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What is CoreOS' relationship with Google? Wikipedia says CoreOS is a fork of Google's Chrome OS, which is itself a fork of Gentoo. Chrome OS seems like an odd c

What is CoreOS' relationship with Google? Wikipedia says CoreOS is a fork of Google's Chrome OS, which is itself a fork of Gentoo. Chrome OS seems like an odd choice for a server product. Why not use something simpler? CoreOS received funding from Google Ventures and uses Google's Omaha updates distribution system and Kubernetes cluster management utility.

tantalic 12y ago
One of the major ideas behind CoreOS is that system updates should be frequent, automatic and reliable. As such the self-updating Chrome OS was chosen as the starting point. https://coreos.com/using-coreos/updates/ https://coreos.com/using-coreos/updates/
philips 12y ago
co-founder of CoreOS here. We chose to fork from Google's ChromeOS early on because they had a nice SDK setup for taking a set of Gentoo ebuilds and taking them through a pipeline of cross-build, image build and then OEM build steps. Because CoreOS is more like an embedded Linux than a normal general purpose one I was evaluating different options like Tizen, OpenEmbedded, etc but I arrived at forking the ChromeOS SDK because ebuilds were familiar and the build pipeline was close enough to what we needed. Since forking we have essentially diverged in every possible way a Linux can diverge: different Kernel, different init system, different bootloader, etc. So, even though technically it is a fork, and arguably the Wikipedia should be updated, it was a hard fork to get a set of build tools. If you are interested you can see our SDK guide here: https://coreos.com/docs/sdk-distributors/sdk/modifying-coreos/ https://coreos.com/docs/sdk-distributors/sdk/modifying-coreo...
- cpeterso 11y ago
  Thanks. I didn't realize it was a hard fork. I guess you've got to start somewhere. :) And as an OS company, you would want full control of your OS distribution and not depend on upstream's decisions.

tantalic 12y ago

One of the major ideas behind CoreOS is that system updates should be frequent, automatic and reliable. As such the self-updating Chrome OS was chosen as the starting point. https://coreos.com/using-coreos/updates/ https://coreos.com/using-coreos/updates/

philips 12y ago

co-founder of CoreOS here. We chose to fork from Google's ChromeOS early on because they had a nice SDK setup for taking a set of Gentoo ebuilds and taking them through a pipeline of cross-build, image build and then OEM build steps. Because CoreOS is more like an embedded Linux than a normal general purpose one I was evaluating different options like Tizen, OpenEmbedded, etc but I arrived at forking the ChromeOS SDK because ebuilds were familiar and the build pipeline was close enough to what we needed. Since forking we have essentially diverged in every possible way a Linux can diverge: different Kernel, different init system, different bootloader, etc. So, even though technically it is a fork, and arguably the Wikipedia should be updated, it was a hard fork to get a set of build tools. If you are interested you can see our SDK guide here: https://coreos.com/docs/sdk-distributors/sdk/modifying-coreos/ https://coreos.com/docs/sdk-distributors/sdk/modifying-coreo...

cpeterso 11y ago
Thanks. I didn't realize it was a hard fork. I guess you've got to start somewhere. :) And as an OS company, you would want full control of your OS distribution and not depend on upstream's decisions.