Google's user interface mockups and YouTube video were a hot topic the other day, and that buzz will likely continue until we finally see a tablet device emerge from Mountain View to accompany the Nexus One.

If the images and video weren't enough proof for you, changes are under way in the Chromium source code which certainly make it look like Google is getting serious about a new interface for Chrome OS on touchscreen tablets.

Coming soon to the Chromium nightly builds is an --enable-vertical-tabs command line switch. While the source note clearly states that this does nothing other than toggle a preference right now, there's every reason to believe that it will move the Chrome tabstrip from the top of your browser window to the side -- as shown in one of Google's tablet user experience slides.

It's a starting point -- though I'm more interested to see how the tab switching interface shapes up.

It’s not an unequivocal “yes,” but an awkward “no comment” from a Google product manager may indicate that touch capability is being built into Chrome OS.

At an event in London at Google’s headquarters attended by TechRadar, Senior Product Manager of Search Anders Sandholm “chuckled nervously” in response to the question of whether Chrome OS would include multitouch capability, the technology made ubiquitous largely by Apple’s iconic iPhone. It’s one of the glaring omissions from the Nexus One, so much so that there’s a hack to enable multitouch support available.

Chromium OS, the open source build of Google's upcoming web-focused netbook system, was made into a thumb-drive-friendly build early on by a helpful hacker named Hexxeh. His latest build, ChromiumOS Zero, adds Chrome extension support, speed boosts, and other goodies.

Here's the official list of updates at Hexxeh's blog, with notable improvements in the delay suffered by Broadcom-based Wi-Fi and the Chromium browser at the heart of the OS. The build still fits on a 1 GB USB drive, surprisingly, can be updated in-system from this release forward, and is offered as a BitTorrent download from Hexxeh's site.

Wanna give ChromiumOS Zero a go on your own laptop from the safety of a USB stick? Check out Gina's human's guide to running Google Chrome OS, which details running a Hexxeh-based build from a thumb drive.

ChromiumOS Zero is a free download, and boots (usually) on non-Mac systems.

I haven't yet been able to boot the new version in VirtualBox, however, so you may want to stick to Cherry for now if you're planning to test drive Chromium OS in a virtual machine. You can still download Cherry via bittorrent.

Hexxeh releases Chromium OS Zero originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:58:00 EST.

Telling the story of Google Chrome and how it inspired an operating system. Produced by Epipheo Studios.
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Google has made a change to Chrome OS to move the user login from the machine to the browser. Our guess is Google is, or will eventually use, Google Friend Connect to facilitate login.

The feature was first mentioned on October 13: “Using Chrome as our login manager has a number of potential benefits.
Explore these tradeoffs and decide what to do about the login manager.” The code was checked in on December 14: “An early version of this change is finally in. It’s not ready for daily use yet, and we haven’t gotten the network picker on there or anything yet, but at least we’ve got a baseline in there. I’m filing issues for the follow-on work.”

There are lots of potential benefits to having users log into machines via the browser. In particular it makes syncing easier and furthers the notion that you can log into any Chrome OS machine and have exactly the same experience as you would on any other machine. The fact that users can’t download any software to Chrome OS computers furthers this experience.

While Chrome OS has been getting the lion's share of netbook/smartbook buzz of late, Tariq Krim and company have been steadfastly plugging away at Jolicloud.

Today, the Jolicloud pre-beta has been released and it's ready for the general public to install on their Windows netbooks.

Jolicloud's Wubi-derived installer make the process dead-simple. Download the 600Mb .exe [or the torrent] from their website, launch it, and make your selections. Within a few moments you're system can dual-boot into Jolicloud or Windows.

While I suppose it's technically not fair to compare Jolicloud and Chrome OS right now since Chrome is so early in the alpha stage, I'm going to anyway. Right now - and for the near future - Jolicloud is the winner in my mind because it supports both native and web-based applications equally well.

"Sure, but Jolicloud uses Firefox and Firefox is slooooooooooow!" you say? Fine, go grab the Google Chrome beta for Linux and install the 32-bit .deb on Jolicloud. There. You've got a nice, fast, webkit-based browser - just click in from your internet apps tab.

In a display of surprising tenacity, Dell have gone ahead and distributed a customized version of Chrome OS for the Dell Mini 10V! Lilputing are reporting that all the necessary hardware support has been added, so in theory you could just whack the Chrome OS image onto a memory stick and boot it up right now!

Mind you, the image is 8GB so this is probably only of interest to enthusiasts -- but hey, it's nice to see a company like Dell catering towards that demographic for once, eh?

You'll need to follow the instructions on the Lilputing article to get the image mounted and ready to go, but it seems simple enough! You could be playing with Chrome OS this afternoon, while nibbling away on cold-turkey sandwiches...

What is Google Chrome OS?
Telling the story of Google Chrome and how it inspired an operating system. Produced by Epipheo Studios. Sign up to get updates about Google Chrome OS: services.google.com More info: www.chromium.org

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Google Chrome OS is an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web built around the core tenets of speed, simplicity and security. www.chromium.org

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Google Chrome OS is an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web built around the core tenets of speed, simplicity and security. www.chromium.org

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Chromium OS Fast Boot
Google Chrome OS is an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web built around the core tenets of speed, simplicity and security. www.chromium.org

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[via TechCrunch]

Pretty much every morning and every night I download the newest build of Chromium for Mac (the open source builds that will eventually turn into Chrome for Mac). While we made an auto-updater to do it for you, you can also manually find the latest builds here. This morning, I visited this site and noticed something new: A Chrome OS folder.

Several sources suggest that the very first, much anticipated devices, powered by Google Chrome OS will debut in mid-October.

One of the first might be Chinese-designed Loongson CPU with OS already pre-installed.

Here is a Google Chrome OS video demo showing off startup screen and login, running on a framework in windows.

A working Chromium on Snow Leopard and Chrome Desktop Notifications are interesting, but let’s be honest, the real Chrome-related information everyone wants to know about is Chrome OS. And today there is news, as it looks like the OS may have just revealed itself, if only slightly, to the world.

No, we’re not talking about those big icon screenshots, instead, this reveal is buried in code commits.