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***memenode*** · (This post was last modified: 10-29-2009 01:16 AM by memenode.)

Few things in the technology industry are awaited with such excitement and suspense as the upcoming Google Chrome OS. Some believe it could be the Windows killer. Others are excited about the particular technologies that it may introduce, from the brand new windowing system to the way Google will integrate web applications in it to run as if they were desktop apps.

And given that it will be based on Linux, users of Linux are naturally curious as to what this new "distro" will be like. It could even be said that Chrome will be the biggest foray of Linux on the desktop market so far.

Some people have taken advantage of this interest to create Chrome OS "screenshots" and preview videos purportedly leaked from Google. All of them turned out to be fakes thus far. It is after all likely that nothing will be seen until Google makes the first beta release.

Still it is entertaining to see how people imagine Chrome OS might look like. As always, high hopes and expectations combined with the suspense of eager waiting inspire some creativity. Here are five interesting Chrome OS fakes that have come out in recent times.

1. Man "risks" his job for Private Developer Beta shots

This genius told an entire story in a blog entry where he posted his shots of a purported Private Developer Beta of Chrome OS. According to the story he works for a company that supplies parts for Acer laptops and "a Google Rep visited the Acer team to install and quickly show off some of the features of the Google OS in development". Apparently the Rep left the laptop alone long enough for him to take a few quick shots with his camera. He couldn't reveal the name of the company he worked for and said he was risking his job by posting as much as he did.

Many people believed him, but as the shots were found to be fake he ended up posting a video called "Of course it's fake!" where he essentially apologizes to everyone who believed him, boasts about the attention his prank earned him and shows an image he used to fake his photos.

2. Creative and intriguing video preview

Another elaborate Chrome OS fake comes in form of a video preview showing the boot up process with some cool animation as the boot screen transforms to the desktop interface. If you ask me however I think this is kind of bulky and not all that polished. According to CrunchGear they found about this from a tweet linking to the "Google Chrome preview video" from a Twitter account "ChromeBrowser".

CrunchGear article compares the excerpts from the video to screenshots of Google Wave to show that this likely involved some copy pasting from existing Google material.

3. Almost looks like it could be the real thing, but probably still fake

As claimed by Mashable they were sent the screenshots which many wish could resemble the final system as they look quite polished and streamlined with a relatively minimalistic interface featuring a dock at the top.

4. This fake you can actually install on your computer

You can install it, but it's still fake. This is just a mashed up Linux distro made using SuSE Studio. It is basically SuSE that boots into Chromium, the still unstable Linux version of the Chrome web browser.

Lots of people bought into this one, including me at first, because it is actually hosted by Google. As soon as we see "google" in the URL we assume it must be real. The trick is that it is hosted by Google Sites which is service that anyone can use to put up a site. What's entertaining is that whoever made this recently released a new version of it on October 21.

You can see a couple of screenshots of it here and if you're inclined to waste some time for kicks you can download it here. It is after all, a full featured OS. It's just not Chrome OS. Smile

5. It came from Google, but still not quite it

We're getting hot now. This fake actually involves Google and it's actually fake only in so far as it's not really an OS, but rather a mere component of an OS, that is the web browser as it's supposedly gonna be within the final Chrome OS.

Well, AppScout has an interesting scoop:

Quote:Earlier in the week, Google posted a folder on its dev site with the title "chromeos." Word got out, and the folder was quickly pulled by the company. One user who had already downloaded the app took it upon himself to share it with the world via RapidShare. That file went up today and is still up. TechCrunch reported about the "leaked" OS in the aforementioned post yesterday.

Here's the thing, though: it's not an OS at all. It's a browser, the Chrome Browser.

What's interesting is that it actually came as a package for Ubuntu which could indicate that Chrome OS might be some variation of Ubuntu.

There are quite a few more of the supposedly leaked Chrome OS shots, but the above represents some of the most notable and most interesting ones. For your convenience and curiosity, however, here links to a few more. Please feel free to post below if you know of any others. Anonymous posting is currently enabled, but if you're interested in Chrome and Chrome OS discussions you could consider joining.

You can vote for this on reddit and digg.

08-27-2011, 04:14 PM

Someone designed a page with Google Sites and utilized it with basic information about the Chrome OS which could be extracted from publicly accessible data Google has shared, again added a link to download some other and absolutely not related tool.