All this fuss about Google ChromeOS.

Is it a threat to Microsoft ? Is it a threat to the Ubuntu ?

(funny nobody wonders if that’s a threat to Apple, especially considering everything is a threat to Apple, even being able to take DRM free songs *out* of the freaking iPod)

I’ll just assume you’ve already read the OMG ! ChromeOS Live Blog.

Now, let’s examine extract some important points:

18:13: Netbooks incredibly popular; most people have important data stored in the cloud; webapps most successful platform so far;

First keyword: Netbooks. But let’s go on.

18:15: ChromeOS to be super fast, boot should be just like switching a TV on! Chrome will be even faster on Chrome OS than any other OS.

Another important thing: Super fast boot.

18:15 Better model of computing = Chrome OS.

Whahahah This is not important, but I find it very funny.

18:16: All apps to be WEB APPS. NO desktop applications. No binaries.

…also (not only) because it’s too hard. BTW here comes the more interesting indication:

Here it is: custom firmware !

Does that reminds you anything ? Splashtop ! (and similar systems) Quoting myself:

Splashtop is an instant on embedded Linux which boots in seconds (I mean, 3-4 seconds) and give the user fast access to web-based features as Web Browser, Skype, online gaming and similar stuff.

Actually, the most interesting thing about Splashtop is that, being embedded in the computer’s firmware, it does not substitute to the chosen operative system. It’s just a faster alternative to check the mail, and chat with friends.

Google has already agreements with hardware vendors to get dual booting Android/Windows netbooks to the mainstream public. It’s no wonder the droid will be soon replaced by ChromeOS.

So that’s it. Google Chrome OS is (partly) firmware based operative system, that just runs on specific systems (SSDs are required for example) and that you’re likely to find already installed on your brand new netbook, along with Windows.

It will just be the thing you switch into when you have no time to boot the full blown windows (or you don’t want to, or it when win is broken).

My 2 cents

We’re talking about the most inflated operating system ever (no, wait, there’s the mac..). When the marketing bubble will explode we will realize it for what it really is: a brilliant technical achievement, hard to install on anything, useful only as a quick and dirty Internet alternative to Windows.

Is there any chance it will become a full blown operative system ? At least a little bit ?

Well, the official launch will be within a year. My prediction is something more may come in approximately 3-4 years from now.

Is Google ChromeOS a threat to Ubuntu ?

Not within the next 10 years. The only real threat in the meantime being Mark Shuttleworth possibly choke by laughing reading Panettieri’s post. (no offense Joe, I love you. Really.)

And to Windows and MacOS ?

Whahahaha.

Will Linux benefit from it ?

It will get some optimized code and some drivers. The drivers are important, but since netbooks have not much hardware inside (and are almost 100% compatible with Linux already) the benefit won’t be huge.

The boot procedure, being so customized, won’t benefit linux that much, but I’m not very into the technical details, so I may be wrong.

The most interesting chance, already anticipated by some, would be to have (not so) soon a new generation of motherboards capable of holding and handling bigger firmwares and – as a consequence – having the chance to flash the firmware and moving part of Linux directly in the firmware. That may help to have instantly-on (like TV’s !) full blown operative systems.

And has you probably already know, Canonical is helping out Google with ChromeOS. And that’s money to keep things going and further develop Ubuntu, at least in part.

Will Richard Stallman be happy ?

No, Google is no fool and perfectly knows and state that ChromeOS is no real alternative to the existing operative systems. It is just part of a long (loong) term strategy to change computing paradigm (we’re talking about 15-20 years at least). And Richard does not like that kind of shift.

But hey, he will probably be able to get an opensource firmware replacement for his BIOS much sooner. How cool is that ?

ps: not only Google requires Ubuntu to build Chrome, but they probably based it on it, or on a similar system. I mean, they use debian packaging !

Carla has something to say ’bout the cloud, and I agree 100% with her.

When I first posted about the matter, most people’s reaction was LOL.

The we thought it was just a random proposal, never going to be approved. Well, according to OMGUbuntu’s do0d, the GIMP has just have been said bye bye in favor of having just F-Spot to edit photos.

