I read in the paper that Google is making an operating system to challenge Microsoft.

I don't remember seeing anything about it here.

You have failed me, Massassi.

Is it going to be Linux with the Google brand on it?

probably going to be a google branded linux distribution or your local paper is just wrong

Isn't this really old news?

It was made official yesterday.

The details:

A. It will be a linux based OS.
B. It will be incredibly stripped down. According to Anandtech, we're looking at nothing more than Google Chrome as the "Window Manager", so apps would all be HTML5/JS.
C. We'll see it in 2010.

And what use would that be?

(I'm not being an ***, I just don't know much about the innards of OS's)

Mid-2010 to be more precise. I imagine it would be a souped up version of Prism/"Create application shortcuts" to allow web apps to interact with the desktop more.

Wouldn't surprise me if it shipped with some stuff like OpenOffice (well maybe not with Google Docs) and GIMP and Pidgin and some of the other well known good open source products. Oh and Wine. It would definitely need to have some easy-to-use version of Wine built in, just to irritate Microsoft.

I think this could be really damaging to the Open Source movement, from what I've seen so far.

Google has a lot of clout in the minds of most people, if they push hard with this OS, people will have their first experiences with Linux as a simple, stripped down, almost useless OS, the exact opposite of what the Open Source movement has been pushing for for years.

Although it's possible that google will not push it at all, and it won't matter.

It won't have any of that if Anandtech is right.

Using Google Chrome as the window manager in essence eliminates the ability to use any other linux software. It would all have to be in HTML5/JS, to run in the Chrome browser/WM.

Meh... until something is as functional and easy-to-use for mainstreamers as Windows, it's not worth the time. That is, if you're trying to make money.

They're not trying to make money. It's free.

It's being designed for netbooks, which hasn't been mentioned here yet. So it's not like it's supposed to be a replacement Desktop OS. It's designed for computers that were designed to surf the web and MAYBE do some web processing.

I'm waiting for google to come out a with a car

http://jalopnik.com/5310238/google-autonomobile-ditches-seat-pedals-steering-wheel-in-favor-of-bar

I think this is good for the OS/nix community. Jon`C was right: I'm installing windows on my EEE PC now because making Ubuntu work was such a disturbing waste of time. Having 10 options for drivers is not a good thing because all that means is that there are up to 10 different ways for the device to fail miserably.

A google-OS means standardization of a free opensource platform. Perhaps they'll support an Open Source community that acts as a "beta" development team with final releases making up more standardized, integrated packages.

Man, I remember when we joked about this years ago.