That said, I think Chrome OS will have the look and feel of a browser-centric OS. The Chrome browser was just the first step; it is deliberate and no accident that Google is using the same name for the OS.

This is the kind of browser-centric OS/environment that Micro$oft has been fearing since the time they recognized the importance of the Internet.

The question I have is, how will Chrome OS differentiate itself compared to existing Linux distributions? Better performance, lower power consumption (including more robust hibernation and sleep), smaller memory footprint, faster boot times, larger base of supported applications in its repositories, improved stability, ease of use and/or configuration for non-geeks? If the main thing that Google brings to the party is just its brand power, it’ll certainly help increase Linux adoption amongst Windows users, but I doubt that many current Linux users (including myself) would be motivated to switch.

But if somehow Google manages to reduce power consumption for netbooks & laptops, make sleep & hibernation work reliabily across all of the hardware platforms Chrome OS supports, and/or makes installation of packages (including from source) so easy that anyone can do it, I’d want in.