Google's Chrome OS in VMware Fusion

 In my last post, I covered How To Install Google's Chrome OS to USB.  I saw that someone at gdgt has already installed Chrome OS into a VMware image.  I wanted to give a whirl to see if there was any differences to the USB version.  It will also be useful to have it as a virtual machine to play with.

How to install and run Chrome OS in VMware Fusion:
1)  Download the Chrome OS VMware image from gdgt.  You will need to be a registered member to download.  It is free to register.
2)  From the VMware Fusion toolbar, select File > New
3)  Click Continue without disc

4)  Select Use an existing virtual disk

 

 













5)  Navigate to the chrome os vmware file downloaded in step 1.  Select Make a separate copy of the virtual disk and click Choose.

6)  Click Continue.

7)  Choose Linux as the Operating System and Other Linux 2.6.x kernel as the version, and then click Continue.

8)  Click on Customize Settings.

 













9)  Change the Save As name to Chrome OS and click Save.

10)  Watch as disk is copied.

11)  Change some settings before starting virtual machine.  Click on Network.

12)  Change Network setting to Connect directly to the physical network (Bridged) and click Show All.

13)  Change memory to 512M and click Show All.

14) Start the virtual machine.  Log in using your gmail id and password.

15) Screenshot of the application page.

16)  Screenshot of the networking options at the top right.

17)  Screenshot of the Chrome options.

18)  Screenshot of the Chromium OS version.

How to Install Google's Chrome OS to USB

Why stop at installing and playing with Google's Android!  It came to my attention today that I can install Chrome OS to a USB drive and boot from it.  It's actually Chromium OS not Chrome OS.  Chromium OS is the open source version of Chrome.

Credit goes to Hexxeh who put together a Chrome OS Diet USB Version.  The directions  for this appeared very simple and I was able to install without any issue.

How to install and run Chrome OS:
1)  You need to get the Chome OS Diet USB Version.  There are links on Hexxeh's website to download the image using either a torrent or http mirrors.
2)  You need a USB stick to install Chrome OS on.  The USB stick must be at least 1GB.  I used an Apacer Steno 1GB stick.

3)  Follow the instructions  on Hexxeh's website for writing the Chrome OS image to USB.  There are instructions to do so using Windows, Mac and Linux.  I followed the Windows instructions.
4)  You need a netbook or laptop.  See the current list of supported hardware.  I did not have any of the hardware listed.  Remember that Chrome OS is still in development and won't be released till next year.  I decided to try it on a MSI Wind U100 Netbook.  All I needed to do was plug in a USB stick and when powered on, it booted directly into Chromium OS logon screen.  The bios on my netbook was already configured to first boot from usb before the hard drive.  You may also see an option to display the boot menu during the boot process.  This will allow you to temporarily change the boot option.
5)  Enter facepunch for both the username and password to log in.  You are now in Chrome OS.

 Some initial observations:
1)  Ethernet worked right away while wi-fi did not.  As far as I know this is not working yet.
2)  The trackpad also worked, as did a mouse.
3)  If you have used the Chrome browser before, then that's basically what you get with Chrome OS (at least for now).
4)  If you click the chrome symbol at the top left of the screen, it takes you to a list of different web-based applications including Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Docs, You Tube, Picasa Web, Hulu, Lala, Pandora, Contacts, Calculator, To-do list, Calendar Panel, Books, Chess, Facebook and Twitter.