There are many issues with Firefox, it takes a lot of memory, it is slower and does not fit well into over-all desktop environment. On the other hand, Google Chrome fits well into Gnome since it has an option to use either default theme or the GTK Theme. Chrome’s GTK theme fits perfectly well and attempts to blend in beautifully. It is much faster and uses less memory than Firefox.

As you all know Google is working on releasing an Open Source operating system of its own which is currently called ChromeOS. A sneak preview of this operating system can be seen here. Those who want to try its very early alpha builds should follow these instructions.

ChromeOS is basically a browser based operating system that uses the web as its hard disk. It is focused around working on the web. Google already has many tools available that will be part of this operating system. Such as Gmail which will be used as the email client, Google Docs will be used as an office suite, Picassa as photo manager, gtalk as instant messaging client, and so on.

This operating system will have linux at its core and the web browser, Chromium or Google Chrome. So may be this is the reason that Google Chrome performs better on Ubuntu Linux.

I have started feeling that may be I am using two operating systems at once. Google OS and Ubuntu Linux. I am using Google Chrome to access Gmail, Google Docs, Gamil Chat, Google Search, and keeping in touch with my social networks. I use Google’s Picassa photo manager. I ocassionally use Movie Player to watch movies, I use Empathy for voice chat with my gmail contacts. So basically I use Google OS components more than I use default desktop applications. So can I say that I am actually using Google Operating System on Ubuntu Linux platform?

Step 1: We need to create two files.
mailnreader1 which contains this:

#! /bin/sh
firefox http://mail.google.com/


And mailnreader2 which contains this:

#! /bin/sh
sleep 30;
firefox -new-tab http://www.google.com/reader


We are going to save these two files in /usr/bin/ directory. Once you have pasted these files please check the permissions. Select a file right click and select Properties and then click on Permissions tab. Make sure that the file is read and executeable by all. See the image below:

These two files contain simple commands to open Firefox with specified web addresses. The sleep command tells your computer to wait for 30 seconds before running the next command. The reason behind doing this is that when your session begins your computer performs some tasks. Like loading your settings, Desktop, Nautilus, etc. My system is only 800 mghz, and If I don’t wait for 30 seconds the browser would give me an error something like this:

Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system.


If you have a faster computer you can try removing the sleep line or decrease the number of seconds.

2: Now Go to Preferences > Sessions, click on Startup Programs tab, press the Add button and add this:

mailnreader1


Press Ok and then press the Add button again to add the second file:


mailnreader2


Press Ok and then Close. Now to check these scripts out you need to Log Out and then Log In.

Why two files?

I tried creating a single file containing this code:

#! /bin/sh
firefox http://mail.google.com/
sleep 30;
firefox -new-tab http://www.google.com/reader


But it didn’t work. I hope someone would improve the script so that we don’t have to wait longer and we can add more sites all in one single script. Until then, I guess I will keep using it because it works and saves me time and hassle of fetching mail and feeds in two separate windows while browsing the web in the third window.

• My documents are accessible from every where. To access my documents I just need an internet connection.
• I can share documents with friends, colleagues and any one and publish it easily on the web to make it accessible for everyone to read.
• Searching the documents is easier with tags and Google’s superior search powers.
• I have Ubuntu 6.06 and Debian Testing installed on my computer. So no matter what operating system I boot at the startup, I can still work on my documents. This feature alone is a great reason for me to use Google Docs. With the Google’s Browser Sync Firefox plugin my browser settings get automatically synchronized on both Operating systems so now it doesn’t really matter what operating system I am using I just need Firefox or Debian’s Iceweasel to resume my working environment.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets are near to perfect for me, but still there are a few limitations. Below is a small list of features I would like to see implemented in Google docs in near future.

• I don’t know how to set page margins. May be the functionality is around but I can not see it. I needed this functionality because sometimes I am being asked to create documents with page margins set to half an inch or more. I can do this in MS office and Open office I don’t know how to do that in Google Docs.
• There are no document templates available. I believe that templates are necessary, they save time and improve the productivity. Google docs should have some templates available and there should be functionality to create, save and share templates.
• In the Style menu, there should be functionality to add new user defined styles.
• Users should have ability to add new fonts in the font menu for a particular document. This is specially useful for people who are writing documents in other languages. I can do this by going to ‘Edit HTML’ and add the font manually. But I guess it wouldn’t be easy for all users.
• Adding images works great but I have a problem with this tool. A document takes more time to load when I add a larger picture and resize it to fit in a paragraph. A better solution would be that Google automatically creates different optimized versions of the image, displays them in a table with their size in caption and asks the users to select one of them or insert the original one. I believe that most people do not have time to open some graphic tool to resize image and optimize it to be used on the web.
• When publishing a document from Google Docs to my WordPress blog, Google Docs doesn’t insert my Document title as the post title and Tags as categories.

Even with limitations I will be using Google Office suite for my daily needs as it promises easy sharing, collabration, hassle free storage and publishing.