Just to be clear, I'm not talking about Chrome OS 1.0. You can build that now and (maybe) install it on your netbook, and should be able to buy on hardware next year. All that stuff is, to borrow a word that Google loves to misuse, is a beta. A test. A trial. A first step toward a larger vision, which Google has been hinting at since they branched out from search: In the future, we will live on the internet. We'll be able to do all the things we do on computers now, and probably more, while connected to the cloud. And it'll be great.

Chrome OS is an explicit step towards making this happen, but the version we saw today is just an early, broad step. Google even said so! Despite early talk about how Chrome OS could be a full replacement OS one day, suitable for regular ol' laptops and desktops, today's preannouncement of a version strictly for netbooks included an admission that it would only be intended as a secondary OS. So, what does Google need to see this thing through, and make Chrome as capable as the OSes we're used to using now? Lots:

The Internet Needs to Get Way, Way Faster

And I'm not just talking about higher bandwidth. Broadband connections are pretty quick nowadays, but compared to reading—and especially writing—data to a hard drive, sending bits over the internet is excruciatingly slow. And Chrome OS isn't even really a true web OS: it'll slurp the guts of larger web applications like Gmail and Gcal and effectively make them local, meaning that the kinds of tasks that require low latency and fast load times will run tolerably.

That kind of local storage, along with Javascript technologies like AJAX, is a salve. We need them because communicating with a server for every event in an application would take forever, and make using them miserable. Remember how webmail used to be, before it got all AJAXy? Awful. And it still would be, if not for recent Javascript advances and local storage.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with making web apps local, and Chrome OS will keep doing that forever: it's the only way Chrome OS can work offline. But that doesn't cover everything. What about high-bandwidth tasks like photo and video editing? To do it the way they suggest would require constant syncing between local memory and a remote server. These are basic tasks for a computer. Basic tasks that'll be impossible on Chrome until super-low-latency, 100mbps+ broadband is commonplace, and not only commonplace, but wireless and effectively ubiquitous. That's quite a few years away, even by generous estimates.

Web Apps Will Need To Get Much Better

I'm sure Gmail, Google Reader and Google Calendar will be totally swell in Chrome OS. They're some of the most feature-complete web apps in the world, and they're good enough to replace desktop apps for most people. But what about VoIP apps? Torrent clients? Media players? Image editors? Video editors? There are web apps for almost all of these things, but collectively, they amount to a big bag of dick. Trimming videos with YouTube's tools is nothing like editing them in Final Cut, or even iMovie. Cropping a few images in an online photo editor and playing with their contrast is fine, but what about my bloated Sony RAW files? There are still some massive gaps in the web app world, hence Google's repeated, vague pleas for developers to do better, alright?

Web Standards Will Have To Evolve, Fast

Google wants to replace regular apps with web apps by making web apps more like native apps, in concept and execution. Eventually, the hope is that they could use the new features of HTML5, like local storage, drag and drop, canvas drawing, native animation and location awareness, to have all the powers of a native app. Thing is, HTML5 is just a stepping stone; it'll take more than a few new HTML tags to pave the way for honestly native-seeming applications.

Google's obviously got a lot of leverage over standards bodies like the WHATWG and W3C, so they could help move new HTML capabilities along in theory. But even HTML5 is brand new, and very few people are using that. It'll be at least another generation before developers will be able to code native-equivalent apps in web languages, and that's assuming that standards development keeps heading in that direction. Which it might not.

Someone's Going to Have To Solve the UI Problem

Talking about Chrome OS's interface almost seems like a waste of breath, since your real UI is the internet, which is the very definition of inconsistent. Part of the reason email apps, Twitter apps IM clients, and the like are still so popular is because they offer services that people want in an interface that's consistent with the rest of their system. Web apps offer no such thing.

Sure, if all you use are Google products, you're fine: Your life is blue, white, boxy and clean. But what about when you want to jump over to Meebo? Or Aviary? This kind of inconsistency wouldn't be acceptable in another OS, so it would feel like a compromise here. I suppose you could use tools like Greasemonkey to reformat pages on the client side, but this is hacky and, well, lots of work. We'd need some kind of framework for skins, or something, to make the experience more uniform.

People Will Have To Give Up On Owning Media, an Get Comfortable With Subscription Services

People need their music and videos, and now, most people have collections. That's sooooooo 2009, am I right? For Chrome OS to work, people are going to have warm up to subscription services and streaming media.

Before you get mad at me, forget about Rhapsody and Napster, and think more about your cable company, your wireless company, or your beloved Netflix. Those work, and these kinds of arrangements are going to have to be extended to all media. Which is possible, but also fraught, since you really won't own your media.

