Hackers puts the shine on Chrome OS

Less than two weeks ago, the source code for Google’s Chrome OS was released on November 19, 2009 under open source licensing as Chromium OS.


 It took less than a day, for the first hacked Chrome OS developer build to go live on theInternet. Very soon it got torrented and hosted, courtesy of a geek celeb who goes why the name of Hexxeh.

The first build required 4GB, but a new and vastly improved ‘diet build’ is now available as a 300MB direct download, it extracts to a 950MB image that can run off a USB stick.

The OS is also available as a torrent on PirateBay, and lots of other trackers. What’s more, support is vastly improved in the newer builds. The minimalist OS can do nothing other than browse the Internet, eliciting snide remarks from a Linux fanbase. “Basically you get a Linux OS that can do nothing but look at Web pages.” But that misses the point.

This OS should work out exceedingly well on an aging PC or an underpowered netbook. It’s also great for your grandma or technically challenged siblings, as there will be little scope of it being infected with viruses or spyware. It cuts all the flab, and offers blindingly fast browsing speeds on underpowered PCs.

We tested the Chromium OS build on an Acer Aspire 12-inch netbook. The Chromium OS booted in less than ten seconds, and while the wireless connectivity did not work, it was able to browse using a LAN cable.

Programs are launched using a button in the upper-left corner of the screen. Here, you can find the whole stable of Google’s services, including Gmail, Picasa, and Youtube. The OS also links to other web applications like Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Pandora, Facebook, and Twitter.

Beyond this, it provides only the bare minimum: a calculator, a clock, and a network status indicator. There isn’t even a notepad for you to save things on if you aren’t online.

The experience on the whole, is quite put together at this point, but provides a free OS that you don’t need a license, or an antivirus for. Better driver compatibility is expected in the future.

Hexxeh, who is also available on Twitter says that “In theory, we have even better compatibility that that chart suggests, that chart refers to compatibility on a fresh unaltered build. I’ve added the WiFi drivers from Ubuntu to this to try and fix the WiFi for people having issues.”

The Web site maintains a growing compatibility list out here that lists out problems or issues, mostly related to wireless support. From the list, we were able to ascertain that the Chromium OS build will work flawlessly on the LenovoThinkPad T400, ASUS Eee PC 1008HA and Eee PC 700 amongst others. With new builds, the compatibility list grow larger.

Kshitij Sobti reporting for Thinkdigit.com has mentioned an interesting spin-off whose usability beyond just netbooks. “ChromeiumOS64 also features the Xen hypervisor, which lets you run Linux or Windows XP as a virtual machine within Chromium OS.” he said. A copy of the OS can be downloaded from: http:// chromeos.hexxeh.net


source::ET