Dedicated Linux servers are known to be fast and efficient, but Linux on the desktop is also becoming more and more popular these days because of its much improved speed. After Google Chrome OS was announced and with the promises or goal of making it fast and lightweight, I know it will someday be compared with some of the fastest and lightest Linux distributions that are currently available. So I’m thinking I may never be impressed with Chrome OS if it can't beat or at least be at par with any of these distros:antiX
I once dubbed antiX as "The Fat-free Mepis" because it is indeed the lighter and faster version of SimplyMEPIS. It runs really quick even on my ancient laptop since it is designed to work on computers with as little as 64 MB RAM and Pentium II or equivalent AMD processors; it even runs great on a netbook! antiX uses IceWM and Fluxbox as its window managers and it is loaded with handy software packages.
SliTaz
SliTaz is considered by many as the world’s smallest 'complete' desktop distro. Despite its miniscule size, it comes with several useful applications out-of-the-box like text editor, audio player, pdf viewer, web browser, image editor, DVD/CD ISO Burner, and a lot more. The latest version now uses Openbox instead of JWM as its window manager. I've used SliTaz GNU/Linux 1.0 before and I must say that its speed is awesome.
Puppy Linux
Puppy Linux is one of the top Linux distros in terms of popularity. Although it has quite a small footprint, it is loaded with great features. You can boot it as a Live-CD needing only a few MB of RAM, install it on a USB Flash drive, and even set it up on a hard drive. You can read some of my reviews of Puppy HERE and HERE.
SLAX
SLAX is another distro to beat in terms of speed. Though it utilizes KDE desktop environment, it's still faster than most distributions with lightweight DE. And don't be fooled by its size because it has good amount of pre-installed software applications making it ideal for day to day desktop use. If you want to know more about SLAX, you can read my review HERE.
Damn Small Linux
Damn Small Linux (DSL) is damn small indeed. Still 50MB in size, it remains one of the most well-known Linux distro. They said that DSL is light enough to power a 486DX with 16MB of RAM so imagine it running on your quad core computer with 2GB of RAM. I've tried and tested DSL before, and view it as a good thing that comes in small package because I'm very happy with its overall features despite its tiny size.
If Chrome OS can't top or equal any of the distributions mentioned above in terms of speed and simplicity, then I have a reason to be disappointed since I don’t see the point of Google creating a whole new Linux distro when they can just improve on what's already available.
What do you think?
On a related note, some of the distributions that I've mentioned above may also be used as Linux servers.
Thanks for correcting me. From Wikipedia: Only Puppy Linux 3 features Slackware 12 compatibility but it does not mean that Puppy is a Slackware-based distribution.
Just because it's a linux distro designed to run on slow hardware doesn't mean you have to only use it on slow hardware.
You can go ahead and install antix, puppy, etc on modern day hardware and it works great.
The only thing limiting here is your thinking.
Let us wait and watch how the chrome os will turn out. I am not yet convinced about it
Chrome OS does not have to be THE fastest. Reasonably fast and with a great user experience is what they should aim.
Let's hope they will ship a improved KDE 4 with integrated web services.
Second, I think one of the benefits Google will/should get out of this new windowing system (I'm assuming that means replacing X, not the WM) is the benefit Apple has: fewer drivers. My buddy's Toshiba has a Trident Cyber 9525 video chip with 2.5 MB of RAM. Flipping through the list of drivers in xorgconfig, you see a ton of drivers for old crappy video chips that Xorg has to maintain. Were I Google, I'd drop all that and have drivers for, what? Four? Intel, nVidia, ATI and Via? Whatever's going to be on these Arm-based devices? Doesn't that cover the netbook/web appliance video-chip landscape? Why get into writing or porting drivers to support old machines so users can have a crappy experience when they can get a netbook for so little dough? Leave the Trident and SiS chips to Xorg. Same for floppy support, Ethernet PCMCIA cards, Winmodems and flaky wireless cards. Ship a stripped-down kernel and post it to the web with a list of machines it works on. So what if you have 1,000 isos up there for 1,000 machines? You're Google.
Then the community can do with that whatever it sees fit. Port drivers, extend the WM, whatever it turns out to be. But Google avoids the crappier parts of the Linux experience, delivers a nice (if narrowly focused) user experience and gives back to the community.
(Certainly not as lightweight as the ones mentioned -- but still lightweight enough to give a note ;) !!)
Distrowatch puts the number of Unix and Linux based distros at 840 and counting.
Do we really need another distro targetted just for the web when any relatively well read person using Linux can build a similar distro in his garage.
Is there ANYTHING in the press release which state that Chrome OS (yes, another brilliant move calling your OS the same as your browser. They must have thought that Linux the kernel and Linux the OS isnt confusing enough) will be able to run on ancient hardware?
Id have thought you would have compared it webcentric OS like gOS and such.
If I cant run apps that we use on Gnu-Linux distros, then I have no need for it since Im very happy with the distros I use for our netbooks and on which we often crop-edit pictures and even record a podcast or two.
As of now, Chrome is pre-alpha so Im going to concentrate more on Moblin 2 for now, teh videos of it looks very nice.
I use Linux for about seven years now and I do not think that something like Chrome OS will be the best and biggest thing in the distro-world. First of: it is not entirely open source as you could read on the first post from Google itself.
The apps you can use are all owned and maintained by Google itself and has no sourcecode available what so ever. For me it is just a strange hybrid between Linux and Windows/Mac OS with an online feature. Nothing new, I'd say, looking at Lotus Notes and AS/400 which do the same things: via a network collaborating on documents, projects and the likes.
If that is innovation, well, I'd prefer to stick with my Fedora and let this thing blow over.
longer have jobs and focus their talent on producing something that has a good support base, user support and
is functional with cloud computing to the point it works and its not a distraction and leaving users with endless
delays in waiting on saves and downloads. It seems they are in the wrecking and re-building stage at this point.
Linux sound and video are in a state of disarray and its going to take a big effort to make it "just work out of the box" perhaps they can buy SunMicro Systems and use virtualization of these devices to make it work.
Yes they could have just used one distro and put their name on it but why bother. You'd have every FOSS person in the world screaming bloody murder. So they took core Linux and rolled their own distro with supposedly their own DE.
For this very reason Google OS does not have to beat any Linux distribution - they are for different audiences.
If Google were smart, they would just help Ubuntu.
Regards
Viva the rebellion !
http://wiki.dennyhalim.com/linux-minimal-desktop
http://www.xpud.org/
It's not going to replace a local OS - it's a different device for those that can't handle the work it takes to keep an OS up to date and maintained and just want to use the darn thing.
I don't imagine they're targeting old hardware as their base since they want the OS to perform at a certain level. I want one because in casual situations, I'd rather not be interrupted by another maintenance task that I feel compelled to do ASAP.
Net install with apps I like and OpenBox and maybe a few tweaks thrown in for good measure.
Like lightning.
--BK
August 9, 2010 12:04 AM
Google Chrome will fail, like Wave, Nexus and Android.
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because Google products fail, Apple shall fail first! :D
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