If you don't find your answer here, check the discussion groups. What's the high-level difference between Google Chrome OS vs Chromium OS?Google Chrome OS is to Chromium OS what Google Chrome browser is to Chromium. Chromium OS is the open source project, used primarily by developers, with code that is available for anyone to checkout, modify and build their own version with. Meanwhile, Google Chrome OS is the Google product that OEMs will ship on Netbooks this year. Specifically, Google Chrome OS will run on specially optimized hardware in order to get enhanced performance and security. Chromium OS does not auto-update (so that we do not blow away any changes you may have made to the code) while Google Chrome OS will seamlessly auto-update so that users have the latest and greatest features and fixes. Google Chrome OS will be supported by Google and our partners, whereas Chromium OS is supported by the open source community, but they fundamentally share the same code base. Google Chrome OS also has some cool firmware features, verified boot and easy recovery, which require corresponding hardware changes and thus also don't work in Chromium OS builds.Should I call my build Chromium OS or Google Chrome OS?You should call it Chromium OS.
Will the autoupdate feature work on both Google Chrome OS and Chromium OS?We don't plan to support autoupdate on Chromium OS, as we did not build the binaries, and we don't know what modifications you've made to the system, so we don't want to blow away any changes you may have made to the code. Therefore Google will not autoupdate Chromium OS systems, but you're welcome to set up your own autoupdate server.
Google Chrome OS will autoupdate to keep consumer machines running the latest and greatest at all times.
Where can I download Google Chrome OS?Google Chrome OS is not a conventional operating system that you can download or buy on a disc and install. As a consumer, the way you will get Google Chrome OS is by buying a netbook that has Google Chrome OS installed by the OEM. Google Chrome OS is being developed to run on new machines that are specially optimized for increased security and performance. We are working with manufacturers to develop reference hardware for Google Chrome OS. These netbooks will be available in the fourth quarter of 2010.
If you are the kind of developer who likes to build an open source operating system from scratch, you can check out Chromium OS, build it and experiment with it. A number of sites have also posted pre-built binaries of Chromium OS. However, these downloads are not verified by Google, therefore please ensure you trust the site you are downloading these from.
Keep in mind that Chrome OS is not yet ready for general consumer use.
The open-source nature of Chromium OS allows it to be ported to an expanding range of hardware; however, some base requirements are likely to remain fixed. Hardware-accelerated OpenGL or OpenGL ES support is mandatory, and the Chromium browser's memory footprint is an obvious lower bound for RAM. See the Developer Hardware list for examples of netbooks on which developers are successfully running Chromium OS. What about other hardware: Does Chromium OS support my wifi card?In order to ensure the best user experience with Google Chrome OS, we're going through a careful hardware selection and testing process for hardware components. For Chromium OS, the open source community and Google are working to add support for a very broad range of hardware. If the device you're interested in has an open source driver already in the upstream Linux kernel, please send a request to chromium-os-dev@googlegroups.com -- if you can include a proposed patch, even better. Please see our supported developer hardware wiki for more details. Is it true that you don't support hard disk drives (HDDs)?Firstly, we should point out that the information in the open source release has been misinterpreted as saying that we don't support local storage. We do, but we are asking our hardware partners for Google Chrome OS to use solid state drives (SSDs) rather than hard disk drives (HDDs), for performance and reliability reasons. Secondly, this restriction doesn't apply to Chromium OS: It will work with conventional HDDs, though the disk accesses are optimized for flash-based storage, like reduced read-ahead. Chromiums OS issuesI can't log inLogin may fail under various circumstances. For example, if you do not have network connectivity and you have never logged in before, then you will not be able to log in. The login screen should display a message beneath the username/password input field. For example, if you have network connectivity and provide the wrong credentials, you will be told that either your username or password is incorrect. To troubleshoot networking at this point, you have to jump to a virtual terminal (only enabled on dev machines) by using Ctrl+Alt+F2 and entering the shared user password that you optionally set as part of the build process. If you did not set this field, you will not be able to debug networking and should plug into Ethernet at your earliest convenience. If you are able to log in to the virtual terminal, reconfigure the networking service ( For more information about login errors, look at the log files:
I log in but the browser does not appearIf you do not have a black screen, try using the hotkey Ctrl+Alt+N to open a new window. If this doesn't work, check slim.log to verify whether it's an error in slim, or in something else. The logs you may be concerned about are:
Wireless drops and does not reconnectDrop into a terminal either through vt02 (Ctrl+Alt+F2) or Ctrl+Alt+T. Reconfiguring the connman service may fix the problem. OtherWhat are the shortcut keys?To get a visual overlay of shortcut keys available, hit F8 and then hold modifier keys like Ctrl, Alt, and Shift to see the associated hotkeys. Most browser shortcuts also apply: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95743
Are native applications supported?Google Chrome OS is a web-centric system, so all applications are web applications; this provides powerful and simple manageability and security. To write applications that will benefit from native code execution we recommend using NativeClient, an open source project that allows web apps to run native code securely within a browser. See http://code.google.com/p/nativeclient/ for more details. Of course Chromium OS is open source, and it's Linux. This means that as a developer you can do pretty much anything you want, including installing any Linux application. |
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Chromium OS > How Tos and Troubleshooting >
High Level Developer FAQ |