We finally got around to prepping a USB key so we could boot to
Chrome OS natively, and let us tell you: it's a world of difference. Of course, running something natively instead of virtualized is always going to be a treat, but what we're seeing with Chrome OS is actually on par performance-wise with our crazy expectations for a stripped-down OS. It boots in mere seconds and loads websites with the best of them. The build we're using, courtesy of @hexxeh on Twitter, who made all this possible with some great instructions and a masterfully-built chromiumos.img, was also able to log into the apps pane -- something we didn't pull off on
our virtualized rig. We wouldn't call this our main Linux jam just yet, but even as we strut cockily back to our "big people computer," it's hard not to feel the love for something this simple and swift. If you want to do this with your own netbook, hit up Hexxeh's instructions at the read link below (we found the Windows how-to easiest to follow, for what it's worth), and if you want to be a
mere voyeur you can hit up a video demonstration after the break.
Update: if you're having trouble with the source link you can try mirrored links to the torrent
here and
here.
posted November 24th 2009 4:52PM
Like all new things in the tech world, this will garner much attention. It helps that it is different and of course, being a product from Google doesn't hurt.
Most of us will try this, whether out of curiosity or to indulge our geekiness, then revert back to our trusty Windows, Mac or Linux distro desktop. Of course naturally, there will be some that will stay as there are quite a few out there who could care less that they're using a computer and just want access to the internet and their social networking site, which are the only things that matter to them.
I've got to say, this OS feels somewhat more akin to an instant on OS but more fully featured. I could see this replacing the other half-baked Linux varieties being used at the moment instead.
I honestly believe there is plenty of room for competitors in the tech world, but for the love of God, as long as nothing gets stuffed down our throats-I don't care for Cloud computing nor want it.
Hexxeh?
From Facepunch?
Nice!
@(Unverified) Yup, that's me alright.
I've tried this on two very capable machines and both are like watching a choppy youtube video of chrome running. Scrolling and typing is incredibly slow. Does anyone else have this problem yet?
@crapNstuff
I have had the same issues on two computers, a quad core AMD machine and a Core 2 Duo @ 1.66GHz.
Gah!
@crapNstuff I ran it from a USB-drive and I agree, it's really slow.
@crapNstuff Running this on anything but a netbook is going to be slow because there are no drivers for your hardware.
Hmm, my terminal gives me the error
sudo dd if=chromiumos.img of=/dev/disk1s1 bs=4m
dd: /dev/disk1s1: Operation not supported
@BlazeBlaster I was having this same problem. Here's how I solved it.
My flash drive was initially one partition, and for some reason when you would unmount the drive from Finder it would remove all the references in /dev for the USB stick. I partitioned the device in half (it looks like you've already done this based on your BSD drive names) and then ONLY unmounted the partition I was going to use for chromium. Then the command was able to start successfully.
It might also work on a single-partition drive if you use the 'umount' command. Haven't tested this yet.
@BlazeBlaster
to unmount, in the terminal type
"diskutil unmount /dev/X"
without the quotations and where X is what he usb key was named.
strange, see I have a Sandisk u3 cruzer 2gb that my dad gave me one day, so it has 2 partitions, only 1 shows up in Mac, the other is a small one with some bundled software i can't delete, but even if i unmount the one i can view, it still gives me that drive doesn't support that
I was able to log in okay, and my wifi card worked... sort of. It detected my network but when I tried to authenticate, it didn't do anything. So, maybe the authentication protocol isn't working properly and it works okay without network authentication, but for most people, this is not a possibility (to go without network encryption). Did anyone else have this problem?
ChromeOs seems to work well on any Intel Chip, but when i tried it on my AMD Athlon Based PCs it lagged, and it lagged up a storm.
I followed the instructions and got Chromium to run off a Sandisk Cruzer 4GB USB drive on a Lenovo S-10.
Web page loads were incredibly fast, and I was able to use Gmail, Google Voice and Google Documents. I was able to view a variety of web pages, but this is NOT an OS. It is a fast loading browser environment. You cannot run anything that is not browser based.
