How not to fake Google Chrome OS
What the hell, I'll bite. I followed the link.
The first thing I noticed is that the link doesn't point to a Google Code project. That's kind of odd, since all of Google's other open source goodies are hosted there - like Chromium, for example. I'll play along anyway. I clicked through and downloaded the torrent from Mininova.
What's provided is a tarballed VMWare machine image. Built with SUSE studio. ORLY?
Upon loading the machine, I'm given a pretty standard (though Chrome-themed) Grub loader. The failsafe entry made me chuckle, because it's safe to assume that this thing is fail. Moving on!
Now the desktop has loaded, and I'm prompted to set Chrome as the default browser. Ok, so I'm to assume that Google has - for some reason - chosen not to pre-set this? I'll suspend my disbelief again for the time being. Also, the online help shortcut points to help.opensuse.org, which doesn't have anything to do with Google. I'm willing to bet Google would at least link to a blank placeholder page on one of their own domains.
Let's go one step further.
Let's go one step further.
Now the cheese has slid completely off the cracker. Evolution and Openoffice.Org are installed. Why? There's no possible way Google is going to ship either of those when they have their own alternatives to push.
To top it all off, the Google apps you'd expect to see front-and-center on Chrome OS are buried in the "more application" menu.
Now, I'm all for enthusiasts who want to blue-sky their vision of what Chrome OS might look like. If your goal is convincing people, however, you're going to have to be a little bit stealthier than this attempt was.
I will say this much - the virtual machine is nice and zippy and Chrome works pretty well (Flash included). If you haven't played with Chrome on Linux before, you might actually want to download this thing and try it out.
To top it all off, the Google apps you'd expect to see front-and-center on Chrome OS are buried in the "more application" menu.
Now, I'm all for enthusiasts who want to blue-sky their vision of what Chrome OS might look like. If your goal is convincing people, however, you're going to have to be a little bit stealthier than this attempt was.
I will say this much - the virtual machine is nice and zippy and Chrome works pretty well (Flash included). If you haven't played with Chrome on Linux before, you might actually want to download this thing and try it out.
