Chilling_Silence's blogChromiumOS review, "Flow" by Hexxeh – Feb '10
Well after a friend IM’d me saying “Wow you have to check out ChromiumOS”, naturally, I had to try it out. I’ve always been a Google fan, and when I initially heard of what they’re trying to do with ChromeOS, I was of course excited about the possibilities for Netbooks.
Almost everything that I do these days is from the browser, with the exception of SSH’ing. I still have Pidgin that I use, but really aside from that it’s pretty much all from the browser. Webmail is a biggy, all my domains use GAFYD (And I’ve got several).
In a world that’s becoming increasingly web-based, I can see how it makes sense to have something like ChromiumOS. If they manage to sort out how to print and how to import pictures then it could be a real winner.
Yes, you’ve got to keep in mind that it’s not for everybody, some people are going to want to do the latest 3D games, I’m an avid DotA player myself. People will always want to do things outside of the browser.
However, add in to the fact that many people today are turning to Flash-based games, Facebook, Online photo sharing, video via YouTube, and you’re left wondering if there is a genuine place out there for a browser-based OK?
It was easy to download ChromiumOS from http://chromeos.hexxeh.net and get it copied across to a USB Drive. Turns out that my Sandisk Ducati that PCWorld gave me a few years back has finally kicked the bucket which is a real shame, so I had initial troubles flashing it, but only due to faulty hardware. There’s instructions on the website on flashing which seem pretty simple, but I’ve used physdiskwrite before so just fired that up out of habit.
Booting from USB on my Toshiba NB200 was a breeze, just hit “F12” during boot to change. I then noticed I had my 8GB SDHC card in there that hasn’t had any use since I got my NB200 a few months back. What a perfect medium I thought.
Anyway it booted up pretty quickly, only took around 8 seconds before I was at a login screen. Entered the pre-defined generic Username / password “facepunch” and I was away laughing.
No complaints about the speed of it, or the smoothness of how it all feels, it’s brilliant. Even though this isn’t the official OS from Google, it still feels like Hexxeh has put a lot of hard work into it and polished / smoothed a lot of the edges. I initially tried ChromeOS back when it first was announced through an unofficial leak build, and was only slightly interested.
First thing I had to do was connect it to WiFi, as I wouldn’t ever be using the ethernet connection. That was dead simple, clicking up the top-right on what looked like the button for WiFi / Connectivity, clicking the discovered SSID, and then entering the WPA2 Key just the once. Nice and easy, just as you would expect. I tried to get it to use my 3G XT data card, but it didn’t like it.
The touchpad was very, very insensitive on my NB200, but plugging in a USB mouse fixed that instantly. I tried adjusting the settings to make the touchpad a little more sensitive and move faster across the screen but it barely made any difference.
I clicked on the little Chrome icon up the top-left, it said the page was unavailable and that I could click Reload. Luckily the word “reload” was highlighted blue, because there was no visible Refresh button / address bar as there usually is. Ideally the OS needs to refresh that “tab” every time you join a new network, be it via ethernet, wifi or 3G.
I figured I’d try the Hotkey for “Open new window”, Ctrl + Shift + N. Interestingly enough it opened a new “window” which looked like a linux virtual desktop, and the new browser was in Incognito Mode. It was pretty easy to figure that Alt + Tab would then switch me between them.
Ideally though, there needs to be some way to find out about these nifty little hotkeys / tips / tricks, such as underneath the application launchers when you click on the Chrome Icon. Similar to how Google have the browser telling you tips about bookmarks and things when you open a new tab.
I should really rant on a little about the speed, it’s freaking brilliant! The whole OS feels very snappy. It’s very responsive, just like you’d hope, pages display very quickly, it’s a much nicer browsing experience compared with the likes of Internet Explorer. Keep in mind I’ve been a Chrome user for almost a year now, and a Firefox user for around 5-6 years before that, and speed is the main reason why I never go back to Internet Explorer. There is a bunch of other reasons, but that’s the main one. Also, after having used ChromiumOS, I now find going back to my main Win7 machine, even the latest Chrome feels slow by comparison, and unresponsive. Not sure why, kind of disappointed it’s killed my desktop browsing feel to be honest.
Now I was a little concerned that the main Keyboard Layout for US English was “dubeolsik”, but it seems to be 100% from what I can tell.
Some of the Options don’t fully work. Under the “Internet” tab for Options, none of the “Options” buttons would work to let me adjust WiFi, Ethernet or 3G settings. Not that I needed to, but something I noted anyway.
My time was wrong, an hour behind, even though I’d set it to GMT+12. I guess we’re GMT+13 right now due to daylight savings, so seeing that as an optino would be nice.
A way to see the temperature of my hardware would also be good, but obviously non-essential. I just felt the NB200 getting a little warm and curiosity always gets the better of me and I wanna know, but this is obviously just personal preference more than anything.
Sadly, sound didn’t work for me on my NB200. I’ve got no idea why, but it’s a bit of a bummer. The WebCam however did (Tested by right-clicking on a YouTube video and checking the Flash Settings). That was nice, but I’d prefer sound to work personally.
Screen pops / notifications, for the likes of the Google Mail Checker Plus worked just fine, a nice small window down the bottom-right instead of popping out from the Mail Icon as they do on my Win7 machine. The installation of the Extension was simple, straight-forward and worked without a hitch.
I made a test website with HTML5 h.264 video sample. The h.264 didn’t display which was a shame, not too certain why, I’m certain Chromium 5.0.321.0 (38366) has support for both h.264 AND ogg theora. I clicked on the raw video link I made to see what would happen when I tried to download a file, it showed me a blank “Content browser” down the bottom right. I figured out later on it was downloading the video, but just not showing / telling me. I tried playing it by telling it to open the file, it just re-downloaded it from itself. Same thing with a .rar file, it didn’t prompt me or anything, just began downloading it, and I have no way of opening it. I figured that would be the case, oh well.
Taking screenshots works, Fn + PrtScreen for me, but it only takes them as “screenshot.png” which means each new one overwrites the last. The first screenshot you see above is me trying to upload the screenshot to WordPress. This is what the browser looks like as I’m editing this post:
Ctrl + Alt + T opens a terminal window, so I can do my SSH’ing. Good stuff!
I’ve not had enough of a chance to play with all the different apps, but there’s a nice selection of web-based mail links (Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail etc), productivity sites, games, social media links, the works 🙂 I would take screenshots, except for some reason there’s parts that it won’t take them of, such as when I’ve clicked on the Wireless menu, or when I’m looking at the Apps. In-browser, screenshots works fine though.
All in all, I’m quite impressed. It’s a very nice OS, runs very fast, though a few minor issues prevent me from being totally satisfied. All in all, a 9/10 from me! 🙂
Please feel free to download it and post your experiences here too, I’m always keen to hear what others think.
Cheers
Chill.
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