After its announcement last year, we feared it might be the end of 2010 before Google's netbook-centric operating system saw the light of day. But Google has opted to make the code of its Chrome OS open source, and it's available for anyone to download at www.chromium.org
To run Chrome, you need to compile it into a bootable operating system from the source. We downloaded a compiled build from Dell's community website, specifically tweaked to run on the Dell Mini 10v netbook.
The open-source development versions of both the Chrome browser and Chrome OS are differentiated from official release binaries by the use of the name Chromium, rather than Chrome. Google likes all pre-release third-party builds to be referred to as Chromium, rather than Google Chrome.
Online only
Much like Sun's old assertion that "the network is the computer", Google's central computing tenet is that browser-based applications are the future. The result is the first true Cloud-based operating system.
Chromium OS requires an internet connection to be of any use. Boot up and you'll find none of the usual operating-system furniture, bar a clock and two tiny icons that produce dropdown menus when clicked to show the current network connection and battery status.
There's no accessible desktop and no way of browsing the local filing system. There are no applications bar the Chrome browser. The browser is the interface, pure and simple, and there's no other view onto the computer. It's the very antithesis of the classic Linux environment, stuffed with spurious applications and customisable settings.
In this build of Chromium, in fact, customisable settings for the entire OS number a grand total of five: you can set the time zone, touchpad speed and sensitivity, and enable tap-to-click and vertical edge scrolling. And that's it.
There is, nonetheless, a slick window manager. There are no traditional-style windows in Chromium; each simply takes over the full screen. At the moment, there are only two types of window to manage: Chrome OS windows, plus that sparse options screen. But, hit <Alt-Tab> to switch between them and the existing screen swishes off to the left, and the second screen swishes in from the right to replace it.
It's a very usable implementation, and the choice not to take up screen space with window frames and icons makes sense for netbook displays. The only other GUI feature, beyond what the browser usually offers, is a Chrome icon in the top-left corner.
Click it and you get a tab that represents a sort of web-based Start menu, but it boils down to a list of shortcuts to standard web apps such as Gmail, plus other Google-owned sites including YouTube and Google Books.
Under the hood
Underneath Chrome OS lies a Linux kernel, patched and modified to achieve the fastest possible boot-times. The traditional Init daemon, which has been responsible for booting Linux systems since the year dot, has been ousted.
The replacement is called Upstart, developed by Canonical for the latest versions of Ubuntu Linux. Upstart is a long-overdue addition to Linux, able to cope with arbitrary addition and removal of devices (especially USB drives) far better.
Its main advantage is the fact it's asynchronous: Upstart can initiate system processes in parallel, and processes don't need to be fully up and running for the computer to boot into the desktop. It's a massive boon for start-up times, and Chromium pairs it with some sensible optimisations for modern hardware. It doesn't, for instance, bother to scan for a floppy drive at boot-time.
It works too. At a recent press conference, Google claimed boot-times of seven seconds for Chrome OS. And based on the performance of this Chromium build, this isn't an exaggeration.
A cold boot of our Mini 10v test netbook gave us a start-up time to the Chromium browser of 31 seconds, excluding the delay while we manually typed a username and password at the login screen. But, taking the time from first access of the boot drive to the login screen, we measured an average of only 15 seconds, and just three seconds more to a Chrome browser window.
Chromium OS application performance essentially comes down to the speed of the Chromium browser. And it's impressive. In fact, based on the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, it's around a third faster than in Windows XP.
Under Chromium OS in the Chromium browser, the benchmark returned an average score of 2200ms; under Windows XP SP2, the same test running under the latest Windows version of Chrome averaged 3100ms. Power options aren't available in this build, so battery life for our test netbook was only two hours, but this is bound to be addressed in later builds.
Once you get past the slightly claustrophobic feeling of being unable to get to a desktop, Chromium makes a lot of sense. But what's less clear is whether Google's attempts to push the world into exclusive use of web-based applications will succeed.
Second opinion with Tim Danton
Chrome OS is a fascinating concept. Since there are no downloadable programs, there's no security risk. Since it's focused on a single task - being a window onto the internet - it's fast. And since it's open-source, it's free.
But companies have been banging a similar thin-client drum for years and they've always come across the same problem: people don't like it. David hints at this problem when he describes "the slightly claustrophobic feeling of being unable to get to a desktop".
Much as everyone moans about Windows, the concept of a rich operating system complete with your choice of programs, your photos, documents and settings, is a comforting one.
And, although Google Chrome OS will be free to download, for it to ever hit the mainstream people will need to go out and buy a netbook running it.
The lack of storage alone is a big problem: we know that netbooks with 8GB solid-state disks never sold well, and eventually were discontinued by manufacturers, because when pushed people will choose a 160GB hard disk instead.
People also opt for names they trust: Microsoft Windows is an established operating system brand, Google Chrome OS is not. "Intel Inside" shifts units; an ARM processor can't compete.
Then we come to the biggest problem. While 3G connections remain unreliable, and Wi-Fi coverage intermittent, Google's vision of an always-connected device hits a frustrating wall.
The Cloud is everywhere in Google HQ, but the rest of us can only be sure of Wi-Fi coverage in our homes and offices. Outside, that fancy new Google netbook becomes a useless brick.
So, while big companies such as Dell may pay lip service to Google Chrome OS (it's handy in price negotiations with Microsoft, after all), it's unlikely they'll ever want to sell them.