Chrome OS Wi-Fi Support Running and hacked for Mini 10v… Source Code Available
Last week, Google released ChromiumOS to the open source community at http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os. ChromiumOS is a small, optimized OS whose purpose is to make it extremely simple and easy to browse the web. Without a network connection, ChromiumOS is not very interesting. With a network connection, ChromiumOS shines. The Chromium browser is extremely fast and makes for a great web-centric browsing experience. Boot time appears quick too – about 12 seconds from hitting the power button.
Me and some other Dell folks noticed that Engadget recently got the Chrome OS running on a Vostro A860 netbook. I’ve been doing some timkering over the lat few days working to get our Dell Mini 10v up and running with ChromiumOS. As of late yesterday, I can report success.
I have released an USB key image file to: http://linux.dell.com/files/cto. The file name is: “ChromiumOS_Mini10v_Nov25.img.” It contains a functioning image of my USB key loaded with ChromiumOS. In addition, I have made a best effort attempt to get the Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter working in this image. It’s definitely not perfect (read: highly experimental, untested, unstable, yada yada…) but it does appear to function.
Here are the caveats:
- It will take more than 5-10 *minutes* for the ChromiumOS network connection manager to “see” the access points and allow you to select and connect – be patient.
- Wired connections appear to work fine and appear quick to connect.
- There are currently issues with both the connection manager as well as the underlying components (wpa_supplicant) that can easily break or get hung. When in doubt, reboot and give it another try.
- Use this image at your own risk – it comes to you totally unsupported and very minimally tested.