ChromiumOS (formerly styled as Chromium OS) is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

designed for running

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

s and browsing the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

. It is the open-source version of

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes styled as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is an operating system designed and developed by Google. It is derived from the open-source operating system and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user ...

, a

made by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

. ChromiumOS is based on the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

, like ChromeOS, but its principal

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

is the

Chromium Chromium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in Group 6 element, group 6. It is a steely-grey, Luster (mineralogy), lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal. Chromium ...

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

rather than the

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

browser. ChromiumOS also includes the

Portage Portage or portaging ( CA: ; ) is the practice of carrying water craft or cargo over land, either around an obstacle in a river, or between two bodies of water. A path where items are regularly carried between bodies of water is also called a '' ...

package manager A package manager or package management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals wi ...

, which was originally developed for

Gentoo Linux Gentoo Linux (pronounced ) is a Linux distribution built using the Portage package management system. Unlike a binary software distribution, the source code is compiled locally according to the user's preferences and is often optimized for ...

. Because ChromiumOS and ChromeOS use a

browser engine A browser engine (also known as a layout engine or rendering engine) is a core software component of every major web browser. The primary job of a browser engine is to transform HTML documents and other resources of a web page into an interacti ...

for the user interface, they are oriented toward

s rather than

application software Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not operating, administering or programming the computer. An application (app, application program, software application) is any program that can be categorized as ...

or mobile apps. Google first published the ChromiumOS

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

in late 2009.

Architecture

Chromium's architecture is three-tiered, consisting of "three major components": * The Chromium-based browser and the window manager * System-level software and user-land services: the

, drivers, connection manager, and so on *

Firmware In computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, h ...

Availability

ChromiumOS was first made available in compiled form by hobbyists. More organized efforts have emerged over time, including a few manufacturers that have shipped devices with the operating system pre-installed.

Builds and forks

By May 2010, compiled versions of the work-in-progress source code had been downloaded from the Internet more than a million times. The most popular version, entitled "ChromiumOS Flow", was created by Liam McLoughlin, a then 17-year-old college student in

Liverpool, England Liverpool is a port city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population of (in ), Liverpool is the administrative, c ...

, posting under the name "Hexxeh". McLoughlin's build boots from a USB memory stick and included features that Google engineers had not yet implemented, such as support for the

Java programming language Java is a high-level, general-purpose, memory-safe, object-oriented programming language. It is intended to let programmers ''write once, run anywhere'' ( WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Jav ...

. While Google did not expect that hobbyists would use and evaluate ChromiumOS ahead of its official release, Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management (now the CEO) said that "what people like Hexxeh are doing is amazing to see." Pichai said the early releases were an unintended consequence of open source development. "If you decide to do open-source projects, you have to be open all the way." Hexxeh's work continued into the following year. He announced "ChromiumOS Lime" in December 2010, and in January 2011, released "Luigi", an application designed to " jailbreak"/"

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

" the

Cr-48 "Mario" prototype hardware and install a generic

BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is a type of firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization d ...

. The developer made the builds available in virtual machine format on March 13, 2011. With no official build of ChromiumOS forthcoming from Google, Hexxeh's "

vanilla Vanilla is a spice derived from orchids of the genus ''Vanilla (genus), Vanilla'', primarily obtained from pods of the flat-leaved vanilla (''Vanilla planifolia, V. planifolia''). ''Vanilla'' is not Autogamy, autogamous, so pollination ...

" nightly builds of ChromiumOS were the principal resource for people wanting to try ChromiumOS. Hexxeh stopped uploading his builds on April 20, 2013. More recent versions of ChromiumOS are available from Arnoldthebat, who maintains daily and weekly builds along with usage guidelines and help. In July 2012, Chromium Build Kit was released. It automatically compiles a developer build and installs ChromiumOS on a USB drive. In 2015, New York City-based Neverware produced a ChromiumOS fork called CloudReady aimed at the educational market, with the intention of extending the life of older PCs and laptops. A subsequent version can dual-boot Neverware and the

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

operating system (until v64). In 2018, Neverware acquired Flint OS, a UK-based and China-based company. In 2020, Neverware was acquired by Google, and a similar "ChromeOS Flex" was released into beta in February 2022. Flint OS became FydeOS. FydeOS, is based on Chromium OS, to run on Intel-based computers, and the Raspberry Pi 4 family.

Hardware

Some devices have shipped with ChromiumOS preinstalled. In May 2012,

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

also released a new build for the Dell Inspiron Mini 10v netbook, following up on an earlier build released almost 18 months earlier. The build did not support audio, but was bootable from a USB drive. Other devices include the Kogan Agora Chromium Laptop by the Australian company Kogan and the Xi3 Modular Computer, introduced by the company of the same name. In late 2015, a team headed by Dylan Callahan released a beta ChromiumOS port to the Raspberry Pi 2 single-board computer. In 2016, Flint Innovations released a ChromiumOS port for the latest Raspberry Pi 3/B model named Flint OS for RPi. Subsequently, this project has been fully open-sourced at GitHub, with all the files and detailed instructions to re-create the build.

Trademark dispute

In June 2011, ISYS Technologies, based in Salt Lake City, sued Google in a Utah district court, claiming rights to the name "Chromium" and, by default,

Chromebook Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a line of laptops, desktops, tablets and all-in-one computers that run ChromeOS, a proprietary operating system developed by Google. Chromebooks are optimised for web access. They al ...

and Chromebox. The suit sought to stop Google and its hardware and marketing partners from selling Chromebooks. The suit was later dismissed and, as part of an undisclosed settlement between Google and ISYS, ISYS abandoned its trademark efforts.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Chromium Os ARM operating systems Google Chrome Google software X86 operating systems X86-64 operating systems Operating systems based on the Linux kernel Linux distributions without systemd 2009 software Linux distributions Gentoo Linux derivatives Rolling release Linux distributions