Paw Prints: Writings of the maddog

A lot of people have been writing about Google's Chrome OS. There is a lot of speculation going on that Chrome will hurt the current distributions of Linux, and therefore will somehow help Microsoft.

What are these people smoking?

First of all I do not believe that Chrome OS will meet the needs of every desktop user any more than I believe that Microsoft meets the needs of any desktop user. There are many tasks where a browser working on a thin client will not have the capabilities to do the processing needed, and therefore stand-alone clients will be used.

Likewise not everyone is connected to a server with the high speed Internet that desktops like Chrome OS would need to be effective. There are many people who are still using dial-up systems, even in countries like the United States.

I think that Chrome OS will find a huge marketplace, that is true. That the huge marketplace could have been filled with desktops based on a more traditional Linux-based distribution is also true. On the other hand there are only about one billion desktops currently in the world, and there are 6.3 billion people, so I think there is plenty of "desktops" to go around.

Secondly, as Chrome starts to fill these desktops (let's say Chrome OS claims two billion of them), the number of device manufacturers who finally take the Linux kernel seriously and devise free software device drivers will probably grow exponentially. These device drivers will be compatible with the Linux kernels on our desktops, servers, phones and other Linux-based devices. The fact that Google has not released line one of Chrome OS code, and vendors are already lining up to support it gives an indication that in the near future we will see tiny penguins gracing the boxes of every peripheral device out there.

Third, a lot of the current Linux distributions concentrate a lot of their work on servers and server scalability. Having a lot of Linux-based Chrome OS systems out there to work with those Linux-based servers keeps the code in the same family.

People say that the programming interface will be different and this will cause ISVs to split whether they support "traditional Linux" or Chrome OS and that the Chrome OS will cause software developers not to write programs for "traditional Linux". Google says that their software will be freely distributed, and will follow standards. Why couldn't these interfaces be added to "traditional Linux" and allow both "traditional" and "Chrome OS" applications to operate on the same platform? People, we have been here before, and our favorite operating system has adapted well.

I think the people who are spreading the FUD that Chrome OS will hurt Linux have not thought this through, and just as Android kept more people from using closed operating systems on top of cellular telephones, Chrome OS will keep more people from using closed operating systems on top of the desktop. Or these people are just Microsoft supporters in disguise.

More importantly, Chrome OS will help to close the "device gap" for Linux Kernel based systems, and that will have to be a win for the good guys.

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