Chrome OS Open Sourced
With the big announcement today at Google’s HQ, Chrome OS (now known as Chromium) is now available for developers to download. We’re not going to give you a low down on Chromium, as web sites such as The Register already has everything you need to know. We did however, get confirmation that it will work on ARM systems, but at present can only be built on x86 systems using Linux.
The launch date is planned to be late 2010, with major OEM’s planning to offer systems capable of running the OS from around the middle of next year. Because Chromium will only work on a very specific set of hardware, it’s highly unlikely that many netbooks available today will meet the requirements. For example, it does not support hard discs of any kind, only flash memory.
We were disappointed that there was very little information about ARM systems, but because the conference main aim was to announce the availability of the code as Open Source, then it makes sense. It looks like we’ll have to wait a little bit longer before Google and its hardware partners are ready to provide us with more information.
Google’s Chromium web site is here.
