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Building Chromium OS

Google Chrome: Speed, Security, Simplicity

Google's logo
Google Chrome

I feel in love with Chrome the first time I used it. It has a minimalistic design, which I totally love. I first time I used it, I noticed that it was much faster than other browsers. The minimalistic design lets the content take the whole screen. And the thing that I love most about Chrome more than anything is that, it is platform for web applications. There are so many web apps and extensions are available for the browser for doing variety of tasks. And the Chrome sync feature? *THUMB'S UP*

Into the Cloud!

I discovered so many web apps through the Chrome Web Store, like Wunderlist, Pocket, PicMonkey, Lucidchart, Earbits... and the list goes on. It's not just about the webs apps from publishers, the whole Google-ly experience takes the web to a whole new level. Gmail, Google+, Google Drive, Google Docs and other cloud-based services from Google, work so well together and with apps from third-party publishers, that I barely use native apps now-a-days. You can say that live in the Internet these days. None of these would have happened if I hadn't met Google Chrome.

The Geek Part

Screenshot of Chromium OS
Chromium OS

All these development in cloud-based technology and services by Google got me excited about the Chromebook. But before I bought a Chromebook, I wanted to see how it feels like to use one. Hence came the idea... Let's compile the Chromium OS! But before I could do that I needed to download the source code. So I went to the Chromium OS website and click the download button... And oh boy!! The compressed source code is 2 GB?!?!? I mean a source code?!?!? 2 GB?? Wow... Nothing I can do about that.. Downloaded it and tried to extract it. The app crashed... Had to use tar on my Ubuntu 13.10 for a successful extraction. 6 GB, yes, the extracted directory was of 6 GB. So I was ready to compile the OS. Went the Chromium website for instructions, but where are they???? The instruction were given to build a the OS by downloading it from Git. No instructions given to build it from source code.. (What the hell?!??) By dreams shattered, literally...

I'm still trying to figure out how to build the OS from the source. Will update the post about new developments.. Stay tuned :)

Update: I have now officially given up due to lack of instructions.

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