Exciting times for Linux geeks. Google has open sourced its disruptive operating system Chromium. Essentially it's a lightweight operating system that contains just enough to power a browser (which is where Google sees us doing just about everything in the near future). The way Google have been able to achieve a boot time of 7 seconds is to strip out everything that is not essential to running a browsers. Anyone who's used computer before is probably familiar with the way operating systems get slower and slower over the life of the device. This is quite convenient for peddlers of locked in operating system, because it means you're more likely to pay for an upgrade, but the root cause is often sloppy programming of third party software. What often happens is that programmers put parts of their code into the boot process so that it run all the time. Why? Because if 50% of their programme is running constantly, when you actually start that programme, it appears to load faster. So the program looks like it's nice and fast, but what it's actually doing is choking your entire computer. Not good in the long run.
With Google's 7 second boot and Ubuntu's goal of a 10 second boot in its next release, it looks like speed is going to become on of Linux's hallmarks in the years to come. It may just be the tipping point for an increasingly impatient market.
More on the Chromium OS:
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