> Driver support will likely be a weak point. We’ve heard at various times that Google has a legion of engineers working on the not so glamorous task of building hardware drivers.
I was under the impression that Chrome OS would be Linux based (which would make this a non-issue).
Graphics drivers under Linux are not a "non-issue", as I for one know from painful experience. And as I understand it, Chrome OS is not running X, so they need specific graphics drivers.
Linux does have some minor issues still in the Netbook arena. So this could be where it stems from.
Personally if this is true:
> nd we’ve also heard conflicting rumors that Google is mostly relying on hardware manufacturers to create those drivers.
That's awesome! Even if that is all Google manages to achieve with Chrome it would rock - getting manufacturers to produce Linux compatible drivers is something barely anyone else has managed!
I think power management will be an issue. Personally I've never had an acceptable experience with Linux on laptops. Not sure how much progress has been made here over the last few years. It definitely helps that netbooks use such similar hardware across the board. If OEMs can be bothered to do some QA testing when the bundle Chrome OS it should be fine. Installing it on "unsupported" hardware could be more of a problem.
If they had the Chrome browser also take over most of the functions of the Window Manager, then they'd get most of the kind of functionality a user would consider a "Chrome OS"
I was under the impression that Chrome OS would be Linux based (which would make this a non-issue).