First things first: yes, this is, in fact, Chromium OS and not Chrome OS. Chances are good that we won't see Google's semi-closed Chrome OS for a few more months, but Chromium is something you can play with now -- and it provides a good look at what you can expect from its cousin.

Over the next few days, I'm going to share screenshots and videos from my compile. My build uses the "plain vanilla" x86-generic hardware overlay, and runs reasonably well on my Gateway LT21 netbook. I'm running from a crappy, generic USB flash drive -- and I'm fairly certain the momentary hiccups I experience would go away if I moved to a faster SD card, flash drive, or SSD.

So without further ado, take the jump and have a look at part 1: the boot process!