Hexxeh's Blog

I thought I’d best create a blog to keep you informed of what I’m getting up to, especially currently with Chromium OS. So here’s a quick overview of my current plans with that:

• Fully automated build system
• More wireless support
• Pushing changes back into the main source tree
• New website with automatic status showing on how a build is going, possibly even ETAs generated automatically
• Faster releases, I aim to get the build process tuned down so we can get builds rolling off as fast as changes hit the main source tree
• And here’s the big one I think many of your have been waiting for, automatic updates. This may not be in initial versions, but it is certainly now a long-term goal for my builds
• Less soda-themed names

Those are just a few of the things I’m planning. Right now, I’m working on building the automated build system, and that’s coming along well (though the 512MB of RAM the server has is becoming rather restrictive). I’ll be posting more about each of these new features and plans soon.

The long term goal, is basically to become the de facto Chromium OS build for general users (as opposed to developers who are comfortable building themselves). I’ll also be publishing every single bit of my code as open-source.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to express my thanks to various people:

• Google, and redpig in particular for helping me out when I needed it amongst other things.
• Every single other developer working on the Chromium projects, because none of this could happen without each and every one of you.
• Users on the Google Groups for ChromiumOS/Chromium, many problems I’ve encountered have been resolved from very useful posts by the users there, my thanks go out to you all!
• Donators who helped to pay for the VPS and who are ensuring I can continue to run it to provide you with fresh builds regularly. Big thank you to you guys, and everyone else, you should thank them too! They’re playing a big part in making this happen.
• All the users who have supported me and send their thanks via Twitter/email, really, thankyou! Please, keep spreading the word as you’ve been doing so well so that more people can try out this fantastic OS and hopefully use it on their netbooks.

If you love what I’m doing (thanks! I enjoy doing it and I’ve met some fantastic people whilst working on it), and would like to help out, here are a few of the things you could do:

• Work on the wiki! Editing a wiki is something anybody can do, you don’t need to have edited one before, it’s very intuitive and you can pretty much learn as you go along. If you’re still unsure, stick to the existing format and just add to the compatibility lists, for example.
• Spread the word! Give your friends copies of the builds and point them to the site, let them try it out! If their hardware is incompatible, add details to the wiki, and you never know, I may be able to ship a fix in a future version!
• Donate! Donations have paid for the server on which builds happen and much of the site runs on, and this project simply could not function without their support! Any amount is very much appreciated.
• Share your ideas/suggestions for the project! While not everything is feasible for implementing, most ideas are and you may have thought of something I or somebody else didn’t!
• Use the builds! This is by far and away the most important thing you can do to show your support.

To those who have tried to reach me via Twitter and haven’t gotten a reply, please, tweet at me again. I sometimes may miss a tweet by accident when I open my client and see many hundreds of new tweets. Please do check the wiki and FAQ first to see if your question is answered there. Many of the questions I am asked, are, and I’ll simply point people to the relevant page. Save me a little time by checking there first, please.

Any future updates to my Chromium OS builds will be found here first, and hopefully you can enjoy my comments/stories about how the project is getting on.