After 6 months of all hype, fake builds and screens of OS, Google finally made Chrome OS live in the event at its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters to update the world on its plans for world domination via the release of its second operating system (after Android).This would offer cloud computing on netbooks.

The operating system, based on the Chrome web browser, is designed to be lightweight and fast, enabling people to boot up their computers and get online in minutes, Google said.“In Chrome OS every application is a web application.There are no conventional desktop applications. There is no need to install software.” said Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management at Google.

All data and applications will reside in the internet cloud rather than the netbook, Google said, giving netbook users protection from malware.Data will be cached in local storage and automatically synchronised with cloud-based storage when an internet connection is available.

Google said the operating system is able to take advantage of graphics processors, multicore architectures and multimedia peripherals that web applications have previously been unable to access.Chrome OS is designed for netbooks, but Google hopes user will run netbooks as if they were fully-fledged PCs.

Chrome OS will be made available on devices with solid state discs and specific wireless cards. Google said it would be working with hardware manufacturers to develop netbooks with full-sized keyboards and high-resolution screens.

If you would like to try it out then you could do this via virtual box or VM ware.You can download the source from Chromium or get the binaries for the same directly and run them under VMWare/Virtualbox using .vmdk image.

Step 1 : You can also try out the build that GDGT has uploaded.

Step 2. Download VMWare Player or VMWare Fusion or VirtualBox and run it.

Step 3. Unzip the downloaded image. In VMware/VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine. One of the options will be to use an “existing virtual disk.” (In VMware Fusion, this is the last option below, “use operating system disk” and “use OS disc image file.”). Make sure your VM is set to use bridged networking, rather than NAT.

Step 4. Login to Chrome OS with username and password which is same as your google username and password.

Let me know how did you like Google Chrome OS.

Via ComputerWeekly

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