gOS is a Linux distribution created by gOS LLC, a Los Angeles-based corporation. The company advertises it as "An alternative OS with Google Apps and other Web 2.0 apps for the masses."
Design
The gOS distribution is based on the Ubuntu 7.10 distribution. It uses the Enlightenment 17 window manager instead of the usual GNOME or KDE desktops, allowing for lower memory and speed requirements. Therefore gOS starts to work reasonably well on systems as low end as a 1GHz Pentium III with 256MB RAM. Due to the fact it leans heavy on on-line applications built on Web 2.0 and AJAX technology it also does not use much hard disk space for applications, the whole system fits comfortably in less than 2 GB of hard disk space. Also many of the documents created with gOS, such as Google Docs documents, can be saved on Google servers instead of on the local hard disk, so gOS can work with very small harddisks. In this respect a gOS PC has many similarities with a Thin client.
gOS primary features include the usage of a Mac-like Dock featuring icons linking to the following various google applications and built in off line applications;
Firefox Webbrowser, Google Mail, Google News, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Froogle, the Blogger YouTube and Facebook online communities as well as Meebo to online chat with a.o. Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger users, Rhythmbox (ITunes like program for music and radio), Skype, Wikipedia, and the Xine media player. The rightmost icon is for Faqly a system developed for gOS to offer a built in on line community based help system. Other programs can be added to the Dock as well.
gOS also supports mini applications that run on the desktop, of which one is the clock.
Also available are a.o. a number of card, board and puzzle games, the photo and picture edit program the Gimp and the OpenOffice.org office suite. Therefore Microsoft Office documents, such as Microsoft Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, can be opened and edited.
Google desktop search is also integrated into the desktop, as can be seen on the top right hand of the desktop.
At the moment gOS is still in the alpha stage and is missing some features, the most obvious being a trashcan.
Products
It was introduced on November 1, 2007, preinstalled on the Everex Green gPC TC2502 sold at Wal-Mart. Less than two weeks after the gPC TC2502 was released, Slashdot reported that Wal-Mart had sold out the machine from its online warehouse (its product page gave many glowing reviews of the product and of gOS itself.)
Interestingly gOS fully supports the advanced Power management capabilities of the gPC TC2502 "green computer".
Online vendor ClubIT.com offers a RoHS-compliant VIA C7 developer board bundled with the gOS operating system.
A version of gOS that does not include support for playing MP3 music and DVD's can be downloaded from the gOS website in the form of an ISO image, which can then be burned to a CD. It acts like a "Live boot CD", and from gOS running off the live CD it can be installed to a hard disk. The missing components can then be downloaded and installed separately.