The rationale is pretty much the same of what we seen in my the proposal:

• the general user doesn’t use it
• its user-interface is too complex
• it’s an application for professionals
• desktop users just want to edit photos and they can do that in F-Spot
• it’s a photoshop replacement and photoshop isn’t included by default in Windows…
• it takes up room on the disc

Even if I can agree about Gimp being complex and targeted to professionals, I can’t see f-spot as a good enough replacement.

Couldn’t we just port Paint.NET to Mono and use that instead? Ops..

I’ll repost the integral, temporary, non-definitive, not-to-be-taken-seriously gobby notes of the meeting:

Not as simple as:
http://www.piware.de/2009/11/you-know-that-you-are-in-the-u-s/
* Step 1: Ditch the GIMP
* Step 2: ???
* Step 3: PROFIT!

so:

1. Game selection. Can we choose fewer, better games by default, especially ones that include a social component?

- robert_ancell’s guess at the best group to pick from are:
- (./) Aisleriot – though I worry it has too many variants for users to know what to play
- ACTION: djsiegel to do a UI review
- Chess* – Old fashioned and well known. Too complex, i.e. will the average user know the rules or would an experienced player be happy to seek it out through the software store? – http://www.airbagindustries.com/archives/airbag/spaceman.php
- Needs telepathy network support.
- Pick a dumber AI for default
- GBrainy – “Brain” games are very popular at the moment. Interface and puzzles seem a little complicated when I tried it. Needs improved name in menu e.g. “Brain Exercise”.
- (./) Mahjongg – Simple visual matching solitaire. Most highly rated in GNOME Games survey. Good game for children?
- Mines – Simple rules and highly addictive. Been a popular game on Windows for years.
- (./) Sudoku – Does Sudoku have lasting popularity now it has been around for a number of years? – popular, but hard to maintain and buggy (timing)
- (./) Tetris – Highly rated in survey. The GNOME Games version is now in clutter and may cause performance problems on various systems. – buggy(??)
- Tetrinet as an alternate?
- Maybe community contests, a la the wallpaper project, to get contributers to make games for future inclusion
- Perhaps coordinate with existing compos like PyWeek / TIGSource which regularly churn out quality games (mrooney is happy to help here)
- we can count on clutter for games
- Look into providing access to online games, like Facebook (Farmville)
- ACTION: fagan to investigate soduko telepathy integration
- ACTION: robert to own the selection for lucid+1
- Look better
- Integrate with telepathy
- Work with upstreams
- A domino game. Never implemented.
- Some educational (but funny) physics games? Test Numpty Physics. <- That rules! It to easy to learn.

2. Can we include a video editor by default?
- (Collabora is supportive of Ubuntu using pitivi, and this seems a good and usable choice to me.)
- Approach Collabora about rename and whether we can count on them for support.
- simple use case of opening a video and using the timeline is hard to achieve (usability needs to be improved)
* would be cool if cheese had video
- Openshot
- Design team to look at the UI of pitivi and/or Openshot

3. Is it time to move off the Gimp to make room for other apps? The Gimp is a showcase for the power of FOSS, but also is complex, takes up a lot of room, and basic photo editing tasks are taken up by F-Spot.
- Gimp isn’t a good first experience for new users, really for hardcore editors
- mt points out that leaving it on the CD isn’t actually that conducive towards its goals, we need better marketing of the Gimp towards non-Ubuntu users
- This could be accomplished with a “staff picks” section in Software Center, to present awesome applications to end users when they are not installed by default. (Since installing an app by default should not be the only way to give it attention).
- Make mixes on the Software Center (”Gimme the graphic designer package”) The SWEET Suite
- Most people get by with F-Spot and even eog for rotating images
- switch on F-spot as default viewer -> currently sloooow to open and does not do nice folder browsing – some editing tools are fiddly (eg: soft focus and red eye reduction. Flip does not provide any controls to the user; arbitrarily flips vertically. No obvious Undo).
- We have read many complaints about a lack of simple crop app (or nautilus-action).
- ACTION: Remove the Gimp from default install (djsiegel is concerned about removing an exemplar app from the default install), use eog for default viewing with “Open in F-Spot” prominently for editing (dbl is going to drive the photo experience)
- ACTION: design team to look at the f-spot interface, looking for inconsistencies with other apps (e.g. editing functions)

