We’ve seen our fair share of fake Chrome OS screenshots over the past little while. The images posted yesterday on the OMG! Ubuntu! blog look like the most plausible yet, however, and there’s a good reason for it: the blogger claims to have gotten working pre-release software straight from the official Chrome nightlies page. Another user on a separate blog makes the same claim, and his own screenshots look pretty similar.
Both blog posts suggest the “Chrome OS” software is essentially a souped-up browser build geared to run on Debian-based Linux distributions (like Ubuntu). It apparently looks and functions much like the Chrome web browser, but it has a slightly different color scheme, and Google has added a clock, network widget, battery meter, and drop-down menu in the title bar.
OMG! Ubuntu! also shows a shot of a full-screen mode, in which the trademark tab bar gives way to a sort of minimalistic taskbar with the aforementioned widgets and an unlabeled Google button in the upper left corner—sort of what you might expect to see on a cramped netbook display.
Hoping to take the software for a spin yourself? Too bad, because we can only find regular Chrome nightlies on the development site now—no trace of the pre-release Chrome OS browser. Perhaps the two bloggers are partners in crime on a hoax, then, or maybe Google simply pulled down the software. Either way, Google itself described Chrome OS as a glorified web browser when it first announced the project in early July.