Mike Levin

Like so many others, I downloaded Chrome OS from gdgt.com today. For those not in on the adventure, Google only released the source code today, and an enterprising Engadget-like site, in a wonderfully successful publicity ploy, compiled and installed it onto a “virtual computer” for distribution, so people like me could preview it without the pain. A Here’s the virtual machine part of the story first: I started out with Sun’s VirtualBox, since that’s what was installed on my machine, but it didn’t work. It appeared to get stuck on a black screen after hitting the virtual drive and network for a few seconds. I did switch from NAT to virtual network interface, per the instructions, and tried quite a few other setting variations. Eventually, I gave in and went through the painful download and install process for VMWare Player, which I have been avoiding on this machine, due to how it appears to pollute your system with new network adapters and drivers. I know Sun’s VirtualBox must be doing similar things, but it doesn’t keep shoving it in your face the way VMWare does. In fact, I’ve been using QEMU a lot latey, which doesn’t pollute your machine AT ALL. In fact, it can be run from off of a USB keychain without so much as an install on the host machine… from a PC host OR a Mac host. Nope, you don’t even need Darwin installed on the OS X host, if you use the Q emulator on the Mac to create the image. Did I mention it’s free and open source? But the awesomeness of QEMU is another story… back to Chrome OS. The only VMWare adjustment you really need to make is switch the NAT networking option to a virtual adapter, and “play” the VMWare session. It’s a bit of a trick to get the hard drive connected. You actually have to start out by making a new Virtual Machine (under either VirtualBox or VMWare), and then switch off the virtual hard drive that it’s working off of. In other words, they did not export it as a virtual appliance with all the configuration files to pull it directly in. Once you get the hang of swapping out the virtual hard drive, it’s no biggie. Oh yeah… the ChromeOS is exactly what I predicted—just enough Linux to get the machine booted and the Chrome browser sitting on top of it. Every app is a Web app, and since there’s no apps developed specifically for it yet, it’s simply a Web browser right now. That’s not to downplay the significance. Linux will never mainstream versus OS X or Windows based on KDE or Gnome. But take KDE and Gnome out of the picture, and basically make a box that boots to a browser that’s capable of running native code that’s sandboxed per tab for all kinds of fun, fast, lightweight net devices—well, THAT could mainstream. I’m pumped about this, and I’m also pumped about how Google released the open source a year ahead of plans for any consumer release. I’m also pumped about how virtual machine technologies are sparing people around the world from having to find spare hardware, figure out how to compile and install an experimental operating system. You just download a file, run some software, adjust a few settings, and bam! I bet today was one of VMWare’s biggest download days ever.

Like so many others, I downloaded Chrome OS from gdgt.com today. For those not in on the adventure, Google only released the source code today, and an enterprising Engadget-like site, in a wonderfully successful publicity ploy, compiled and installed it onto a “virtual computer” for distribution, so people like me could preview it without the pain.

A Here’s the virtual machine part of the story first:

I started out with Sun’s VirtualBox, since that’s what was installed on my machine, but it didn’t work. It appeared to get stuck on a black screen after hitting the virtual drive and network for a few seconds. I did switch from NAT to virtual network interface, per the instructions, and tried quite a few other setting variations.

Eventually, I gave in and went through the painful download and install process for VMWare Player, which I have been avoiding on this machine, due to how it appears to pollute your system with new network adapters and drivers. I know Sun’s VirtualBox must be doing similar things, but it doesn’t keep shoving it in your face the way VMWare does.

In fact, I’ve been using QEMU a lot latey, which doesn’t pollute your machine AT ALL. In fact, it can be run from off of a USB keychain without so much as an install on the host machine… from a PC host OR a Mac host. Nope, you don’t even need Darwin installed on the OS X host, if you use the Q emulator on the Mac to create the image. Did I mention it’s free and open source? But the awesomeness of QEMU is another story… back to Chrome OS.

The only VMWare adjustment you really need to make is switch the NAT networking option to a virtual adapter, and “play” the VMWare session. It’s a bit of a trick to get the hard drive connected. You actually have to start out by making a new Virtual Machine (under either VirtualBox or VMWare), and then switch off the virtual hard drive that it’s working off of. In other words, they did not export it as a virtual appliance with all the configuration files to pull it directly in. Once you get the hang of swapping out the virtual hard drive, it’s no biggie.

Oh yeah… the ChromeOS is exactly what I predicted—just enough Linux to get the machine booted and the Chrome browser sitting on top of it. Every app is a Web app, and since there’s no apps developed specifically for it yet, it’s simply a Web browser right now. That’s not to downplay the significance. Linux will never mainstream versus OS X or Windows based on KDE or Gnome. But take KDE and Gnome out of the picture, and basically make a box that boots to a browser that’s capable of running native code that’s sandboxed per tab for all kinds of fun, fast, lightweight net devices—well, THAT could mainstream.

I’m pumped about this, and I’m also pumped about how Google released the open source a year ahead of plans for any consumer release. I’m also pumped about how virtual machine technologies are sparing people around the world from having to find spare hardware, figure out how to compile and install an experimental operating system. You just download a file, run some software, adjust a few settings, and bam!

I bet today was one of VMWare’s biggest download days ever.