Computers should be like toasters, they should just work for years and then when they stop working, you should be able to pop out and buy a new one. Toasters don’t need backups, and a major cause of problems with computers is loosing data (which may include family pictures and purchased music as well as College work).

Google’s Chrome OS looks like it might be a solution to both failing PCs and the need to back up data. It will be the second branded operating system built on top of an open source kernel and tool chain. Mac OS ‘just works’ and looks nice, has full desktop functionality, local storage and a huge range of software. By contrast (BBC report, Google) Chrome OS may not be able to run applications that require an API richer than the browser. The obvious questions that spring to mind include “Where do I keep my music/photos/videos?” and “What happens if my Internet connection fails?” and “How do I install real programs?”. Local storage with cheap online backup could be a very popular combination. The gOS operating system had direct links to Google Apps integrated into a nice desktop, but used local storage and had OpenOffice installed.

Google mention working with hardware manufacturers. My toaster PC in the photo above is the Aleutia E2, a low power fanless PC that has enough processing power to view Web pages, do e-mail, write Maths worksheets and presentations, but does not quite make it through a YouTube video. That runs Debian Squeeze, but there is a spare partition, and I’ll be trying the Chrome OS when it arrives in public beta form.

The Google blog carries an interesting post written just after the Chrome OS announcement that describes SMS based access to Google services in Uganda. The mobile phone may be a mass platform in many countries.

Added 11th July: A Daringfireball article has some ideas and links about Chrome OS. I think this article makes valid points. Disclaimer: I use Ubuntu and therefore according to Gruber I’m not a real person. Help, I’m fading away!

Linux allows you to use old hardware with a current, relatively secure operating system and the usual applications. I’ve put Ubuntu 9.04 on the Linux partition of my old Dell laptop mainly because of the Network Manager that has appeared in Ubuntu since 8.10. Networking Just Works with a range of WiFi cards and, importantly for me, G3 data modems over which I’m posting this. The Netgear USB WiFi adapter seems to be very slow on the laptop (works fine on desktop).

I originally installed Xubuntu on the Dell over the previous Debian Etch installation and found sluggish performance and a lot of hard drive activity compared to Debian with XCFE. After some discussion on the Ubuntu support forums, I added lxde as the window manager and that change cut the fresh boot RAM use from 130Mb to around 70Mb, so much less swapping. With 384Mb or 512Mb, Xubuntu becomes much nicer, but laptops of this age have a maximum RAM of 256 Mb usually. The fans work properly, and hibernate to swap partition works, but I need to load an applet to trigger the hibernation when I close the lid.

Hardy Heron 8.04.1 appears to work fine on my Asus Pundit P1 box (AMD dual core, integrated graphics, very quiet). Installed easily and the NVIDIA drivers were downloaded and recognised my no name monitor. Bling works including the wobbly windows (but I tend to use ‘medium’ bling settings in the appearance tab). The ‘buy from magnatune’ button does not work in Rhythmbox, but I have been listening to CBC for the last 10 minutes.

8.04 beta 2 was a little rough around the edges although it ran fine on the Pundit. A clean install of this patch appears to have smoothed off a lot of the burrs. Having separate home and root partitions helps to preserve my data and preferences while installing different flavours of linux.