Open Voice

Photo of Caesar Sengupta

I am sure a lot of people was surprised, excited and baffled when the news broke yesterday that indeed ChromiumOS is being released as open source by Google and that all future development on the OS is going to happen in the open. We definitely do live in an exciting time for technology innovation. I was very lucky to be able to get hold of Caesar Sengupta, Group Product Manager at Google, for a couple of minutes to find out some details about ChromiumOS.

Schalk Neethling: Welcome to Open Voice Caesar and thank you for joining me. To kick things off, please tell us a little more about yourself and your role in this project.

Caesar Sengupta: I am the lead Product Manager for Google Chrome OS. I’ve been at Google for about 3.5 years and have worked on Toolbar, Desktop, Sidewiki and our Ads products.

Neethling: A lot of people have obviously been anxiously awaiting the news that broke yesterday. Before we get into more specifics, please give us a broad overview of what Chromium OS is.

Sengupta: Google Chrome OS is an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web. It is built around the core tenets of speed, simplicity and security.

Neethling: Of course Linux has now been around for a long time and has finally been recognized for it’s achievements. How is Chromium OS going to be different then just another flavor of Linux and indeed, in which ways is it going to be similar?

Sengupta: In general we see Google Chrome OS is a fundamentally different computing model from anything else that is out there– it is an open source light-weight operating system for avid users of the web built around the core tenets of speed, simplicity and security. Chrome OS is built on top of a number of open source Linux components including the kernel and components developed by the Moblin and Ubuntu projects. We are going to work closely with these communities to upstream any changes we make to these components.

Neethling: Do you have a short video clip or demonstration available to share visually demonstrating what Chromium OS is all about?

Sengupta: We have a bunch! You can see this video called “What is Google Chrome OS?,”  our UI Concept video, and a video of the demo Sundar did during our event. We also have some more technical videos that explain Google Chrome OS security, fast boot and open source.

Neethling: Thank you again for joining me here on Open Voice and we wish everyone that get’s involved with this project all of the best and will surely be following it very closely. In closing, the big question now is, where to from here and how can the open source community get involved in steering the future of Chromium OS?

Sengupta: We have a lot of work to do and we definitely need help from the open source community. We need your contributions in every part of the system – systems software, drivers, extending functionality. We also hope you will review our designs and help us make Chrome OS better. You can find information about how to contribute the project by visiting our tracker site and the helpwanted category.