4. Overall application selection. Can we look through each category and discuss if we have the right apps in place by default.
* remove synaptic by default?
* Add a simple backup app like BackInTime
* (I missed this session, but I’m the maintainer of a simple end-user-focused backup program called Deja Dup: https://launchpad.net/deja-dup)

5. run through seeds

6. All Mono, All the time <- irony

alacarte?
tsclient/vinagre: one is being merged into the other (confusing in menu to have two in the menu for essentially the same purpose)
- ACTION: robert_ancell to investigate when/if vinagre replaces tsclient
What about a selection of nautilus plugins for simple+common actions?
An util add for nautilus is the plugin nautilus-md5sum to check the integrity of ISOs. <- not a good idea, would take startup time for all users and slow nautilus for no stong win. Not at all, is light and very useful. In fact we want users to check iso images MD5sum, but there is no simple way to do it without a terminal.Usually an standar user doesn’t want to use a terminal.

keep rhythmbox for lucid

Using Empathy, have a new systray icon when a message has came, is possible? Like pidgin.

Oh, they’ll keep Rhytmbox.

Who never dreamed to have his personal Apple website page, like this guy ?

Now you can !

UPDATE : they just fixed the page, the form doesn’t work anymore

Have fun ! (and thanks, Apple!)

Feel free to send me your best pages
(oh, btw it wasn’t me to discover the exploit)

Straight from the release notes of the recently released Fedora 12:

Gnote is installed by default in GNOME for this release replacing Tomboy. Gnote is a port of Tomboyfrom Mono to C++ and consumes fewer resources. Gnote is both an applet that can sit in your GNOME panel as well as an individual application you can run within other desktop environments. Fedora Desktop Live CD since the Fedora 10 release has excluded Mono and hence Mono-based applications like Tomboydue to lack of space. Gnote will be installed by default in the Live CD as well in this release. Tomboy is still available as an optional alternative. If you are upgrading from the previous release you will not be migrated to Gnote and will continue to have Tomboy. Tomboy users can migrate easily to Gnote as it shares the file format and a plugin is available in Gnote that will automatically import Tomboy notes on first run. Many of the Tomboy plugins have been ported to Gnote. The following plugins are available as part of Gnote:

• Bugzilla Links
• Tomboy Importer
• Fixed Width
• Insert Timestamp
• Export to HTML
• Printing Support
• Sticky Notes Importer
• Backlinks

You can copy the notes from Tomboy to Gnote using the following command in your home directory:

cp -r .tomboy .gnote

The sticky notes applet is not provided anymore since Gnote provides a better note taking utility and is available by default in this release.

Everybody happy ?

Since I posted about Canonical’s Music Store project, a few comments rained down from above. I’ll abuse my blog to give some answers.

Oh, and you forgot to say “Welcome back, Stefano” !

Michael:
This would be great, but it just seems to have a pipedreamy feel to it. Perhaps I’m too cynical to believe it would actually happen.

I don’t see any reason for it to be unlikely. I think chances are it will happen.

Linux Affic:
I can NOT stand iTunes. It is without a doubt, unquestionably the most overrated useless POC software ever designed. With that said, it would be nice to see a ‘GNU/Linux’ based music store similar to iTunes/Rhapsody. Just with a COMPLETELY different interface!! Automatic conversion of mp3/wmas to .ogg’s would be a plus.

My guess is that the only 2 people who actually really like the iTunes interface are Steve Jobs.. and his dog.

Expanding the last statement, the format is one of the points that make Music Store controversial. The vast majority of Mp3 players plays, guess., Mp3. So the Mp3 format is needed to reach the mainstream folk. On the other hand, Ogg is needed and strongly required by the FOSS folks. Surely an automatic conversion would be handy.

ghabuntu:
Hello Stef
You know I see nothing wrong if we should have such a service from Canonical. If that is one of the means through which the company can stand on its feet financially and continue to give us what we are getting, I see no problem.

One thing I can be sure of is that if such a thing should materialize, then the music is going to be in the open format.

I see nothing wrong as well, for sure ! I will support the project, whether Foss or closed source.

Do0d:
Doh! I blogged about this an hour ago and it seems it’s old news! Oddly enough we seem to have followed the same train of thought; something that got me expelled from university!

