Is there a ChromiumOS to go with ChromeOS?

In a recent report on TechCrunch, it was noted that modifications were being made to the Chrome browser which hint that the forthcoming ChromeOS will use the browser as the application launcher. Details also reveal that the developers at Google are extending the status bar to include an application launching control, a clock and battery indicator. Commentators noted that users with a Google Code account saw a permissions error at http://code.google.com/p/chromium-os/ rather than a page not found message. This suggests that there is an active project at the address which may be opened to the public in the future. This may be an indication that Google plans to follow a similar dual brand strategy to the Chrome browser; Chrome is Google's integrated-with-Google services binary release of the browser, while Chromium is the open source browser that Chrome is based on.

A further link into the Chrome Subversion logs reveals what appears to be a plan to implement Single Sign-On on ChromeOS by making users log-in with a Google account when the system starts and then send the appropriate authentication cookies to the browser when needed. Whether a possible ChromiumOS would implement the same mechanism, or allow it to be easily substituted, is not revealed by the code changes, but it does show that the plan is to use DBus for interprocess communication.

(djwm)