Google Chrome OS home page in browser

Once you log in, this is what you see: the Chrome web browser. Normally Chrome OS restores your last session, so that when you switch off and then back on, it is as you left it.

Chrome itself is similar to what you may have seen in the Windows version, though there are a few fixed tabs on the left, and some extra icons at top right. The other notable feature is lack of a close gadget.

In Chrome OS the only way to close the browser is to shut down the machine. That said, this is not strictly true in a development build, which lets you exit to a terminal by pressing Ctrl-Alt-T.

This is for debugging, and will likely not work in the final devices. If you do access the terminal, you can see that Chrome OS looks similar to other Linux distributions. It seems to be based on Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), which is also the recommended build environment if you want to compile it for yourself. The open source project is called Chromium OS and can be fo