The Rest of the (Browser) World Has To Be Onboard

During the announcement, Google made the point that the Chrome browser in Chrome OS won't have any special talents that Chrome elsewhere won't, and that at present it's no more able—in terms of what kinds of web apps it can run—than, say, Firefox. Nobody's going to want to write web apps just for Chrome (that would make them Chrome apps, right?), so it's vital that other browsers support the same new HTML standards that Chrome needs to succeed. Google can go all out supporting the latest, greatest web standards, but unless everyone else does too, nobody—not even Google—is going to write for them.

None of these things are impossible; in fact, most of them sort of feel inevitable, given that they're all just extrapolations of obvious trends from the last few years. They're just optimistic, and sit well in the future. Chrome OS can carry out Google's LET'S ALL LIVE ON THE INTERNET vision when the conditions are right, eventually. But these are long-term bets, measured in years.

That might make sense to a room full of Google engineers. To the rest of us, though? It's abstract. It's strange. It seems gimped. It's largely irrelevant, and it's not all that exciting. Yet.

According to Techcrunch this isn't really a launch, but rathe a chance to give us a first look at the OS, and for Google to detail their actual launch plans (we've been sitting tight with the "late 2010" projection from the initial announcement):

The plan is to give some technical background information as well as show off some demos, we're told. More notably, they will be giving a "complete overview" of the new OS, which they say will launch next year.

Knowing what Chrome OS will look like is only half the fun anyway—three months after it was announced, we still don't really know what the hell it is, or how it's going to work. Soon! [Techcrunch]

The story inspired widespread hyperventilation last week, most of which revolved around a few impassioned quotes:

Here it is, patent number7617530. Thanks, USPTO, for giving Microsoft, which is already a monopoly, a monopoly on something that's been in use since 1980 and wasn't invented by Microsoft. Here's Wikipedia's description of sudo, which you can meaningfully compare to Microsoft's description of its "invention".

This from Groklaw, a site that specializes in free and open source software legal affairs, i.e. exactly this kind of thing. But for whatever reason—zeal? clicks?—their reading of the patent, which we picked up, turn out to overblown. Says Sudo maintainer Todd Miller, via Ars:

I've already received a number of questions about US patent 7,617,530 that some people seem to believe might cover sudo. I don't think that is the case," he wrote. "Sudo simply doesn't work this way. When a command is run via sudo the user is actively running the command as a different user. What is described in the patent is a mechanism whereby an application or the operating system detects that an action needs to be run with increased privileges and automatically prompts the user with a list of potential users that have the appropriate privilege level to perform the task.

So, if not this, then what does the Microsoft patent cover? Back to Ars:

Specifically, it describes a user interface which displays accounts that have the necessary rights to perform an action when the user is blocked from performing an action that requires higher access privileges.

These are similar, but not patent similar.

Turns out, though, that there is a Linux tool called PolicyKit just like what Microsoft patented, which prompts users to switch to a higher-level user account when they hit against a permissions barrier. It was created after the patent was filed, but before it was made public. So, Microsoft, on all counts: not guilty. [ArsTechnica]

Previously, Google had set the release date had been set roughly at H2 of 2010. In their words,

[T]he first netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010

Of course, that's when a dedicated product will launch, as in, a netbook from a prominent manufacturer running Chrome OS as sold. But Google did go on to say in the same announcement that that they'd "soon be working with the open source community," after which Eric Schmidt dropped a few hints that we could see Chrome OS, most likely in beta form, "as early as this year." So, that brings us to the new rumor: TechCrunch has it from a "reliable source" that we'll see Chrome OS within a week, available as a download. It'll have limited driver support, meaning Google will only endorse installation on a limited number of computers—mostly netbooks—including a number of Eee PCs.

The obvious question now is what will it look like, though I'd like to remind you that, in all likelihood we've been given a pretty good preview: Remember the version of Chrome browser for Chrome OS that leaked for Linux machines a few weeks ago? It had (or has, above) a nonoperational Start-style button, a clock embedded in the title bar, and a minimalist interface, and it's probably a pretty good indicator as to where Google's going with this. [TechCrunch]

Besides it's impressive top speed, the interesting thing about the bike is that it features a dedicated IP address, on-board web server, WiFi and Linux.

Mavizen is calling the TTX02 a "laptop on wheels", signaling their approach to electric motorcycles via a consumer electronics perspective. According to Azhar Hussain, TTXGP founder and entrepreneur, the consumer electronics perspective comes from the notion that "we are living in a click culture and connectivity is the key, across the board. Our approach was to find how we could make a laptop go racing. We think electric vehicles have more in common with consumer electronics than traditional automotive."

