GoogleOS? No, it's gOS Rocket (Linux distribution)

gOS is an easy-to-use, Ubuntu-based distribution designed for less technical computer users. Its main features are the use of Enlightenment as the default desktop and tight integration of various Google products and services into the product.

gOS is a Linux distribution created by 'Good OS 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 modern user."

On January 7, 2008, a demo second version 2.0 of gOS named "gOS Rocket" was released at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show. However, the definitive second version of gOS will probably debut mid February 2008, together with the launch of Everex's new CloudBook which will use gOS 2.

gOS Rocket is based on the Ubuntu 7.10 distribution. It uses the Enlightenment 17 window manager instead of the usual GNOME or KDE desktops, to create a desktop that has similar usability as a Mac with OSX. This is possible because of the flexibility of Enlightenment. Enlightenment acts both as a X window manager, and as a desktop environment, which helps to keep memory requirements low. Therefore Rocket works on systems as low end as a 350MHz Pentium II with 196MB Ram. But a typical gOS system would use as a minimum a 1GHz Pentium III with 256MB RAM.

Based on the idea of cloud computing gOS leans heavily on on-line applications built on Web 2.0 and AJAX technology so it also does not use much hard disk space for applications. The whole system fits comfortably in less than 2 GB. Also many of the documents created with Rocket, such as Google Docs documents, can be saved on Google servers instead of on the local hard disk, so Rocket can work with very small hard disks. In gOS Rocket Good OS introduced the use of Google's "Google Gears" technology which promises to make Google's web applications usable without an internet connection. Currently, Google Reader is the only Google application that is supported, though other web applications such as Remember the Milk have added Google Gears functionality.

gOS Rocket's primary features include a Mac OS X-like Dock called the iBar, containing icons to launch the following programs: Firefox web browser, Rhythmbox audio player, Xine video player and Skype for Internet telephony. Other programs can be added to the iBar as well.

There are also icons to launch Firefox to specific web-sites and web applications for Google Mail, Google Talk, Google News, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Product Search, Blogger, YouTube, Facebook, Meebo to online chat with Yahoo! Messenger and .NET Messenger Service users and Wikipedia. The rightmost icon is for Faqly, a system developed for Rocket to offer a built-in online community based help system, or you can use the official forum.

Other installed programs can be started through menu's, among the most important are the photo and picture editing program the GIMP, the document viewer Evince, and the OpenOffice.org office suite. More programs can be installed using the built-in Synaptic Package Manager.