The Linux Ninja

The Official Google Blog has announced that Google plans to release an operating system based around the Chrome browser. They intend for it to be an open-source lightweight OS that targets netbooks at first and the source code will become available later this year with a consumer release planned for the 2nd half of 2010.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

There’s no official word as to what the underlying operating system will be, but I feel it’s safe to assume that it will be a variant of a current Linux distro or the Linux-based Android (they do discuss how Android and Chrome OS will be separate but that doesn’t mean they won’t share pieces ).