Of course, the "consumer" part of all this doesn't necessarily mean you or I will be checking our email flying down the road on this thing. The bike is going to be produced in a limited 50-unit run and aimed towards the racing scene—a development platform of sorts that can be used by professionals to customize the bike to fit their needs. Although, I suppose it is not impossible for the average Joe to get their hands on one—if you are willing to pony up the $41,300 asking price that is. [Asphalt and Rubber]

Maybe he's just a laid back guy. Maybe the copies are pirated. Maybe it's because there is a shitload of copies and only like one appears to have been sold. Actually, Microsoft tried to spoil the Japan Linux Symposium by setting up a booth across the street. Obviously, Torvalds was amused. [Picasa via Engadget]

The Else Intuition, aside from being one of the first phones to use Access' Linux Platform v3.0 OS, is a 3.47-inch 480x854 slab of handset, with an OMAP 3430 processor, 16GB of internal memory, a five-megapixel camera, A-GPS, and 3.5mm headphone jack. It's capable hardware to start with, and the Palmy (an honestly, kind of sleepy) v3.0 OS has been slapped with a completely new OpenGL-accelerated interface, codeveloped by Access and Emblaze, who had promised an "ultimate holistic device," whatever that means, late last year.

It's a lot to process, and there's not a ton of info to run with here: There's no hands-on to indicate if this left-field software is any good, and the companies won't get any more specific than "[worldwide] operator evaluations are currently underway" as far as potential release dates go. That said, this looks like decent hardware, albeit seriously bricklike, and newness counts for a lot in mobile software. (Pre, anyone?) Maybe this whole Access fiasco wasn't so crazy after all? [Access via Impress]

The Hero's kernel is the bottommost part of its software; it's the part that manages basic functions like memory allocation, device drivers and the like. For modders to be able to access and compile this is great news for potential Hero modders, who'll be able to drop this kernel into cooked ROMs with all manner of interfaces, app configurations, performance tweaks and the like. What this won't do is help bring features like the Sense UI to other handsets—though modders are doing pretty well with that on their own—because those components are distinct from the kernel.

While this might seem like a generous move on HTC's part, it's not: The Hero's kernel is a modified Android kernel, which is in turn a heavily modified Linux kernel. In other words, parts of it are irreversibly open source, which means that HTC is legally required to release this code—they're actually kinda late here. [HTC]

There's all kinds of new hotness in Snow Leopard and Windows 7, but what's old and busted is when stuff crashes, even on the newest OSes. This is how that happens, and why it's thankfully happening less and less.

There are about a bajllion ways for a computer to crash, from hardware to software, so we're going to start with the little crashes and work our way towards kernel panics and BSODs.

Application Crashes

Broadly speaking, the two most common causes of crashes, according to Microsoft's Chris Flores, a director on the Windows team, are programs not following the rules, and programmers not anticipating a certain condition (so the program flips out). The most obvious example of the former is a memory error. Basically, an operating system gives a program a certain amount of memory to use, and it's up to the program to stay inside the boundaries. If a program makes a grab for memory that doesn't belong to it, it's corrupting another program's—or even the OS's—memory. So the OS makes the program crash, to protect everything else.

In the other case, unexpected conditions can make a program crash if it wasn't designed with good exception handling. Flores' "oversimplified" example is this: Suppose you have a data field, like for a credit card number. A good programmer would make sure you type just numbers, or provide a way for the program to deal with you typing symbols or letters. But if the program expects one type of data and gets another, and it's not designed to handle something it doesn't expect, it can crash.

A completely frozen application is one that has crashed, even though it stays on your screen, staring at you. It's just up to you to reach for the Force Quit and tell the computer to put it out of its misery. Sometimes, obviously, the computer kills it for you.

Crashes, as you probably experience almost daily, are limited to programs. Firefox probably crashes on you all the time. Or iTunes (oh God, iTunes). But with today's operating systems, if you hit an omega-level, take-down-your-whole-system crashes, something's likely gone funky down at the kernel level.

System Crashes

The kernel is the gooey core of the operating system. If you think of an operating system as a Tootsie pop with layers of sugary shell, it's down at the lowest level managing the basic things that the OS needs to work, and takes more than a few licks to get to.

More than likely, your computer completely crashes out way less than it used to—or at least, way less than Windows 95. There's a few reasons for that. A major reason, says Maximum PC Editor Maximus Will Smith, is that Apple and Microsoft have spent a lot of time moving stuff that used to run at really low level, deep in the guts of the OS, up a few layers into the user space, so an application error that would've crashed a whole system by borking something at the kernel level just results in an annoying program-level hang up. More simply put, OSes have been getting better at isolating and containing problems, so a bad app commits suicide, rather than suicide bombing your whole computer.

