A few days ago Google announced the launched of Chromium OS, and like an excited kid on Christmas Eve, I just couldn’t wait! Yesterday, the firstly publicly available developer build of the operating system was released. If – like me – you already have several other operating system installed (but use Windows as your primary system), you will probably find that running VM Ware Server from within Windows will make your life a little easier.
Installing Chromium OS on VMWare Virtual Machine and Player
You can download the VMWare virtual images for this operating system from gdgt (you will need to create yourself a login, but this only takes a few seconds!). Alternatively you could download the torrent. Next download the VMWare Server here. You can install this on Windows, enabling you to run your virtual machines from your Windows desktop. Alternatively you can use VMWare Player which I find is a lot faster, however GDGT did not supply this virtual drive with a VMX configuration file, 
so I generated one using EasyVMX (I chose ‘other’ operating system). EasyVMX will give you a zip file, which you just need to unpack into one of your Virtual Machine Folders.
Then, simply open up the folder you extracted the VMX files to, and rename the VMDK file to the same file name as the other files (they should share a similar base name, although they will have different extensions), then Then turn your virtual machine ON!
Google Chromium OS Review – The Verdict
What can I say? Google Chromium OS is the only operating system that looks and feels exactly like a giant version of the Google Chrome browser. It seems to evolve around the Web, using your Google account login to access the system, running all applications through an instance of the browser. It is incredibly fast, and even in VM Player, you have a responsive system only seconds after pushing the on switch.
The trade off appears to be having less functionality. Google Chromium OS does not carry all the clutter of utility programs and drivers in the background, making it fast. But I have no obvious file explorer, or terminal console available for running commands. At first I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. On the plus side, Chromium appears to be skinnable, and users of Linux’s X Windows will be pleased to note it is distributed with the GTK+ Appearance theme. I immediately turned this on to give me some feeling of normality.
The concept of having an OS running entirely on the Internet clearly belongs to the new generation of thought. Google have made this OS open source, and have welcomed contributions from developers. While yesterdays developer launch may provide little more than a bare framework, I would like to reserve judgement until after the masses have contributed.
Tags: chromium os, Google, google chromium os, operating system, review, screenshots, server, virtual machine, vmware, vmx
