On the 7th July, Google announced that they are developing an operating system called ‘Google Chrome OS.’

“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010.”

“…redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates”

“..Google Chrome running within a new windowing system”

“…Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips.”

The world of Internet journalism went mad and Techmeme lit up as a result of the announcement. Thousands of blogs responded too. It was quite an interesting response for what is essentially another Linux distro. Perhaps it reflects the desire for a real consumer-level alternative out there. It certainly proves the power of the Google brand and that could be the most important aspect of the whole product.

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The crossover is finally happening. The smartphone CPU designer is moving into the PC market while the PC CPU designer is moving into the smartphone market. 

ARM are announcing a partnership with one of the best-known names in desktop Linux and are making a very significant move into the world of low-cost, low-power, connected computing with Canonical who will port the full desktop version of their Ubuntu OS to the ARMv7 architecture ready for release in April 2009. 

Press-release and more, below.

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Update: I’m currently live on UMPCPortal.com/live testing this out if you fancy seeing it in action.

Update: Live session summary below.

Today, One of the Canonical mobile team members released details of a new distribution based on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) aimed at ‘MIDs’ with screen sizes from 7-9″

After a simple download and copy to a flash drive the Q1 Ultra booted straight into a live linux session running in RAM and everything seems to work out of the box. Touch, brightness, wifi, BT and more. This is exciting. There’s a full software suite withthe Moblin browser (Firefox + grab and drag), on screen keyboard, Open Office, Pidgin, Thunderbird and of course, through the package manager, a whole lot more. [Video after the break]

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Thanks to everyone that replied to my cry for help on mobile operating systems. I’m trying to take a developers view on the mobile platform market and work out why a developer might choose a particular OS or platform. Coming from an X86 world myself, I find it difficult to understand how Moblin, one of the first X86-only mobile operating systems, might fit into the big, carrier-influenced, ARM-focused, 100million-device-per-year world of converged mobile devices.

Since my article, Nokia announced that Symbian and related projects will be pooled and gradually turned into open-source operation. This article at GigaOm has some good thoughts. Given that they have 65% of the global market it’s obviously a significant move and I’ll be watching closely to see what happens. In the meantime, here’s a list I created of the choices that are in the market. The top 4 basically take the whole of the 100million+ per year smartphone market with LiMo carrying most of the rest. The most shocking thing is the list of Linux options. What on earth are they thinking? Open Source Linux appears to translate to a lack of focus and if I was a commercial development house right now i’d be looking to the top 4. LiMo appears to have some traction with good carrier support and penetration. Android on OHA has a lot of backing and media attention and Moblin has a number of distribution deals although at the moment, these are non-voice netbook distribution deals. It remains to be seen if the X86-focused Intel can stimulate smaller-screen distribution and make the conversion to being a voice platform when their smartphone-focused Morestown cpu comes into play in 2010.

So here’s the list of platforms, systems and methods i’ve put together. i’f i’ve missed one, please let me know!

Top 4 – 95% penetration of mobile device (*1) market.

• Symbian (65%)
• Windows Mobile (13%)
• Blackberry (10%)
• iPhone/ OS-x (7%)

Linux flavours

• LiMo (now includes LiPS)
• Android – OHA
• Moblin – Linux+Gnome+Hildon
• Meamo – Nokia. Linux+Gnome (GtK+, Gstreamer, Matchbox, Hildon)
• Mobilinux – MontaVista Linux
• Acces Linux Platform (LiMo compliant?)
• OpenMoko – Linux+Gnome
• TuxPhone
• Qtopia

Others

• Garnet (Palm, Access)

High-level languages, kits and methods:

• Ajax
• j2me
• Adobe air
• Silverlight
• Flash
• Flex

(*1) % Figures from Canalys

It looks like there are definately a few options for getting Windows XP after June 2008. All OEMs can take the ’system builder’ route to provide XP until Jan 2009 as we mentioned on Podcast #15.

JKK has the summary of options and highlights that OEMs should be shipping XP restore CDs with editions of Vista that include downgrade rights.