Google Chrome OS on My Netbook

On 18th Nov, Tuesday night, Google released a long awaited new open source operating sytem, the Google Chromium OS. While it is not yet released with final product, Google engineer Matt Cutts send twitter with source code for download.

You can also get the source code here.

Google Chrome Os is an operating system that is mainly intended for the people who spend most of their time in clouds. Yes, Google Chrome OS uses most of the features of Cloud computing including Software as a Service . Google Chrome OS is built on a Linux kernel. It will utilize an “occasionally connected” model, allowing the OS to run offline at times, and sync back up with the cloud when it is connected. It is the similar functionality in Google Gears in Google Chrome web browser. All the applications will be available on Google Chrome OS which are already available online and web-based. Truly, it is the first operating system designed from the scratch to work in the cloud.

Google Chrome Os is currently available in two formats if you really wants to get dirty with it. Source code is off course first choice for developers. But it is time consuming and can affect your curiosity about this new technology.

So, right now I decided to go first with the second option, virtual machine installation with VMWare. It is very easy task and almost took my 20 minutes to install on my windows 7 Netbook.

I am giving those steps below if you are really interested in at least how Google Chrome OS look a like.

The most importantly you need VMWare Workstation or Server installed on your machine. If not then you can download it from VMWare’s website. Although it is not a free product, you can download an evaluation copy for the use of 30 days.

Through VMWare you will not get amazing performance but it will make you happy by giving you the feel of Chrome OS.

Installation of VMWare can take more than 5 minutes, based on your configuration. Also you need to restart the system after installation.

You can also use VirtualBox released by Sun Microsystems. It is free and open source.VMWare

Now you need to download an image of Google Chrome OS. It is available at GDGT website. You need to register and create the username with the website or you can use your Facebook login if you have.  The approximate download size of the zip file is 320 mb. You need to extract the zip file. The uncompressed file size is 740 MB approx.

Now you have all the necessary materials in hand. Let start the installation.

Start VMWare Workstation from Start menu group. You will get the screen like this.VMWare Start Screen

We need to create new virtual machine. Click on New Virtual Machine icon or select File Menu –> New –> Virtual Machine.

Select new virtual machine with custom advance configuration option.Select Custom Wizard

It will prompt you for hardware compatibility. Select 6.5-7.0 option from the drop down menu. You can see the limitations and compatibility at below area. Right now we can ignore them.

In the ‘Guest Operating System Installation’ screen select ‘I will install Operating System later’ option. This option will create blank virtual machine without any data in it.

Now it will ask you to choose which Operating System you are going to install. You can choose any of the system since this is just for naming. Here I will select Linux option with Ubuntu version from the drop down and click next.

In the next screen, you have to name our new operating system and also need to choose the location to keep the image files. I suggest to keep the path same, with name change as ‘ChromeOS’.

In the next screens, Processor Configurations and Memory For The Virtual Machine, do not change the default parameters.

In ‘Network Type’ screen, select User Network Address Translation (NAT).

In ‘I/O Adapter Types’ screen, keep the default settings.

In ‘Select Disk’ screen, instead of creating new disk we will select existing disk option and click next.

Select the Google Chrome OS image from the browse button and select the file we have extracted (chrome-os-0.4.22.8-gdgt.vmdk / 740 MB)  from the GDGT website.

Once you click on next, it will ask you whether you want to convert the existing disk into new format. It is up to you. If you want to use the image in old VMWare versions then keep existing format intact.

Now click ‘Finish’ in the next screen.

You can anytime edit the configuration by choosing ‘Edit virtual machine settings’ on the main page.

Now your Chrome OS virtual machine is ready. Just click on ‘Power on this virtual machine’  from the commands section.

If everything goes fine, you will see the following screen.

Just wait for 10 seconds and you will get the Chrome Login Screen.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Google Chrome OS on Virtual machine.

Now you can use your Gmail id and password to login to the system. If you have seen the webcast from Google 2 days back while launching event, you might expecting the great things with this installation. But unfortunately you will not be able to see all those things, but definitely you will get the preview of some of those.

Also remember one thing, you will not be able to install the applications. Everything will be available in Google Chrome Browser.

Tomorrow hopefully I try to play with the source code.