[geeks] Google announces Google Chrome OS

[Michael Parson]

On Thu, 9 Jul 2009, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> Michael Parson wrote:
>> On Thu, 9 Jul 2009, gsm at mendelson.com wrote:
>>> The problem I see with that is, the "Linux on the Desktop" as it were,
>>> was the original idea behind Red Hat and it has never taken off to the
>>> point that enough people actually run Linux on their desktop computers
>>> that anyone says it's a serious contender against Windows.
>>
>> I don't know that I ever thought of the earlier Red Hat releases as
>> seriously attempting to be desktop-ready.  As I recall, the first real
>> effort to make a desktop friendly Linux was Caldera Desktop Linux, which
>> was based off Red Hat (2.something, IIRC),
>
> I think we have different definitions of "desktop ready".  In
> particular, I suspect what you mean here is something rather closer to
> "looks and works just like Windows".
>
> "Desktop" does not imply "Windows".

I've never claimed it did.  "Desktop" tends to mean "User Friendly" and
"has apps people want/need to get the job done."

Before Caldera Desktop Linux, our desktop environments on Linux were
limted to things like TWM, FVWM, OLWM, all configurable with 'dot files'
and had no integration with the operating system for doing any kind of
system management, software install, printing subsystem, etc.  CDL was,
to the best of my memory, one of the earlier stabs at providing this,
with an intuitive-ish GUI even.

I don't recall if it had a 'start-button' metaphore like Win95 did, but
that was a farily new concept for most people still.  We'll ignore the
Mac 'Apple' Menu for now, as, at the time, Mac OS was still in relative
obscurity, mostly for desktop publishing, and, at the time, was thought
to be on it's last legs and dying.  This was just before Michael Dell
made his statement about recommending that the board just shut the place
down and cut their losses, before the return of The Steve.

I don't recall being offended by CDL's interface, maybe a bit limiting,
after the power I had with being able to twiddle my .fvwmrc to my
liking, but I saw it's intended market.  Had the apps been there, I
could have probably installed it on any of my family members' computers
and they would have been OK using it.

I still have the media for it around here somewhere, I could fire it up
in a VM and see what the fuss was all about. :)

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org