This is part of the reason drivers—the software that lets a piece of hardware, like a video card talk to your OS and other programs—are a bigger source of full-on crashes than standard apps nowadays when it comes to modern operating systems. By their nature, drivers have pretty deep access, and the kernel sits smack in the middle of that, says Flores. So if something goes wrong with a driver, it can result in some bigtime ka-blooey. Theoretically, signed (i.e., vetted) drivers help avoid some of the problems, but take graphics drivers, which were a huge problem with Vista crashes at launch: Flores says that "some of the most complex programming in the world is done by graphics device driver software writers," and when Microsoft changed to a new driver model with Vista, it was a whole new set of rules to play by. (Obviously, stuff got screwed up.)

Another reason things crash less now is that Apple and Microsoft have metric tons of data about what causes crashes with more advanced telemetry—information the OS sends home, like system configurations, what a program was doing, the state of memory, and other in-depth details about a crash—than ever. With that information, they can do more to prevent crashes, obviously, so don't be (too) afraid to click "send" on that error message.

In Windows 7, for instance, there's a new fault tolerance heap—basically, a heap's a special area of memory that's fairly low-level—which could get corrupted easily in past versions of Windows. In Windows 7, it can tell when a crash in the heap is about to happen and take steps to isolate an application from everything else.

Future Crashes

Of course, there are other reasons stuff can crash: Actual hardware problems, like a memory failure, or motherboard component failures. Hard drive issues. Hell, Will Smith tells us that a new problem with high-performance super-computing clusters are crashes caused by cosmic rays. A few alpha particles fly through a machine and boom, crash. They weren't a problem 30 years ago.

Granted, you don't have to worry about that too much. What you might worry about in the future, says Smith, with the explosion of processor cores and multi-threaded programs trying to take advantage of them, are the classic problems of parallel processing, like race conditions, where two processes are trying to do something with the same piece of data, and the order of events gets screwed up, ending in a crash. Obviously, developers would very much prefer if the next 5 years of computing didn't result the Windows 95 days, and programming techniques are always growing more sophisticated, so there's probably not a huge danger there. But as long as humans, who make mistakes, write programs, there will be crashes, so they're not going away, either.

Thanks to Maximum PC's Will Smith! Blue Screen of Death photo by Sean Galbraith originally posted on Gizmodo here.

Still something you wanna know? Send questions about crashes, blueberry pie or popcorn kernels to tips@gizmodo.com, with "Giz Explains" in the subject line.

The only file you can really do anything is is a .deb—that's a Debian-based Linux installer package—meaning that Debian (and Ubuntu) users can install it with a few clicks. On Ubuntu 9 I got a dependency issue when I tried to install, but is was easy to fix: I just enabled the Universe and Multiverse repositories in Synaptic, and upgraded the library it told me too.

As for the browser itself, it's not unlike regular Chrome, barring a few telling differences. For one, the clock is on display in the titlebar, as if this browser is going to be the only app you see when using Chrome OS. There's also a frustratingly enigmatic little Google logo in the top left corner, which looks like a menu. When you click it, it pops up with a prompt to log in with an @google.com email address. Oh well. In any case, downloads are still working from here; feel free to post more mirrors in the comments. [Living in a Google World via Techcrunch]

Nokia's aging Symbian S60 OS isn't maturing so well, as seen on their N97 handset, and though they've made some positive strides with Maemo, it sounds like they might be limiting themselves to those two OSes—at least until the market forces them elsewhere. On the other hand, the "No Android" statement was pretty obvious.

Based on a Linux kernel, Moblin has a sleek shell that was clearly designed for the novice Linux user and internet social butterfly. The images below give you the best look at what it is like to use Moblin. At the core of the interface are a series of tabs that line the top of the screen. They are all pretty basic and include a Web browser, applications, etc.

I've got to say I like the communications aspect of the OS the best. I logged into my AIM and Google Talk accounts right from the interface and then all my buddies showed up on the People tab. You can also log into Twitter; updates show up on the home screen and you can tweet from the Status tab.

Moblin 2.0 came out of beta just about two weeks ago, which was around the same time that the next version (2.1) was released. The interface in 2.1 is unchanged, but added is an app store. Instead of having to dig through a Linux repository, Moblin has its Garage for easy access and installation of applications. Loading programs from Garage is so easy Kylie could do it. I had no problem selecting Abi Word from the store; as soon as you install it from Garage it appears on the applications tab.

