Size of Chrome OS

[Stephen Pretty]

Can anyone explain to me why Chrome OS is so large, Given that it is
little more than a linux kernel and a web browser?

There are perfectly viable linux distros available at less than
100Mbyte (e.g. Puppy, Damn Small Linux). Tiny core is 10Mbyte (plus
you then need to download a browser).

I writing this using Chrome OS running on an early ASUS EEE 2G Surf PC
(build courtesy of hexxeh). In it's 2G memory, it has a fully featured
Linux, including Open Office - and there is still some room left for
user data! Chrome OS seems to be a little larger than 2G.

I do think the developers need to think seriously about the size. A
smaller Chrome OS would attract many more users (faster to download,
more useful on older handware) - and also enable it to be used on a
wider range of new low cost hardware platforms.

[Martin Bligh]

> Chrome OS seems to be a little larger than 2G.

Where do you get that from?

[Chris Masone]

(resending from @chromium.org)

 

1) The ChromiumOS you're talking about has two copies of the system software partition and an empty user partition in it.  It is meant to be easy for devs to create and to dump onto their machines, as that is the primary behavior we need to support at this stage of the project.  I believe that actual space required for system software these days is <700MB, and a gzipped image is < 350MB.

2) The build system has been under active development over the past month, and there is much traffic on IRC and the email lists about it.  One of the main benefits of this (in addition to cross-compilation) is that we will be able to trim the dependency tree of the system and drastically reduce image size.

3) it's not just a kernel and a web browser.  It's X, it's data to support text input in a myriad of non-western languages, it's support for video and sound...it's a lot of things.  That said, we know there are dependencies pulled in that we don't actually need.  

I'm curious...did you find nothing in your search through the list archives?  If you go to http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/discussion-groups, you can see that for traffic before 1/21 you need to search the old lists (before they were hosted at chromium.org).  Or did you just assume that we haven't thought about this issue?

[zfjagann]

Well the image to install on a Flash Drive requires a 4gb flash drive.
I am aware that this also includes space for user data, however.

I think it would be nice if the OS was smaller, but I think it's too
early in development to worry about cutting things out or seriously
reducing the size.

And 2gb isn't bad for a fully featured OS. The bare Ubuntu barely fits
on a CD image. After I install a few programs I use daily that aren't
on the bare install, it easily comes up to 2gb.