If it's all about speed and lightness they might want to drop firefox for chrome. The difference is very noticeable on an Atom 1.6gighz, and in the upcoming ARM powered devices it will be too.
The screenshot ( http://www.markshuttleworth.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/L... ) does use Chromium. What I find remarkable about this "light" version of Ubuntu, though, is that it seems to use up more screen real estate for panels than normal Ubuntu! What the hell?
The left panel has "this should auto-hide" written all over it.
As a Ubuntu Netbook Remix user, though, I'm looking at the window titlebar and wondering, what happened to the titlebar-integrates-into-top-panel stuff from UNR? Shouldn't that remain a part of the "conserving precious vertical display space" approach?
Does it have anything to do with betting on the browser they can probably influence more in the future rather than one they essentially have no control of?
I am not sure what you mean. How do they have more control on Firefox and not Chromium? Both are open source, both can be forked and customized in to whatever they want it to be. One is exceptionally faster than the other. Since they are concentrating on speed, shouldn't Chrome/Chromium be the obvious choice?
Firefox already includes a lot of customization points that allow entities like Ubuntu to package a just-right version of Firefox without needing to go whole-hog and fork the entire system (remember Iceweasal?).
I've seen a few tests that claim Firefox beats Chrome on overall page load (and e.g. memory usage). Do you have anything that shows Chrome to be exceptionally faster in the general case, or is it just reducing Javascript execution on the average page from 1 millisecond to 0.5 milliseconds?
I'm not aware of benchmarks either way, but Chrome certainly feels a lot faster. Pages snap up almost instantly and events fire immediately. Firefox, by contrast, comes across as comparatively sluggish.
It pains me to write this, because I've been a happy and devoted Firefox user since the early days of Mozilla, but I am gradually shifting over to using Chrome for straight browsing - though I still rely on Firefox and the unparalleled Firebux addon for troubleshooting web applications.
Some of these instant-on linuxes actually run on a separate ARM chip from the main OS to further differentiate it as the low-capability/low-power/long-battery alternative to the full blown Windows OS, as well as the speed of access element.
Latitude ON runs MontaVista Linux on an ARM-based subprocessor. This so-called MontaVista Montabello Mobile Internet Device Solution provides a customizable, Linux-based Mobile Internet Device (MID) platform the laptop is able to boot almost instantly and view Email, document reader, calendar, contacts and access the Internet
... Dell claims that up to 19 hours of battery life on standard lithium ion batteries can be achieved with this system.
If it's all about speed and lightness they might want to drop firefox for chrome. The difference is very noticeable on an Atom 1.6gighz, and in the upcoming ARM powered devices it will be too.