It is obviously not meant to run Open Office or anything you might have resident on your local machine. Chromium forces you to use the cloud to store and interact with your data. In a way, it felt as if my lap top had been changed into a large cell phone, but without a dialing app.
I booted into it with my Mini 9 and I could not log in. It tells me that it can't connect to the internet and that offline login has failed. I connected with Ethernet to see if that would work but it did not fix it.
Not much new here. I was able to see the apps pane in the virtual machine days ago. Only thing new here is that someone was able to make the machine bootable.
just Internet, huh? can "this" download stuff ?
I've downloaded to .tar.gz. When I try to unpack it, says 10 hours. What the hell? And inside WinRar it says that the .img file size is 2,988,442,112 o_O 3gb? I've tried 2 different torrent clients to download and both to recheck the hash. Everything is ok with the download, still says that the .img file is 3gb and takes 10h to unpack. Ideas? Or someone please link for a direct .img file download
@AA Alex Nvm, unpacked. 3gb is ok, but have 2gb USB :(( anyway thanks
I just tried it on my eee pc (the s101 model). Booted to a blank screen - finally came up after 3 minutes of nothing.
NAAA... I thought this was a follow up from the Clovefield movie.
anyone have any luck with wifi working on a medion akoya mini?
erm...how much does the OS needs? apparently 2gb is not enough ....=/
i like my slow boot time. gives me time to wake up
I got as far as being able to log in with facepunch, however when I try to turn on wifi it just pauses and nothing happens.
Ideas anyone? It'd be greatly appreciated.
Does anyone know what happens if you right click a link to a file? Is there a way to save it to some kind of cloud storage, since there is no local harddrive?
On my Dell mini 10v I have having problems with the numbers on the keyboard working. 1,2,3,4,7,8 don't work. Any one seen this?
When I try to login first with my gmail account it tells me "network not connected and offline login fail". So I use facepunch.
My external USB keyboard doesn't work under Chrome OS but works fine under XP? Whats up with that?
How do you shut this thing down? I have to press the power button and then when it comes back up it tells me Chrominum didn't shut down correctly. So I logged out of gmail and gcalendar and it didn't give me that message.
@SilverSurfer @BlazeBlaster: If you're having trouble with "Operation not supported": Open the Disk Utility, select the drive and select Unmount. That will allow you to dd the USB device.
Isn't Moblin supposed to be even faster ?
No worky for me. Says it's a bad image file.
I have put the USB image files download and installation instructions on http://memac.com/chromeos/
@DougAnson from Dell's technology team recently got the Chrome OS up and running on a Mini 10v with basic Wi-Fi support. More details and link to the source code available on Direct2Dell here: http://bit.ly/7KUvQf
Thanks,
LionelatDell
Is that Chrome OS running on a Macbook Pro in the back. That I would be interested in trying.
i'm moving the file to my website, sorry guys if this too late.
If downloading the torrent is killing his site why not use the magnet link?
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:TKUF3EUJSXTFNNRZSTPD4U7X6KVWCZKZ
Got this to work on an eee pc T91MT using a SD card; wifi worked; the OS ran very slowly. Same results with a usb drive.
This could be a perfect cheap secure client. Banks and other businesses could give them away with certificates and shortcuts set up.
I've followed the instructions but I get the error "missing operating system" when I reboot. I have reformatted the USB stick in several different file systems. I've made sure it's set to boot from USB in the BIOS and/or boot select scree. I've seen other people boot with my same model netbook on youtube (MSI Wind). I've also tried two different (but both cheap) USB sticks. I've also extracted the .img twice to make sure there was no corruption. And I've used gparted to flag the usb as "boot". I'm pulling my hair out! Any ideas appreciated.
I personally don't care if my Mac OS takes 15 sec more to boot. At least I have an OS!
Chrome will be biggest failure for google.
Just added the Dell Mini v10 Chrome OS Image and installation instructions here http://memac.com/chromeos/