already using Windows.

Even though Linux has had a head start in the netbook arena, Microsoft was able to catch up with the use of Windows XP because a lot of existing users are already familiar with Windows.

With price as another driving factor, I wonder if this will show in the total price that the ordinary consumer will see. The experience with Linux on netbooks has been that the price difference wasn’t really that big so much so that the consumer opted to still use a Windows XP based netbook compared to a Linux one.

Google Chrome OS on a desktop PC

I don’t think this is going anywhere in the near future. Google has to really convince the game developers to support the OS. One thing that I think has to a major extent hindered the growth of Linux is the lack of support by the game developers. I for one still use Windows simply because a lot of games don’t run on Linux. Maybe Google can put up a pot to encourage game developers to port their games to the Google Chrome OS.

Android on Netbooks

I’ve seen quite a number of netbooks being demoed to run Android. I wonder what’s wrong with working with Android as well to make it run on netbooks. An obvious thing is probably the windowing layer on Android — so why not use the same Linux kernel core of Android and just create a new windowing layer above it.

Well, we’ll soon see next year how it plays out although I’m not as excited as when Google’s Android OS was going to be released.