My experiments with Chrome OS!

Google Chome OS is easily one of the buzzwords over the last two weeks in almost all the technology blogs. There were enough reviews and mixed reactions. Its my turn to share the experience with you guys. Its better to be late than never. I got a chance to hook onto the webcast of Google Chome OS press event (19-Nov-2009) by Sundar Pichai and Matthew Papakipos from Google. It came out as a real disappointment for me. Reasons -- 1. Chrome OS needs special hardware devices 2. User data is available only on the cloud 3. Only limited apps on the web. But, still these reasons could not stop me from trying it out. From the very next day, I started getting my hands dirty on the Chrome OS source code. Check out the screencast  of my successful build at the bottom of this post.

Attempt#1:

To make things quicker, I had downloaded the tarball of Chrome OS source code instead of checking out from the repository. I was trying to build the same from my Ubuntu 9.04 virtual machine. Before starting the process, I had decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 9.10. Then came the first problem.Ubuntu got crashed during the upgrade process and I had to download and install Ubuntu 9.10.Also, in the interest of time, I didnt want to build Chrome browser component and took the binary files of it. Finally, I was able to build Chrome OS (It took around 5-6 hrs) and launch it as a virtual machine. But, the Chrome browser component I had downloaded was an older one and so I could see only the basic browser without the app bar, etc.

Attempt#2:

After being able to see something, I decided to take the long route. Checked out the Chrome OS code and also the browser's code. Spent quite some time solving the dependency for building the browser. Unfortunately, Chrome browser is dependent on some of the older versions of gtk libraries (responsible for gnome-desktop). Then, I made a big mess of it by downgrading those packages. After that, I was unable to login to gnome-desktop and even to the text  based login mode (Courtesy: Crazy display problems with Sun Virtualbox). Somehow, managed to revert back to the previous state and decided not to build the chrome browser anymore. (There are more technical reasons to this). Total failure.

Attempt#3:

Attempt#3 is a mix of Attempt#1 and Attempt#2. Building the Chrome OS from source with already built browser component. I downloaded the latest build of the browser and its all successful this time around. :-)

I have spent around 30 hrs on this whole thing and in the end I was able to cherish the successful build of Chrome OS (which not many have done). Have tried it out from Sun Virtualbox. Chrome OS seems to be running very slow as a virtual machine. Shall make an update here once I get to know its performance when booted from USB drives. Check out the screencast below:

Contact me if you need any help in building / trying it out as a virtual machine.

-- Varun