Readers of like mind to my own may be interested to know that the Chromium OS (the open source version of Google’s upcoming Chrome Operating System) is up and running and available for anyone with a 2gig usb stick and a willingness to run a few terminal commands.
In point of fact, an endeavoring 17-year-old, European lad has spent a good part of the last year furnishing some 200-thousand odd experimental souls with early alpha releases of the OS. I have been dimly aware of such things, but now that the actual release is not so far away, I figured I might give it a shot. Thus it is that I find myself typing this note to you from an “operating system” that looks a whole lot like my normal, chrome web browser.
For anyone who spends as much time on the internet as I do these days, you will find much to enjoy about Chrome OS. It’s an operating system that only does Internet. Nothing of any real note is kept on the computer, hence the smidgeon of memory necessary to run it. Given my propensity for Google Docs, Gmail, Google News, Youtube and all of the other, allied services the internet supplies (twitter, tumblr, my banking), I could be quite happy for most of my computing time on an OS like Chrome. Sure, I like a hard drive, but that might soon start to seem like a comfort born of familiarity more than of any particular utility.
I won’t bore the reader with a point-by-point review of the Chrome OS. Frankly, given the early state of things, it wouldn’t be accurate, or fair (running an OS off of a USB stick is a decidedly stop and go affair). But if you have a few hours and a spare flash drive around the house, you might think about giving it a whirl. If only to take a peek at the future.