On 19 November 2009, Google announced on its blog that it was going to open-source the software for its Google Chrome operating system as the Chromium OS project. According to the blog, they released the code a year in advance of the release of the Google Chrome operating system because they were "eager to engage" with the open source community and partners.

The Chromium OS is an open source project which is intended to provide a "fast, simple, and more secure computing experience for people who spend most of their time on the web".

The operating system consists of:

Chromium-based browser and window manager	The window manager is similar to X window and is used for managing the user's desktop windows. The Chrome browser runs on top of this.
System-level software and user-land services	A lightly-patched Linux kernel with as few as possible system process being initiated to improve boot up performance. Crashed processes can be automatically restarted with Upstart.
Firmware	The boot up sequence has been simplified and speeded-up by not checking for things like legacy hardware. This process is verified in firmware to ensure that the firmware itself, the system image and kernel have not been altered. If any corruption is detected by this process, the firmware automatically re-installs Chromium OS.

There are some differences between the Chromium OS and Google Chromium OS:

Chromium OS does not automatically update its software whereas Google Chromium does
Google Chrome OS runs on speed-optimized hardware netbooks
Google Chrome OS has some verified boot, recovery and firmware features not available in Chromium OS
Google Chrome OS is supported by Google. Chromium OS is supported by its own community.

Website: Chromium.org

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