[alxian]

enough of this kids stuff. GE SB and silly toolbars.

google should go for gold and build an entire operating environment.

thinner than windows, more poweruser friendly than OSX, running on intel x86 @ 64bit.. drool.

any takers?

[Buffy]

They have, but its a server OS, not a client OS. It runs an amazing distributed server farm thats big enough to handle the flabergasting number of searches thrown at it every day around the world. It is fully redundant, has load balancing and fail-over. Its an amazing bit of coding.

Yes, it would be interesting to see them get into the client OS business. Don't count them out, they're trying to raise something like $40 billion with another public offering very soon and there's lots of speculation about what they want to do with the money....

Cheers,
Buffy

[nemo]

Slashdot is all abuzz about the prospect of a Google IM client, but I haven't heard the OS rumor for a while... If I were them, I'd offer something akin to what people used to get with the mainframe environment; they keep your profile and data (really, how many Gmailers actually use all the space they've got), and you log in from any Internet capable machine. Essentially turning any machine at any location into a terminal that just happens to connect to one of the biggest beasts in the world. There have already been articles on how to use Gmail as a network drive, and it doesn't seem like it would be that big a stretch to me... Limit free home directories to whatever size gmail is at, and offer bigger home directories to paid subscribers. Something tells me you wouldn't have a problem locating that file / email / picture / article you saved three months ago in this scenario.

[alexander]

Google OS is based on a Linux kernel, infact it is not the OS that is the most amazing, reasonably ofcourse, it is one hacked up version of Linux with all kinds of patches some custom written by google programmers, I'll give you that

The most amazing part of google's infrastructure is their filesystem called googlefs, that is what makes google servers such an amazingly fast searchers. The code for the fs was released a little while ago, but google, I'm sure, already released dramatic changes.

As to the main issue, it would be cool as heck to see an os made by google

Oh and nemo, there already have been articles on how to install Linux in your gmail account (want a link?), lol...

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by alexander

The most amazing part of google's infrastructure is their filesystem called googlefs, that is what makes google servers such an amazingly fast searchers.

Actually I like the load-balancing/fail-over/redudancy features (which get closer to the kernel), but that's just taste...

Originally Posted by nemo

Slashdot is all abuzz about the prospect of a Google IM client...

<sigh/> oh no, another one I have to sign up for. I've got em all. Thank goodness for Trillian...

Cheers,
Buffy

[alexander]

well all of those failover redundancy, load ballancing features are already available in Linux, Buffy, the fact that most people dont know how or whether it is possible to use them, thats another point all together. And kernel has nothing to do with failover or redundancy and very little with load-ballancing

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by alexander

well all of those failover redundancy, load ballancing features are already available in Linux, Buffy, the fact that most people dont know how or whether it is possible to use them, thats another point all together. And kernel has nothing to do with failover or redundancy and very little with load-ballancing

Bah! Honest, they've done a lot there: its really a fully distributed OS that goes far beyond what's in Linux... I have friends on the inside.... Its really mind boggling too...

Cheers,
Buffy

[alexander]

I never doubted the fact that it is mindboggling buffy And i had a chance to talk to some people who work at Google during last Linux World Expo, actually I talked to one of the guys on the Revolution OS video (if you havent seen it, you have to).
The thing is it is highly customized for what they use their machines for, not many people could have a use for googles server OS (well microsoft search engine can take a few lessons, few thousands that is)

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by alexander

The thing is it is highly customized for what they use their machines for, not many people could have a use for googles server OS (well microsoft search engine can take a few lessons, few thousands that is)

No bout a doubt it. So now you know. Its not practical as is, but its the first useful implementation of some of the ideas that came out of the plan 9 project at Bell Labs...

Cheers,
Buffy