It does seem a tantalizing little discussion, and hopefully one that will be streamed (audio) as it’s incredibly vague as to what they’re proposing so far – more so with the regards to “Ubuntu One Music Store”.

Eheh, follow the leader. :-p

I’m joking of course. Beside that, you interestingly raise the same issue as I. There is no specification draft. Usually to have a proposal considered for discussion at UDS you have to create a detailed specification and market it to the rest of the community in the hope it will be considered for inclusion.

As this project comes from above, though, there is no draft, which feels disappointingly disorienting. Not a problem, as everything will be cleared out in 2 days. Still it leaves me wonder if it’s because of no time or because it is some kind of surprise.

As Mark Shuttleworth manifested recently some doubt about the “noise” in open development, may it be the second ? (please don’t flame me about this one, thanks)

Starcannon:
I never understood online music stores to be controversial; indeed they seem very mainstream and normal.I’ll buy music from Canonical if they make it happen.

Selling copyrighted items online and especially music and movies gets often controversial. DRM desire by the vendors comes often in the way. Pricing is much debated. And there’s the file format war (Mp3 ? Ogg ?), with patents and counter-patents. (even when the content is free of charge, see the HTML 5 debate).

Finally, there are the commercial agreements with the majors, which is the only way to get mainstream music into the store. And majors are not good puppies. Even Apple, which is incredibly powerful – given the market share of iPod/iTunes), had its problems to get good conditions from them.

Even beside the classic issues will the store publicize items from the “good stores” like Jamendo and Magnatune?

Will the store be open source ? Being part of Ubuntu One, I’d say no, not fully.

I like the project, but music stores always raise discussion, and being this the first large scale Linux’s one will likely shake things even more.

–

Oh, as the final thing, I’m not being evil, I’m just blogging

[screenshot picture shamefully stolen from the OMG ubuntu post about the store]

For those who don’t know, the Lucid UDS has begun today.

One of the most interesting yet controversial meetings is this: the Ubuntu One Music Store. What it will be is currently left to the imagination since no specification has apparently have been drafted yet. Selling music online has always been a controversial topic, and that adds interest in such a feature.

Also interesting, assuming the meeting’s name is meaningful and correct, the association between the Music Store and Ubuntu One, rather than with the Ubuntu Software Center.

Currently I don’t know any detail about this new project, the most obvious question is which kinds of commercial agreements will Canonical arrange with the music labels. Because the success of projects like are heavily dependent on the availability of a vast catalog of music as well as on a good price.

For sure we’d like to have Jamendo and Magnatune integrated!

2 other obvious questions are:

• Ubuntu doesn’t ship by default Mp3 codecs. Will this change or will the music be sold in a open format ?
• What about, *cough*, DRM ?

The meeting is on Wednesday, if you happen to follow it either live or remotely, be sure drop me a note to tell me more !

Update: rephrased a misleading sentence depicting the Uds meeting itself as controversial

Update 2: I addressed most of the comments in this post. Take a look !

Apparently someone tried to show off that “Nerds are not insensible to the feminine body“.

Here are the results:

And this is the end of the story:

Apparently sometimes there are higher priorities, like Counter Strike for example.

So, here’s the news.

In a mail response, Skype revealed the intention to open source their Linux client.

[...]
We are happy about your interest in Skype!

We understand that many users complain that there is no Mandriva
version at present.

We are happy to be able to inform you that Skype will from now on be
part of the open source community.

Therefore Linux developers wil be enabled to influence the development
of the Skype client for Linux – which will most certainly result in
specific versions for the different distributions.

We understand the concern of the Mandriva users – on the other hand we
can assure that the indicated versions 8Fedora and static) will work
on a Mandriva system.
[...]

As Olivier points out in his FAQ, that doesn’t probably mean they’re opensourcing the protocol, but still is a great news.

I can easily see a GTK Skype client coming, as well as support from Pidgin and Empathy/Telepathy.

While I find a bit of bitter irony in the timing (now that Empathy is all the rage and has finally voice/video support), but it’s still a wonderful news.

Focusing their business on providing a (proprietary but) open service instead of a closed source client seems a nice step towards the freedom for Skype.
(ps: given their economic situation, they may just be looking for a way to decrease the costs, btw)

Do you welcome the move as I do ?

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