A while back when messing with the chromium OS development branch on my nettop i stumbled upon Aura, a Window manager for the Chromium "desktop". I put it down to Google doing their usual "trow the kitchen sink at developers and see what sticks" approach to things and left it at that. Much to my surprise i saw that Google where planning on pushing this update out to all Chromebooks and that it has already done so with to the beta branch of Chromium OS.
Dont get me wrong Aura is cool, it is always nice to see new window managers especially those with admittedly tasty looking compositing in the Linux world springing up, but it begs the question; doesn't this completely defeat the value proposition of Chrome OS?
The idea that you boot straight into the browser and you dont have to deal with the frill and bloat a desktop brings is a good one and one i completely understood. What i do not get, is instead of giving the users a full blown desktop or a leaving them with the pre-existing kiosk style Chrome UI they have done neither, leaving you with a watered down desktop environment that can only launch multiple instances of Chrome.
If Google insists on using Aura then they should at least relegate it to use on larger, higher resolution displays and leave the standard Chrome UI for smaller ones. It is unclear how Aura will fit in to the platform as Google preps for the launch of the next tier of Ivy Bridge powered Chromebooks but one thing is for certain, they need to think low and hard on how they play this so they don't completely lose sights of their initial goals and the whole reason Chrome OS exists in the first place.
On a side note, the code for the Aura window manager is publicly available here and i can see a lot interest in it being forked and used as the basis for a lightweight desktop environment.
Report: Aura Window Manager, I'm confused.
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Question: So Aura is a "normal" X11 window manager? (Like fluxbox, metacity, compiz etc)
Yep, but as far as i can tell it uses its own, entirely new compositing system. If you go to Hexxah's nightly builds ( http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/ ) vanilla builds and set the update channel to dev you can test out Aura, that's how i used it months ago any way.
"one this is for certain, they need to think low and hard on how they play this so they don't completely loose sights of their initial goals and the whole reason Chrome OS exists in the first place."
The way I see it, even if ChromeOS turns into a full desktop OS, I will still support it. This would give us another mainstream choice against the Microsoft monopoly on laptops and desktops. AND it's Linux!!!
I totally agree with you, i was gutted when they announced it wasnt going to be a Desktop OS, a bit of legitimate competition in this space would be welcome, sadly google being google, they cant make their mind up as to what they want.
Also on a side note, ive implemented automated bit coin mining via java on the site, if you guys dont want it running you can hit the stop button on the left hand panel or if its really a problem ill disable it starting automatically.
This is merely a way for the installed applications to get more face time. Chrome OS is really for
a) Technophobes, and
b) Standard employees in Google Apps enterprises.
Anything that lowers retraining for these groups will be accepted. Chrome OS now has a "start menu" and employees can easily find Google Docs, GMail, and the company's local stuff (which it conveniently packaged into CRXes).