google chrome OS

I try not to get too geeky here (and have often contemplated forking geek posts to a new blog altogether because I often feel like I have a lot of geeky things to say regarding Linux and software that will alienate 99.9999% of my current audience – to fork or not to fork?), but that said, I feel like I have to be all anarchic and go against the tide of Google Chrome OS posts out in the blogosphere today, and say that I… am really not all that excited about it. Yet.

The thing that strikes me about Google Chrome OS – and what I’m sure a lot of other regular Linux users have also realised – is that it offers nothing radically new enough to warrant all the hype around it. If you want an OS for your netbook that boots up really quick and does nothing except go online, there’s already Jolicloud, and the upcoming gOS Cloud that boots directly into a browser, which is what I imagine Google’s OS will do. There are literally countless Linux distros optimised for netbooks. And if you don’t mind getting your hands a little dirty (it isn’t as hard as it sounds, I’ve tried it!), you can always roll your own Linux OS with something like Arch Linux, which basically starts you off from a command line and lets you install whatever you want on top of the veryVERY basic framework.

In fairness, I’m not techie enough to know how to wrangle the Linux kernel such that my OS boots directly into a browser, but I’m sure other people are. And if I had a netbook, nothing would be stopping me from using one of the already available distros that do something similar. I think I just don’t see right now what Google could do, other than add their brand name to the project, that could truly revolutionise netbook computing. On the bright side, I’m guessing a LOT more users will be converted to Linux netbooks if Google throws their weight behind it – and as it will be open source, I’m sure it won’t take long for intrepid developers to fork it into all sorts of yummy variations.

I don’t really subscribe to the “Google is evil” theory, and I still feel that they have the potential and know-how to really pull out something brilliant, so… more of the waiting game for now, I guess. Right now, for the life of me, I can’t imagine what it could possibly be. This is probably why I don’t work for Google (creativity fail)!