You don't have to wait for someone like Dell to sell Moblin 2.1 pre-installed on a netbook or MID. Try it now and share your thoughts. I warn you that there may not be full support for your Intel Atom powered netbook - some drivers may not be compatible. I tried it on an HP Mini 5101 and there was no Wi-Fi support. I never said the install was the easy part! [Moblin]

Indeed, having Linux on the RangeMax right from the start means you can load unofficial firmware on the router out of the box. And the USB port means you can also set it up as a media server. Other features include a a 480MHz MIPS processor with 8MB of flash and 64MB of RAM. Expect the WNR3500L to ship sometime this fall for $140. [Netgear via Electronista]

They have rounded up some of the best Linux netbook solutions, including Easy Peasy and Eeebuntu. I'm a big fan of the latter and used it for quite a bit of time on my MSI Wind U100. The nice thing about the guide is that it provides step by step instructions on how to load the new OS on along with productivity software alternatives.

Left from the roundup is Moblin 2.1. I have been testing it out for the last few days and will post my impressions soon. In the meantime, if you are also suffering from Win XP sickness try one of these penguin-friendly options or you could always check out our Hackintosh guide. [Maximum PC]

The 7-inch (800x480) tablet runs Ubuntu and a browser based upon WebKit. The light footprint software allows its 667MHz ARM processor with 128MB of RAM (ick!), 1GB of RAM storage to browse the internet, Facebook and Twitter. (Given that we're talking Ubuntu, there's a world of other software you could run, too...if you can find the space))

But where the software/hardware shines is a one-button text-to-speech updates on social networking sites. Just hold the button and say things like "Today, I stepped in a pile of dog crap. The crap flicked off my shoe into my mouth. Then, out of nowhere, the girl I've had a crush on since first grade decided to kiss me for the first time. It happens that's she was not only disgusted but also deathly allergic to canine feces. I no longer have a date to the prom, and now my dad is making me go hunting instead. FML." Then they'll show up on Facebook or Twitter. You can also speak URLs rather than typing them in.

The SQ7 weighs slightly more than a pound and runs for a modest 5 hours per charge. But at just $250 this October, it's lower risk than it could be. We'll try to get our hands on one to test it out. You can also watch a demo here. [AdelaVoice via besttabletreview via ubergizmo]

True, there's no elegant solution for the iTunes Music Store under Linux. And that's a fair enough point. But when it comes to player software, Linux has plenty of options, including Banshee. And the iPod, most MP3 players, and printers work fine under Linux.

True, Linux won't run every Windows program, but Wine supports a bunch of them. Special versions like CodeWeaver's CrossOver Games actively support World of Warcraft.

Video chat on all major IM networks? Try Pidgin or Skype. Windows Live Essentials? There's plenty of free alternatives.

There's some extra steps involved in the above, so I'm not saying that Linux is suitable for each and every newbie, particularly those who would ask Best Buy for advice in the first place. But some of Microsoft's info is a little…distorted. [Overlock.net via CNet]

Vincent called it "a lovely little Linux box" when showing it off at geekfest Foo Camp last weekend. We're not really sure what the practical applications of a Linux Kindle would be, but it's an impressive proof of concept for sure. [Boing Boing Gadgets]

Beyond that Maemo Linux OS we've been begging Nokia to bring to phones for the better part of a year, the N900 is, as Nokia handsets tend to be nowadays, a healthy piece of hardware. It's got a 3.5-inch resistive WVGA screen, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, an ARM Cortex 8 processor, and 1GB 256MB of RAM, and is crammed with 32GB of internal memory with a MicroSD slot for expansion, GPS, an FM transmitter, a 5-megapixel camera, a 3.5mm jack and a gajillion-band cellular radio, including, crucially, support for T-Mobile's 1700MHz slice of the spectrum.

Since Maemo is based on Debian Linux, the app selection should be interesting. Stock, the N900 will ship with Firefox (Fennec, I assume) and Flash support and a panel-based multitasking system, as well as tight VoIP integration and near-total video and audio codec support.

Maemo is fresh in a phone context, but it looks fantastic here—I see bits of Pre, pieces of Android and a whole lot of Nokia freshness. More than anything, I really just want to touch this thing. Try getting that excited about an N97, sometime. Nokia: Maybe not doomed! The N900 will launch "select markets"—all of which sadly seem to trade in Euros—for €500, or about $700. [Nokia via BGR]

Nokia will try again to tackle Apple Inc's iPhone in the top-end of the handset market with a bet on Linux software, several industry sources told Reuters.

Top handset maker Nokia will show its first high-end phone running on Maemo, a version of Linux, next week at the annual Nokia World event in Stuttgart, Germany, the sources said

Come to think of it, it is pretty weird that the phone-sized, phone-shaped, phone-button-having N900 has until recently been consistently assumed to be a tablet, even though the prospect of a QWERTY Maemo handset has been openly discussed for well over a year now, and explicitly predicted as far back as October. There may still be a gutted tablet version, but this thing has the heart, soul and body of a smartphone—I'd say this is what Reuters is talking about when they say "Maemo handset", even if they don't know it.

