Friday, November 13, 2009
My Views on What Chrome OS Should Be
Google will be releasing an OS called 'Google OS'. I've heard a little bit about it, but it did get me thinking about the problem with software development. Now we have people writing programs in Java to overcome the operating system limitations... basically, the way programs are written now, they are written for a single OS. Windows (usually). However, when a program is written in Java, that program can normally work on all OS.
The way it is now, if you write a program for Windows, and you want to switch to Linux, you can't - because most of your productivity software that you already purchased just won't work in Linux, or OSX, or whatever OS you decide to switch to. The way people work around that now is with a 'Virtual Machine' (VMWare / Sun Virtualb0x).
¶ 8:12 PM Well, imagine that Google comes out with something similar to JAVA. Imagine being able to run native code through the browser. Imagine that the OS becomes irrelevant, and every application is 'virtualized' as if it were running in a virtual machine.
Google has a few projects in the works, which, if combined could eventually make that future a reality. Take for example their new programming language "Google Go". It's a semi-compiled language that is similar to Java. Look at another project that they have in the works called "Native Client". They also use sandboxing in Google Chrome. Intel tried and failed at something similar with their "Open Runtime" (they haven't failed, but nothing's come of it for years). The only thing missing is the VM, and perhaps Google's 'Davlik VM' could play that role.
Imagine Google actually pulls it off.
