Monday, October 5, 2009

Chrome OS – The Unofficial Version

Although Google has not released any official versions, demos, or even screenshots of the upcoming Chrome OS, you can get a feel for what it might be like with the unofficial Chrome OS Linux project.

chrome os - Start Screen

Built from SUSE Studios, the Chrome OS Linux is basically is a light install of SUSE Linux containing that latest developer build of Chrome for Linux that launches by default on startup. You can either download either a virtual hard drive with Chrome OS installed to run it inside Virtual Box or VMware, or you can burn the Linux distro onto a disk and install it to your hard drive. The files are compressed in the .tar.gz format so you can use the free 7-Zip program to extract them on to the local drive.

When you start up Chrome OS Linux, the Google Chrome browser will automatically run and will ask you to choose whether to set Chrome as the default browser and to send anonymous data to Google about the browser. Everything should be automatically setup for you to quickly browse the web. Most websites will work fine though the Flash player is not supported in this version of the Google Chrome browser.

chrome os - First run

Google Chrome Browser - Linux

So if you’re feeling adventurous and would like to see a glimpse of Google’s vision for computing in the future, check out Chrome OS Linux. Even if the real Chrome OS turns out much different than this, you will still be able to easily browse the internet with the speed and efficiency that Chrome provides today on Windows.

Originally published at Digital Inspiration

No comments: