Dell (Dell) engineers have been experimenting with Chromium OS, the
open
source project associated with Google's Chrome OS, which was
released in
preliminary form to developers just over a week ago.
In a blog post, Dell technology strategist Doug Anson said that he
and a few
of his colleagues decided to try to get Chromium OS running on a
Dell Mini 10v
netbook.
"Without a network connection, Chromium OS is not very
interesting," said
Anson. "With a network connection, Chromium OS shines."
Google plans to release Chrome OS to consumers next year as a
lightweight
Web-centric operating system for netbooks. It has not disclosed its
marketing
plans other than to state that it is working with hardware
partners.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment on whether Dell is one of
those
partners but said that Chrome OS is open source and that it's
exciting to see
developers experimenting with it.
In July, Google said that its Chrome OS team was working with Acer,
Adobe,
ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas
Instruments, and Toshiba.
That same month, Anson said in a blog post that Dell planned to
evaluate
Chrome OS, along with other alternative operating system
environments.
He also said that Dell "is very interested in Moblin at present and
is
working very closely with its key Moblin partners (Intel and
Canonical)
investigating potential offerings."
Moblin is another open source Linux-based operating system for
mobile devices
and netbooks.
Google and Dell have a long history of working together. Dell's
PowerEdge
servers, for example, form the basis of the Google Search Appliance
for
enterprises.
Gartner analyst Ray Valdes recently told InformationWeek that the
commitment
of Google's partners will play a critical role in determining
whether Chrome OS
succeeds.
Anson reported that his Chromium build took 12 seconds to boot up;
when
Google demonstrated Chrome OS earlier this month, the boot time
clocked in at 7 seconds.
Anson released a USB key image file that can be used to install
Chromium OS,
with some support for the Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter. "It's definitely
not
perfect...," he said. "But it does appear to function.