Kicked out of the high end of Nokia's product line, Symbian—which remember, they recently plunged nearly $400m into—would be relegated to the dregs of Nokia's product line, where it would presumably, eventually, wither and die. Sad!

Anyway, Maemo: It handles great on a tablet, but nobody really knows how it'll translate to a phone. That said, the N900 is largish and has a QWERTY-shaped crutch, so expectations, so majestically shattered last month, are back on high. [Reuters]

Users of Android devices will be able to grab a special judging app from the Android Market to download, test, and rank entries. The top 20 programs in the following categories (200 in total) go into the second round:

• Education/Reference
• Games: Casual/Puzzle
• Games: Arcade/Action
• Social Networking
• Lifestyle
• Productivity/Tools
• Media
• Entertainment
• Travel
• Misc

In the second round (roughly October), Android users will make up 40% of the vote, with a Google-selected judging panel accounting for 60% of the score. Winners will be announced sometime in November, while $USD prizes will be distributed as follows:

For each of the 10 categories:

• 1st prize: $100,000
• 2nd prize: $50,000
• 3rd prize: $25,000

Overall (across all categories)
• 1st prize: $150,000 (meaning the overall winner will receive $250,000)
• 2nd prize: $50,000 (meaning the 2nd prize winner will receive up to $150,000)
• 3rd prize: $25,000 (meaning the 3rd prize winner will receive up to $125,000)

Full details at the Android Developers Blog. What are you waiting for? [Android]

It looks the N900 will have a different slide-out keyboard mechanism to the N97, but it should have the same 5Mp Carl Zeiss camera as the N97. Mobile-Review mentions a MicroSD card slot and TV-out support, but you'll need to refer to our earlier Indonesian leak for more possible specs.

As for Maemo 5, it's clear that the upcoming version of Nokia's Tablet OS has a few visual improvements.

Due to variety of visual effects, smooth transitions and decent reaction time of the touch screen (which is a significant improvement over the Nokia N97), the N900 feels more like the Apple iPhone. At the same time its UI looks nothing like that of the iPhone - it's just different, but eye-candy nonetheless (maybe somewhat similar to HTC's products).

[Mobile-Review via Engadget]

Before we dive in, it's worth talking about exactly what we're going for here. What "theory of Chrome" are we planning to adhere to? Or perhaps more to the point, what the hell is Chrome? From Google:

"Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks" and "most of the user experience takes place on the web." That is, it's "Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel" with the web as the platform. It runs on x86 processors (like your standard Core 2 Duo) and ARM processors (like inside every mobile smartphone). Underneath lies security architecture that's completely redesigned to be virus-resistant and easy to update.

From our own Matt Buchanan:

If I had to guess, I'd say Chrome OS is somewhere in between an entirely browser-based OS and a generic Linux distro, though leaning toward the former.

In other words, Chrome, as we understand it, and as Google describes it, is a Linux OS that lives on the web, depending almost entirely on Google's suite of services, which are served through a special, Google-designed interface. We have no way of knowing what this mysterious window manager, menu system or desktop environment will look like, so we can't replicate that. The web half of Chrome OS, though, is already in place, and ready for us to clumsily unify. So, we'll make our own stripped-down operating system. Here's how:

Get Yourself Some Linux
Before embarking on this goofy afternoon software project, we need a launchpad. Specifically: Linux. You could go with almost any distro and accomplish the same effect, but this guide will be focused on a distribution called Xubuntu. Why Xubuntu? Because it strike a perfect balance between being extremely compatible and easy to install—on both counts, it really is—and, since it's essentially just a version of the uber-popular Ubuntu Linux distro with a stripped-down, super-fast desktop environment called XFCE, it's quick, and lightweight. Anyway, head over the the Xubuntu website and start downloading. (Go with 9.04 the latest stable version.)

There are a few ways to handle this. If you're planning to install Xubuntu on a netbook—Chrome's first and most natural target—you're probably going to need to create a bootable flash drive. Ubuntu provides some fairly fantastic instructions for doing this on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. If you're trying to do this on a regular laptop or desktop, or you have an external optical drive, you're going to want to burn your downloaded ISO to a CD and install from there. Alternately, you can order a free install disc from Xubuntu. Lastly, if you're like me, and you just want to test this out in a free virtual machine like VirtualBox, all you need to do is boot a new system from your downloaded ISO. At any rate:

During the installation, you'll be prompted with a number of options. Make sure to check the "Log In Automatically" radio box—it'll make your boot-to-browser experience a little smoother later on.

