Take Chrome OS for a test spin
Some generous individuals have done the heavy lifting for you. Test out Chrome OS in a virtual machine today!
So by now you've either sat through a LiveBlog of Google's Chrome OS event, or you've read our story, Google Chrome OS Unveiled: Speed, Simplicity Stressed. Maybe you've watched the video (embedded below, in case you missed it) Google prepared to introduce Chrome OS to laypeople.
This is all well and good, but launch is a year away and if you're an OS geek you can't wait that long to get a chance to play around with a new OS. Now if you're an Alpha OS geek you can snag the source code and compile a version yourself (for some of us, that's a daunting task), and if you're a really generous Alpha OS geek you might compile a version and share it with the rest of us. And that's just what has happened.
The build comes in the form of a virtual machine, when means you'll need VMWare or VirtualBox running, and of course the image of Chrome OS itself. The folks at gdgt are distributing the latter and they've set up a page with all the links you'll need. You'll need to create a gdgt account if you don't have one yet. The Chrome OS image is only a bit over 300 megs so it's a fast download.
If you need a little more handholding, TechCrunch has a step-by-step guide to getting Chrome OS installed and running using VirtualBox and a Chrome OS torrent they link to.
What better way to pass a Friday than 'researching' an upcoming OS so your company is prepared for it?
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I heard mention that the Chrome OS will have some sort of encryption available a la bitlocker. If it's possible to encrypt personal data using another password or key, then it may have potential for very secure data.... And Ubuntu has an 'encrypt home directory' option, perhaps google should follow suit.
- Dann
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Stored on the internet
Stored on the Internet? Woav. Who's going to buy it? Normal users maybe, but it's not stored on the Internet. It's stored on Google Data Centers. All your e-mails, music, documents stored on servers of the company. We won't have annoying software updates, but we will have "not-annoying" targeted ads, which are gathered from our (?) data stored on the Google servers, sorry the Internet, from Google. What a great milestone for computer usage.Hmmm, not yet
As any OS in its early stages; it lacks a lot. I just hope they intend to improve if they want to make a desktop worthy OS. This internet based OS will not go far, unless of course, you like the cloud computing concept. In the meantime, I think I will keep playing with the Chrome OS and follow it's development.This is such a misleading
This is such a misleading comment... Your hotmail inbox will still be in Microsoft's servers. Flicker pics in flicker's servers, facebook profile in Facebooks's servers and so on.Nothing changes from the web applications as of now. Just you won't have the viruses infections, crashed OS screens, etc...