Google took the wraps off of their new operating system, Chrome OS, today. And of course, after reading all that I could about Google's presentation, I downloaded the source code and got compiling. Google has really polished the build environment — it was pretty easy to get Chrome OS compiled and running inside of VMware:

Chrome OS, after login

I have posted a gallery on Flickr, which goes over my initial impressions of Chrome OS. In short, it is as Google says — they have optimized for speed and security. Even in VMware, Chrome OS boots quickly, and renders web pages in a flash. And it seems like Google has added quite a few security protections — having the root filesystem mounted read-only is an especially nice touch.

But unfortunately, these appear to be the only two areas in which Google has innovated. In my previous blog post on Chrome OS, I hoped that Google would use this opportunity to finally free Linux of some \"legacy\" baggage, such as the X11 windowing system. But alas, Chrome OS uses X.org, and toolkits such as GTK+. Google is really just focused on getting the browser running — they're not trying to advance the state of the art on any other fronts.

And so while I'm sure that this is going to help Google reach their goals for Chrome OS, my inner operating systems nerd is disappointed.

-Andy.