ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Hi, everyone.
Welcome to the Google Developers Live studio here in Paris.
I'm with Francois.
Hello, Francois.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Hello, Alexis.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: And we're
here to talk about channels in Chrome OS.
So just like Chrome the browser and Chromebooks,
you have Chrome OS.
And you can have different types of channels.
So tell us which ones are those, and what is the default?
Maybe let's start with this.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: So yeah, if you don't know anything
about channels, you are on the stable channel.
This is the safest one.
That's the one you should be on right now
if you don't know anything about channels.
And it has been fully tested and blessed by the Chrome team.
Really, that's the one you should be.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Just need to remember one thing.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Great.
So can I check?
Maybe I've been fiddling with the options, and how can
I look at and see where--
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Let's have a look.
Click on the Chrome menu here, then Settings.
Then click on the Help section there-- more info.
As you can see here, I'm on the stable channel.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK, very good.
So I'm on the stable channel.
This is great, but I'm kind of adventurous.
I want to--
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Are you?
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Well, sometimes.
Let's pretend.
And I want to see things that I've heard
will be coming down the line, and I want to test those.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: And that's-- yeah, there is a channel.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Beta is what I'm looking for.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Exactly.
If you, like you say, if you feel adventurous, a little bit,
just go to a beta channel, and you
will get all the cool upcoming features
that will come to Chrome OS.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: So are we guaranteed--
these are just things that are not stable enough--
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yes.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: But they will eventually
make it to the stable channel?
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: 99% of the times, yes.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: And how unstable are they, really?
I mean how safe or unsafe is it to use that channel?
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: It's beta, so there might be a risk.
But I think it's a fair compromise between security
and OK, I want to see what's happening.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK.
So that's beta?
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yeah.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: What about updates to each channel?
Are they different in terms of how frequent they are?
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: They are, sure.
If you're on the stable channel, every six weeks
you get a brand new Chrome OS version.
If you're on the beta channel, every week
you've got an update.
So this is pretty cool.
If you stumble upon a bug or a glitch
and say, ah, that's weird, you can actually
report an issue to Chrome team.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Oh, can I do this from Chrome--
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yeah.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Directly?
Show me.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: So you just click on the Chrome menu
again and report an issue.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: That's all?
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Or if you are a keyboard lover,
you can just click on Alt Shift I.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Oh, cool.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Now you can send a message to the Chrome
team and-- actually I was surprised,
but they actually read it.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Now they do read this?
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: No, really, they consider it.
So that's pretty cool.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK, great.
So that's one way to do it.
And then if you're used to going to chromium.org and filing bugs
there, just don't change anything?
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Exactly.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: And this
is just a shorthand for doing pretty much the same thing.
It ends up in the same place.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Definitely, yes.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: So dev,
I suppose if you are a developer and you're watching this,
you probably should try it out.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yeah.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: The edges are not too rough,
I would think.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yeah, sure.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Now let's talk about something
that's really exciting.
This is the dev channel.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yeah, dev channel for development.
Actually, that's my favorite.
I'm always on dev channel, and some weeks
are harder than others, for sure.
But it's very cool.
You get all the cool new features that will, or not,
come to Chrome OS stable.
That's the best way to see what is coming.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK, great.
So do you want to show us how this looks like?
Go to the dev, what does it say?
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yeah, it's pretty cool, actually.
So you just click on the channel button.
As you can see, there is three channels, like I said,
stable, beta and developer.
And if you want to go right now to the developer channel,
let's click on the change channel button again.
And bing, you just wait now.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: So what happens now?
Now I'm doing--
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: So it's downloading
in the background the updates.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: So maybe let's skip that part.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK, let's skip that.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: And OK, now we've reached the 100%.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: So it takes about a few minutes,
depending on how big the update is, how big of a pipe you have,
and eventually you get to a point where-- 100%.
And you restart--
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: And it works.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: And there you
have those new features.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yes.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK, so that's super exciting,
but there might be things here that I don't want.
It's really just too unstable for what
I'm doing, what I need to do.
Can I move back?
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Sure.
If you want to move back, there is
one thing you need to remember.
That will power wash your machine.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: So power washing
is something which sets the machine
to be like in a "I just bought it" mode.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Exactly.
So--
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: No user defined,
no local data, nothing.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Exactly.
So all the files you've done on it
and not saved on your cloud, that will be lost.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK, so that's not too bad.
Hopefully everything is in the cloud, anyway.
But what about the updates?
Are these full-blown updates of Chrome OS you get all the time?
And they're big, and--
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: That's a cool part, actually, of updates.
They are powered by the project called Courgette,
which means in French, zucchini.
So the Courgette project-- basically
what the Chrome team did is they have built a compression
algorithm that analyzes the Chromium source code,
and compress it like ever to send the smallest
byte to your device.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: But it's also diff.
It's super compressed, and it's a diff.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: It's diff between two versions of Chrome.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: That's pretty cool, pretty quick.
And, like you said, just two minutes, and I've
got a new version.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Right.
So just to sum up this quick presentation here, stable--
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yep.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Development--
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Dev.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: And beta in the middle.
So that's great.
There are ways to send feedback right from the tool here.
What do you use?
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: I use the dev channel,
but like you said, stable for everyone.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Beta, eh.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Everybody watching this should
try beta--
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yeah.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: At least I think.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: You should try it,
report bugs if you find some.
And dev channel, be careful.
But I love it.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: OK, well, if you love it,
you probably need to try dev, as well.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yeah.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Well, that's
all the time we have for it.
Thank you, Francois.
Merci.
And we'll be seeing you for--
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: Yep.
ALEXIS MOUSSINE-POUCHKINE: Another short episode
hopefully.
FRANCOIS BEAUFORT: See you guys.