Once you've finished the installation—this should take no more than a half-hour, really—you'll find yourself with a pretty, fresh new Xubuntu desktop. It's really nice! But now, it's time to start replacing it.

Choose Your Browser
So obviously, you'll need a browser. This is the center of the Chrome experience—the window through which you'll access Google's suite of services, and which you may never leave. It needs to have support for all the web's various technologies, be it Google Gears—a plugin that lets Google services store data offline, so they can load faster and function offline—or Flash, which makes the internet significantly less boring. Chrome OS will ship with Google's Chrome browser, obviously, but the Linux port is a little sickly right now. Gears, for example, doesn't really work right now, and Flash, though technically available, crashes constantly. But if you really want to stay as Googly as possible on this project, you can get Chrome for Linux (Chromium, it's called) by adding these lines to the "Sources" list in a program called Synaptic, which manages Linux applications through one, unified interface, and is accessible in your System menu.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/chromium-daily/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

You can find out how to enable Flash here. Pro tip: don't bother with this.

Counterintuitively, the best way to get the Google experience on Linux is with Firefox. Xubuntu comes with Firefox, but you're going to need to spruce it up a little. Ok, a lot.

Make That Browser Work
First, you'll need Flash. Open Synaptic—mentioned above—from your Applications>System menu, and search for an item called "Flashplugin," (it's Flash Player 10) or navigate to the item as shown in the below screenshot.
Click "Apply" and let the installer run its course. Now, Firefox should support sites like YouTube, Pandora, et al.

Now, you'll need Google Gears. This is a simple Firefox extension, which you can download here. This'll help make living online feel a little less like, you know, living online—think offline archived email. Most of Google services can use Gears, so you'll want to go through each site's settings page to enable as many "Gears" or "Offline Access" options as possible. Docs and Mail are where you'll see the biggest differences, since Gears turns them from web services into full-fledged offline apps, transparently. Pretty amazing stuff, and one of the few features we know will be in Chrome OS.

Next, you'll need the Google Toolbar. This, in absence of whatever interface voodoo Google is sitting on, will serve as a sort of constant dashboard for Google services in the meantime. Along with providing shortcuts and notifiers for services like Gmail and Googel Caldner, it's got a few little tricks that'll make your browser feel more like a proper OS. For example: in the Google Toolbar preferences, you can check options that enable both automatic Gmail-ing or Mailto: links, and automatic opening of many document formats in Google Docs. You'll want to enable these, since we're trying to create the illusion that the rest of the OS doesn't exist, which an errant OpenOffice window or email client could shatter, God forbid.

Lastly, grab yourself a copy of an extension called Speed Dial, which will give you a Grid-based homepage of favorites which you can populate with all the core Google Services you're going to need—Gmail, Reader, Google Docs, Google News, etc—and which will be the first thing you see when you open your browser, and eventually, your OS. Set the initial configuration as I have on the left.

And if you're really into this idea for some reason, you can download a Firefox skin that looks like Google Chrome here.

Getting Rid of Everything Else
Now that you've got everything you need to live wholly within Google's ecosystem, a la Chrome OS, you need to remove everything else—that means excess browser clutter, system menus, and pretty much anything else that stands between you and your Google suite.

The first step will be to strip out your Firefox interface, which is probably looking a bit bloated by now. I've posted my small-screened solution below, which you can replicate by dragging and dropping icons however you please in Firefox's View>Toolbars>Customize menu. The above configuration lets you totally remove the Bookmarks and Navigation bars, which saves a good deal of space. Feel free to play with this for a while—you might find that you don't need one input box or the other, or that you can get away with much less of an interface than I have.

After grinding down Firefox's interface to an acceptable size, you'll need to go to work on your desktop. Before you can kill all the menu bars and shortcuts you don't need, you'll need to make sure Firefox automatically loads at startup, so you're basically booting into the browser. You can do this by navigating to Applications>Settings>Session and Startup, and adding a new startup item with the values seen below. (The last one if the only one you can't change—it's the one that launches Firefox).

Now, it's time to murder everything else. Right-click on either the top or bottom system panels—the Start Menu-like things on the top and bottom of your desktop—and click "Customize Panel." From here, you can remove the top panel, and set the bottom panel to "autohide." Once you're done, restart. Upon boot-up, this is about all you should see:
Welcome to Chrome! Kind of!

See What You Think
As I said before, what you've just slapped together here is not Chrome, and Google's final product will probably look nothing like this, superficially. But this little web-savvy Frankenstein OS does, I think, capture something of Google long-term vision, in which everything we store, use and experience on our computer is based online—preferably on their servers—and native applications are nothing more than a small, necessary evil. This experiment is less about guessing the specifics of Chrome OSes interface, under-the-hood workings or usage model (three things which I'm fairly sure this fails at) than it is about deciding whether or not the the idea of Chrome OS suits you, and how you use your computer. That, at least, you can get a taste of. So, how do you like it?

