HackNBlog @ Salamanteri Server

I believe most here have already read about Google starting up an operating system of their own, Chrome OS to compete with Windows as their next project. I’ll share some of my feelings about good, bad and the futile related to this hopefully neat project.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Google want’s to provide users with an OS that boots up lightning fast and ready for web in seconds from switching power on. They want the system not to clutter up but always run as fast as anew. They want to provide an OS where there is no fuss and fighting with new hardware, configuring the system (that usually needs knowledge below the average) and no updates that break things or change&confuse the user interface. This all sounds good - and it also already sound familiar.

Gathered not from Chrome OS official blog but from a zdnet blog entry, let’s check some known facts:

• It runs on top of Linux kernel.
• It will boot directly into the Chrome Web browser
• It will be aimed primarily at netbooks
• It will run on both x86 and ARM processors
• It will not be designed to have local storage; all data will be stored in the cloud
• Google will not entice developers to build software to run on the Chrome OS; instead, they want them to build Web apps that will run on any standards-based browser
• The three most important features will be “speed, simplicity and security”, according to Google
• Google will release the software to the open source community before the end of 2009
• Announced Chrome OS hardware partners: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.
• Netbooks running Chrome OS will be available in the second half of 2010

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One great milestone for Mozilla FireFox 3 browser and in the battle against the more pathetic dinosaur of the browser world, Internet Explorer, was achieved early this year when FireFox 3 beated Internet Explorer 6 on most used web browsers statistics (at least according to StatCounters statistics).

Currently the lead is however still kept by Internet Explorer with it’s 7th release which is used by approximately 40% of users while FireFox 3 has around 24% of users. Internet Explorer 6 was left behind FireFox 3 with userbase of around 22%.

So despite this milestone Internet Explorer still has strong grasp of users worldwide. However as an example in Finland FireFox 3 is doing even better, having taken a 47% share of all computers in our country and leaving Internet Explorer 7 with only 29% of users we here in Finland are clearly leading the change away from Microsoft controlled browser monopoly (for more detailed statistics of browser use in Finland click here).

I must say before anything else that this is not guide to installing Safari on Linux. You can find one for installing Safari under wine here.

I want to ask if anyone has had success with this guide? I tried it and apart from succesfully loading the default home page I havent managed to load any other webpage - not even google - with it and the window has really bad graphical glitches all the time…

I would personally like to get this browser to run under Linux just to test my site with it - specially since one commenter here posted a claim that this site does not show correctly on Safari. So if anybody has had success just let me know what version of wine and safari you have and what extra measures you had to take, if any, to get it work correctly.