Releasing the Chromium OS open source project

[Agus Hamonangan]

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/releasing-chromium-os-open-source.html


In July we announced that we were working on Google Chrome OS, an open
source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the
web.

Today we are open-sourcing the project as Chromium OS. We are doing
this early, a year before Google Chrome OS will be ready for users,
because we are eager to engage with partners, the open source
community and developers. As with the Google Chrome browser,
development will be done in the open from this point on. This means
the code is free, accessible to anyone and open for contributions. The
Chromium OS project includes our current code base, user interface
experiments and some initial designs for ongoing development. This is
the initial sketch and we will color it in over the course of the next
year.

We want to take this opportunity to explain why we're excited about
the project and how it is a fundamentally different model of
computing.

First, it's all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire
experience takes place within the browser and there are no
conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to
deal with installing, managing and updating programs.

Second, because all apps live within the browser, there are
significant benefits to security. Unlike traditional operating
systems, Chrome OS doesn't trust the applications you run. Each app is
contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and
viruses to infect your computer. Furthermore, Chrome OS barely trusts
itself. Every time you restart your computer the operating system
verifies the integrity of its code. If your system has been
compromised, it is designed to fix itself with a reboot. While no
computer can be made completely secure, we're going to make life much
harder (and less profitable) for the bad guys. If you dig security,
read the Chrome OS Security Overview or watch the video.

Most of all, we are obsessed with speed. We are taking out every
unnecessary process, optimizing many operations and running everything
possible in parallel. This means you can go from turning on the
computer to surfing the web in a few seconds. Our obsession with speed
goes all the way down to the metal. We are specifying reference
hardware components to create the fastest experience for Google Chrome
OS.

There is still a lot of work to do, and we're excited to work with the
open source community. We have benefited hugely from projects like
GNU, the Linux Kernel, Moblin, Ubuntu, WebKit and many more. We will
be contributing our code upstream and engaging closely with these and
other open source efforts.

Google Chrome OS will be ready for consumers this time next year. Sign
up here for updates or if you like building your operating system from
source, get involved at chromium.org.

Lastly, here is a short video that explains why we're so excited about
Google Chrome OS.