There are many ways to do this to start from a computer portablewe have seen how an operating system can be run from a USB stick or a regular disk, but what surely no one expected is that it would also be possible to do it from Google Drive. And a developer has found a way to boot a Linux operating system from Google’s personal cloud storage platform.
Many of the great advances in technology are made simply out of curiosity, and it is on many occasions that what most prompts a person to try to do something is to know if it is really possible to do so, and in this case, in fact, it is something that is can do. While one of the main motivations for Sambhav S, the student who achieved this milestone, was curiosity, another key factor that contributed to his achievement was to surpass a classmate who had managed to boot Linux. from a system network. File transfer (NFS),
Booting a computer from Google Drive is now possible
It is often thought that to start a computer, it must have all the components that can be found, including the hard drive, because in the end it is what allows the operating system to be stored with all the data. This may be the case in some operating systems that do not allow too many changes to their operation, but in Linux it is possible to start a PC by other, not too conventional means, such as through the Network File System (NFS).
But if that already seems like an achievement to be reckoned with, then the next one that will surpass it will seem even greater, namely that after successfully booting a laptop using NFS, a student and developer named Sambhav S wanted to take it a step further, by running the laptop directly from Google Drive. To achieve this, Sambhav thought about how to use different types of software to make them work as if they were each components of a computer.
To begin with, he saw that adopting FUSE, a program that acts as a file system driver in user space, was a good idea, and the goal was to ensure that during the Linux boot process, a RAM disk would be offered based on the FUSE file system to use key applications, the operating system, and network binaries would allow booting via Google Drive to become a reality.
After several adjustments, the project became a reality and he managed to boot a virtual machine from Google Drive, but the goal was not this, but to use real hardware. That is why Sambhav used a laptop for these tests that did not have internal storage, and after migrating from the virtual machine and adjusting various settings such as the Ethernet controller, the display and the NETWORK settings, he managed to create a computer that boots directly from the cloud, called a “Cloud Native Computer”.
