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Channel Z ! Chromium OS

Discussion in 'Technology' started by Ricambi America, Apr 4, 2010.

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  1. Ricambi America

    Ricambi America F1 World Champ
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    #1 Ricambi America, Apr 4, 2010
    As the essential geek never dies, I thought it was time to screw with a perfectly good netbook tonight and install the Alpha (or barely Beta) Chromium O/S on my EeePC tonight.

    Ummm.... I'm on it now. Pretty damn cool. Every website I've visited renders perfectly. Boot time is wicked fast -- 10-12 seconds, based on my atomic-sync EcoDrive watch (thanks Chris VTC!).

    I used the Hexxah builds of Chomium, and installed to a USB key from which my machine booted. The hard-drive never spins. It is nowhere close to Windows or SnowLeopard.... but who cares? 99% of what I do on my netbook is web-based. For these apps, it is damn zippy.

    I'll try running it all week and see how it goes. I suspect the already amazing (5 hour?) battery life on this machine will spike considerably because there's no HDD to run and less CPU hogging. Give it a whirls, nerds !
     
  2. SilverF20C

    SilverF20C Formula 3

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    #2 SilverF20C, Apr 5, 2010
    Is this where you downloaded it? http://chromeos.hexxeh.net ?

    Would love to hear more about your day-to-day impressions after using it for a while. Basically, it's an OS on a USB drive that you can just hotswap and run, but quickly revert back to whatever OS you have on the original machine, correct?
     
  3. TheBigEasy

    TheBigEasy F1 World Champ
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    #3 TheBigEasy, Apr 5, 2010
    I've been waiting for this myself as well.

    How long do you think until they start selling PC/Netbooks with only Google's OS pre-installed?

    I am pretty running 100% Google already on my Vista PC... I'd love to just cut out the middle man. The only things I'd miss are iTunes and Skype... (and even Skype will go away once Google merges Google Talk with their new Google Voice app).
     
  4. Ricambi America

    Ricambi America F1 World Champ
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    #4 Ricambi America, Apr 5, 2010
    Google Talk works on my Asus. YouTube videos work fine and the audio works fine too.

    iTunes would be an impossibility because the music would have to reside in the cloud, which Apple doesn't permit (at least I don't think so). OOTH, Pandora might work,

    I'll take this netbook to the office today (I'm on it now) and take some photos for everyone to see.
     
  5. Ricambi America

    Ricambi America F1 World Champ
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    #5 Ricambi America, Apr 5, 2010
    Pandora works on this Chromium build too.

    For those wanting to try it, it is very simple --- BUT, it is not a finished OS. There are lots of herky-jerky odd things, that just seem unpolished. It is more like a proof of concept, so keep that in mind.
     
  6. Ricambi America

    Ricambi America F1 World Champ
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    #6 Ricambi America, Apr 5, 2010
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 7, 2017
  7. TheBigEasy

    TheBigEasy F1 World Champ
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    #7 TheBigEasy, Apr 5, 2010
    Very cool. Thanks for posting.

    I think I'll hold off on buying my next laptop until I can get one that just has this... but I think I'll stick with Windows for my desktop.
     
  8. Ricambi America

    Ricambi America F1 World Champ
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    #8 Ricambi America, Apr 5, 2010
    2:47pm. Machine has been on wifi all day (about 6 hours), and battery is now down to 8%. I think the power management features are actually not as advanced as Windows. So, even though it never spins the harddrive, it still consumes quite a bit and perhaps doesn't sleep the CPU as aggressively.
     
  9. BubblesQuah

    BubblesQuah F1 World Champ
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    #9 BubblesQuah, Apr 7, 2010
    Pretty neat.

    First thing I noticed though were the ads. :(
     
  10. Ricambi America

    Ricambi America F1 World Champ
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    #10 Ricambi America, Apr 8, 2010
    ... so, in an attempt measure things unscientifically, I rebooted my netbook into Windows XP. On this machine basically all I do is access the web via Chrome and use web-based documents, webapps, and RDP back to our servers at Rackspace.

    Then, I proceeded to uninstall Norton Antivirus entirely.

    Reboot machine back into XP.

    The speed difference is astounding. Faster boot, faster launch of Chrome, faster everything.

    Hmmm...

    Maybe for what I do on this netbook, a slimmer AV client is what I really need.
     
  11. nsxnick

    nsxnick Formula 3

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    #11 nsxnick, Apr 9, 2010
    your dog looks tired
     

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