And it will run your life. - Jérôme Flipo

Do we really need yet another windowing system on top of a Linux kernel? - Brome

I don't care about kernel & Co. We need powerful Web apps. I'm soooo tired of downloading and updating software to edit docs, manage my music, video, external devices, etc. - Jérôme Flipo

BTW, I comment your post from http://friendfeed.com/search...: it fast, very fast, and it's funny to see you popping up in the middle of the stream. - Jérôme Flipo

The thing is, apps are not everything. Functionalities built in the OS can have a huge importance for the end user (and the developers as well). We'll see what comes out of this project, but it'll need a lot of mojo to make me stop using OS X. - Brome

I'm on OS X since June 18 (after many years on XP). I may not like it, but above all, I don't really "use" it: I use Firefox, Firefox, Firefox, Chrome, Chrome, Chrome, iTunes, VLC and Lightroom. Now, I want to edit and manage everything in the browser (no update, no download, full power to the websites). I know that what http://code.google.com/p... is for, but so many experts said that adding this layer on top of an old OS was plain stupid. That's why I'm very interested in Chrome OS. - Jérôme Flipo

OS is 'all'.. (security, network management etc..). And a good windowing system can impact even on developer's creativity.. - Thierry R. Andriamirado

Question is: why does Google choosed to build another Linux distribution, instead of building Chrome on top of another one ;) - Thierry R. Andriamirado

My favorite feature in OS X is Spotlight. Spotlight does exactly what FF's real-time search does, but for your file system. I love that feature and I don't want to give it up. The problem is that it has to be built directly on the file system. Not in the browser. Not even in the OS, but at a lower level. - Brome

Brome: are you sure? Where did you read that? - Marcos Marado

OK, sorry, forget it, here it is: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009... - Marcos Marado

I think google is doing what linux developers never manage to (sorry guys...) : make a simple alternative to windows for non-geeks people (i mean : user-orientated). Who could do that better than google ? - Stanislas Jourdan

Google Chrome OS will only host WebApps, which is, by design, a huge limitation: how will you play your favorites divx, transfer your mp3's etc ? - BobbySponge from IM

Bobby, who said "only webapps"? And why can't a browser do with some good NaCl technology? - Jérôme Flipo

Unfortunately, the google blog suggests it very clearly: google doesn't want to take care of third party native apps (as rythmbox or amarok, or other wonderful Linux apps). And native web app wouldn't simplify application developpement at all. Imagine that google wants to replace a media player like Amarok w/ a native web app: what's the difference ? changing the GUI, re-using the core (80%) or re-wrinting the core ? Impossible. Google wants it coming soon, they'll only develop web app linked w/ their wonderful web services, and that's all :) - BobbySponge

Looks like they sort of want to kill the desktop apps. May be a good thing. Well, many web apps can work offline now (Google Docs or GMail for instance) so maybe we need to change the way we look at applications, and consider them mainly as webapps that are also able to work offline when we're not connected. - Brome

Google realized that most users (such as my mother for example) only use the web side of the computer. Reading news, posting photos, sending mails, listening to music via deezer or spotify... In a way, many of them use computers as thin clients. Google Os intend to give them a perfect Os without technical related issues. Ok, we DO need filesystem oriented apps and many other things. Does my mother or any non-geek else need to know about the way all that stuff runs ? - DAL

I really don't think Google is just releasing yet another Linux distro. I think they're serious about using the browser as a platform, and Chrome itself will be the GUI, with Native Client as the API. - Victor Ganata

Chrome as GUI ? Prepare to have much more memory than 2 Go - DAL

DAL, does Chrome use that much memory? I ran some tests and found that it used a little less memory than Firefox or Safari. I didn't compare them to Opera because, well, it was supposed to be a serious test. - Brome from email

Lol. Chrome is using one thread by tab. Memory usage goes critical as you open more tabs. (maybe a bit like firefox). For example, I have 3 tabs opened yet : start tab, gmail and FF. Chrome uses over 110 Mo for now... Maybe a new test is necessary. - DAL from IM

So, my previous test was running under XP. Let's try another thing : (not a serious test). I am on a Edubuntu 8.04, firefox running with 3 static tabs : 101 Mo. We need indeed a more relevant and serious test. - DAL

Ok, DAL. But if you open like 30 tabs in each browser and close them, Chrome will give back the unused memory after it's killed the process, whereas Firefox tends not to be so nice. - Brome from email

+1 for you ... - DAL

BobbySponge: media applications similar to amarok or rhythmbox can be run in-browser using javascript or flash, and the files may be web-based similar to pandora or last.fm music players - Mike Chelen

Mike: javascript or flash could run heavy apps like Amarok, so we could imagine having a kind of media framework, a piece of Amarok, running locally and a web app driving the framework, the media files located online ? is that what you mean ? - BobbySponge from IM