So that's about it! Please add in your experiences in the comments-your feedback is a huge benefit to our Saturday guides. Good luck with your OS impersonation, and have a great weekend!

It was January of 2008 when we first caught wind of Garmin's widening ambitions, and grabbed our first joyful glimpse of the navigation-centric handset, followed by an (also joyful!) hands-on. But that was in February, nearly a year after the announcement. And also, again, that was February, about six months ago. The ASUS-built Nuvifone was uniformly impressive from the start—with a custom-built Linux OS, creative location-aware applications, clean styling—but it'll have a much tougher go of it in the age of app stores, especially against the 3GS, Pre, and Hero, which have pretty impressive GPS integration in their own right.

Sadly all we're learning today is that the G60—to be followed closely by the much less exciting Windows Mobile M20—is only shipping in Taiwan for now, which we can at least take to mean the product is finally ready. US release, decidedly not happening in Q3 of last year, is still unknown, as is the price. [Garmin]

Some of the products on this list were or are vital to the computing industry as we know it, especially the dearly departed Palm OS and the sure-to-infuriate-fanboys inclusion of Linux. But then...who the hell ever heard of Inferno? [Silicon Alley Insider via Switched]

But wait, doesn't the Peek already run some kind of stripped-down Linux? You'd think so, but no: it's super-simple variant on TI's in-house Nucleus operating system, designed specifically for the OMAP processor used in the Peek. It's confusingly called "Peekux:"

TI's underlying real-time OS is Nucleus (by Mentor). Its a widely-used RTOS. TI has compiled in device drivers, and other stacks and turned it into their own platform. We then wrap it with our own proprietary GUI and network libraries to create Peekux, and then our email app sits on top of it. All of it is built together as a single image, so there is no distinct OS vs app on our device.

So that's the software situation, which Peek understandably wants to change to something a bit more versatile. In trade for a successful port, they're offering a "mini-consulting gig," the terms of which are unclear, so successful candidates may or may not be paid in piles of Peeks. [Geekypeek via BoingBoing Gadgets]

Always Innovating has published photos of a production device on their page, which looks exactly like the dummy shell we saw back in March. Accompanying these photos is something just above a promise, and just below an announcement:

We intend to start shipping the Touch Book next month, in July 2009. Our first batch of Touch Books is already in production.

At this point, the device's ship date come down to whenever the ODM finishes building the first batch, so it's effectively imminent.

Pre-orders are still open for those of you who thought you caught an early scent of vapor, and the $300 ($400 with keyboard) price still holds. Best of all, they've held the course on hardware specs. Here's the final list:

* Texas Instruments OMAP3530 with Micron 256MB (RAM) + 256MB (NAND) Memory
* 8.9 inches 1024x600 A+ screen
* Main storage: 8GB SD card - we decided to change from Micro SD to standard SD, so that you can easily upgrade it
* USB wifi 802.11 b/g/n dongle powered by a Ralink 3070 chipset
* USB bluetooth class 2.1
* FCC, CE, UL-certified, 5V, 3.5A power adapter
* 8.9 inches pressure sensitive touch screen
* US Qwerty 24cm-large keyboard - around 95% of the size of a standard keyboard
* Cirque Touchpad
* Two Owolff high-quality internal stereo speakers
* 3D accelerometer
* Two internal batteries 6000 and 12000mAh - it can be replaced with a screw driver
* 7 USB ports: three external, four internal, three of them may be reserved for wifi, bluetooth and keyboard
* Bi-color silver/black case - see photos - with a beautiful dark-red back cover (we decided to go only for red for the first batch as it really jumps out, you won't regret it).
* Secured attachment system of tablet into keyboard
* Independent magnet system for the tablet - we don't want your Touch Book to un-magnetize all your credit cards while carrying it in your bag!

[Always Innovating—Thanks, Akos!]

The guts of the machine are a 400MHz processor, 32MB RAM, and 8MB flash memory, plus two external antennas for wider coverage. You can also stream media from USB drives through the USB port to UPnP devices. It's 802.11n compliant, of course, and will retail for $120.

Main point? That it's Linux-based, so people can shove apps on there like BitTorrent downloaders and whatever else you can find that runs on Linux. [Linksys]

As mentioned above, the "fiddling" actually requires you to gain root access to the Pre. This important step is followed by compiling FCEUltra and an adjustment or two to the display settings so that the NES games run at a somewhat squished 320x480.

Understand Linux better than breathing? Great. Should be easy then. Full instructions in the Pre Dev Wiki link. [Pre Dev Wiki via CrunchGear]