[Tfug] A Google Chrome-OS prediction...

[Jim March]

> By mid-2010 Google is coming out with its own operating system, Chrome OS.
> It will be open-source and possibly free. They claim it was built from the
> ground up with the Internet in mind. This may well be the last coffin nail
> for Windows. Google will then be able to offer all sorts of services from
> office suites to tax programs to storage over the Internet for a nominal
> fee.

Yeah, Google is going to push "the cloud" heavy, but I'm not sure
everyone will bite.  I suspect Google's distro will be very good mind
you, and could take over Ubuntu's lead position as a distro plus push
Linux further than ever - but not without tweaks to give more local
processing, including the addition of OpenOffice and other major
"non-cloud" apps.  The tweaks might be significant enough that it's
not GoogleOS that becomes dominant, but rather a fork.

GoogleOS could end up as the "Debian" for the next "Ubuntu".  And as
long as Google's cloud-centric features aren't stripped out, Google
will likely view that as OK and possibly give active support.

Another thing if we're talking "The Annointed Distro To Rule All And
Kick MS's Butt" - the Wine project is getting better all the time.  At
some point a distro will ship that will be good in it's own right and
strongly integrate Wine setup and app support in to a point where
running most Windows apps is just as easy in Linux as it is in
Windows.

Photoshop CS4 for example is running almost perfectly under Jaunty and
the latest Wine builds...that's a breakthrough point not enough people
are paying attention to, and gaming/DirectX support is also coming
along nicely.

Upshot: the pieces for The One Distro are starting to come together.
They're not there yet but they're close enough that work can begin on
The One right now...and I would submit that both the new thinking
Google will bring in plus a really clean front end/installer for Wine
and Windows apps is going to be part of the recipe.