Chrome OS

This week there has been a lot of press dedicated to Google's ChromeOS. I have been running versions from Hexxeh for most of the year. Here's a link to his ChromeOS page. Last week I finally bought a computer capable of running ChromeOS the way it was intended. I have a Samsung N150 Plus with an Intel N450 atom processor and 1GB of ram.

So, on to Hexxeh's ChromeOS.  He has 2 builds of interest.  Both can be run as a LiveOS, which means it can be run directly from a usb memory stick.

The first, FLOW, is a stable ChromeOS build with quite a bit of hardware support.  It easily installs to a usb memory stick.  I use usb-imagewriter from the Ubuntu repository and have run it on a variety of laptops from Toshiba and Compaq.  The only issues I have had is with Wi-Fi support, forcing me to tether my android phone as a modem.  It's easy to install and there are even instructions for a dual boot configuration in his FAQ.  I have had it dual booted with Win7 and Ubuntu, using the grub2 bootloader.  It has full hardware support on my netbook.  Hexxeh also makes available information for installing FLOW directly to your hard drive.  CAUTION, if you delete everything, it is your own fault.

The second is called VANILLA.  I am using the latest build, dated 10/28/2010.  It installs easily to a usb memory stick.  I am using the same usb-imagewriter from the Ubuntu repository as with FLOW.  

I am currently clueless as to why the disc gets partitioned the way it does under the VANILLA build.  The FLOW build has 3 partitions, the VANILLA build (at least the latest one) has 12 partitions.  That said, I have failed miserably at dual booting VANILLA with anything else.  So, I just installed it as the only operating system on my netbook.  Instructions for installing to your hard drive are very easy.  Ctrl-Alt-T for terminal then install <dev>.  If you leave the device blank, it will install to your primary hard drive.  Again, if you delete everything, it is your own fault.  Remember, you don't have to install either one to your computer to try them, you can run them directly from the USB drive you wrote the image to.

The latest builds of VANILLA are very similar to those debuted by Google on their ChromeOS netcast this week.  We start out by entering our gmail login information, taking our picture and selecting our network source.  That's it.  There really aren't many details that follow.  If you are familiar with Google's Chrome browser, well, that's exactly what you will get every time you start your computer.

First boot of the LiveOS, install and reboot took about 8 minutes.  After install, ChromeOS will boot in about 20 seconds.

A few things to keep in mind.  In Windows, you can use PowerISO to create an ISO file from the IMG file provided by Hexxeh.   From there you can install the ISO to a usb memory stick.  I was not able to build a successful live boot USB from windows 7 using live usb-creator from Fedora.  UNetbootin was the ONLY application that worked from Win7.