The Chromium OS Project is an open-source operating system project started by Google to form the basis of Google Chrome OS. While Google will distribute it’s flavor of the OS primarily directed toward OEM netbooks, the Chromium OS project being open-source, can be used by anyone willing to join the developer team. The emphasis of the project is to build the fastest, safest and easiest operating system possible to run on small portable netbook type computers, with quick boot-up and fast web-based applications the primary focus.

The purpose of the Chromium OS project (vs Google Chrome OS) is for developers to build out the OS functions, try new ideas and provide pre-release versions for testing and debugging. The project has the benevolent guidance of Google to push things along since this is the core main development work for the Google Chrome OS. The Chromium project provides source code at the Chromium website, while Google works on its own release as a private project slated late 2010.

Features and Functions: Chromium OS (along with Chrome OS) features primarily the Chromium/Chrome browser as the only application the OS will run. The OS is designed to run on SSD devices (solid-state drives) instead of spinning platter hard drives. The OS is designed to provide the minimal resources to simply run the browser. The OS attempts to provide a safer more secure system by booting up a static image of code that rarely needs to be updated, and does not allow any downloaded applications from the Internet to infect the OS. This results in a more stable OS and virtually virus free.

The Chromium OS is based on a Linux kernel to start with. Then the Chromium developers removed and/or replaced bloated code and functions with streamlined versions. The focus of the OS is to provide a fast minimalist system that only provides the basic needs for running the Chromium browser.

Chromium OS source code is available for download so you would have to compile and build the OS for your hardware. Since Google is primarily aiming this OS at netbooks, there is currently a limited list of supported I/O devices. You may not have much success running this on just any platform. However several people are providing ready to download Chromium OS builds for your to try.