Chromebook's bigger fan

Chromebook's bigger fan: Linus Torvalds

Google's already accepted Chromebooks are accepting added accepted than ever. Not alone has HP afresh abutting in affairs these Linux-based, failing netbooks, but now Acer, HP and Samsung Chromebooks are accessible in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. Part of the acumen abaft this broader availability may because the Chromebook, abnormally the high-end Chromebook Pixel, has a actual acclaimed and agog fan: Linux's inventor, Linus Torvalds.

Torvalds is right. Chrome OS, which is fabricated up of the Chrome Web browser active on top of a Google customized Linux, is a lightweight, cloud-based operating system. That's why it can run able-bodied alike on accouterments as failing as Samsung's ARM-powered Chromebook with its Samsung Exynos 5 Dual (5250) arrangement on a dent (SoC)and its a dual-core 1.7GHz Cortex CPU. The Pixel, with its 1.8GHz Intel Core i5 processor, is calmly the fastest and best able Chromebook currently available.

So, what would one of the top operating arrangement developers in the apple do back faced with abundant accouterments that he feels isn't actuality acclimated to its abounding potential? Why, he'd alter the operating system, of course.

He didn't do it all by himself. Torvalds accustomed that Linux Kernel networking maintainer and a Red Hat architect David Miller's assignment on accepting accustomed desktop Linux to assignment with the Pixel's accouterments was a abundant help.

 

That said, there are still some problems with the Chromebook Pixel's append action and Linux. Duncan Laurie, a Google chief software engineer, has nailed bottomward the botheration and has issued a fix for it until such time as a approaching firmware fix removes the botheration already and for all.

The alone actual problem, from area Torvalds sits, is the touchscreen. The touchscreen works now, it's aloof that while Torvalds like "the abstraction of touch-screens...with the affectionate of baby detail I want, my fingers attending like Godzilla-like sausages trampling all over Tokyo. No accomplished control."

That alone leaves the 64-bit question: "Which Linux administration is Torvalds active on his Pixel Chromebook?"

Torvalds told me "I tend to try to abstain that question, back I'd *like* to be distro-independent, but in convenance I actually abhorrence accepting assorted altered distributions in my house, so I end up standardizing on one accurate one, not so abundant for 'that's the above distro' reasons, as artlessly because that way updates etc all assignment the aforementioned way. So I'm active F18 (Fedora 18) on my Pixel for that reason."

In added words, Torvalds is not adage that Fedora is the best Linux distro, he's aloof adage that it works for him as a accepted belvedere for his work. And, that as nice as the Chromebook Pixel is with Chrome OS, it's alike bigger for him with a full-sized Linux desktop administration active on it.

Android and Chrome OS

Schmidt does not aphorism out Android and Chrome OS merger

Numerous account stories, based on a distinct Reuters report, which accompaniment that Eric Schmidt, Google's controlling chairman, had said that Android and Chrome OS would abide abstracted articles with possibly some overlap, arise to be incorrect.

Schmidt absolutely did not aphorism out the new Linux-based operating systems eventually merging. Joe Wilcox of BetaNews begin a video of Schmidt's catechism and acknowledgment affair at the Google Big Tent Summit in New Delhi, India. In the video, we see Schmidt answering a catechism about whether or not Google ability put an end to Android or Chrome OS now that one person, Sundar Pichai, will advance both Android and Chrome groups.

Schmidt responded, "No, is the answer. We don't accomplish decisions based on who the baton is … [Google makes decisions] based on area the technology takes us."

He again segued into talking about how: "Chrome and Chromium are the world's best HTML5 assembly and developing systems. You should be application Chrome. It's faster, it's safer, it's added defended than any of your added browser choices. In Android, which is added of a Java-like development environment, it [the Chrome web browser] solves a altered problem. There will be added commonality for sure, but they will abide abstracted for a very, actual continued time because they break altered problems."

First, Schmidt disqualified out killing either operating arrangement platform. I don't anticipate anyone absolutely anticipation Google would do this. Google has invested ample assets in both Android and Chrome OS. Android is now the world's best accepted smartphone operating system, and Chrome OS and its associated Chromebook laptops are accepting added admirers by the day.

Schmidt again started talking about the two operating systems' altered development models. Finally, he batten about how eventually the two will merge. At no point does he accompaniment that a alliance amid the two platforms won't happen.

So it seems bright to me that back you booty his off-the-cuff animadversion in context, there's every acumen to accept that eventually we'll see Android and Chrome OS advancing calm to accomplish one operating system.

To be precise, I still anticipate we're activity to see a Google operating arrangement with Linux-Android as its foundation and a Chrome web-browser interface that will absorb both Chrome OS-style HTML5 web applications and Android-style Dalvik bounded applications. The aboriginal belvedere you'll see this will be on the Chromebook Pixel. After all, Google is already nine-tenths of the way to already carrying the software — and the Pixel has both the keyboard Chrome OS brand and the touchscreen that Android requires.