Google Chrome OS heading to netbooks

Google's new Chrome OS heads to teensy laptops.

China's Shanzai IT news website has reported that Google's Chrome OS might show up in inexpensive Chinese-made netbooks as early as mid-October.

The Linux based Chrome OS apparently has been ported to run on the Loongson 2F processor developed in Mainland China. The Loongson CPU is a low power, ARM-like processor built on the MIPS architecture. As such, it could compete with Intel Atom based netbooks and might be an excellent platform for Google's stripped down Chrome OS.

Loongson processor based machines are built by the partly government owned OEM firm Lemote, which sells the Yeelong netbook PC and Fullong Mini, which apparently is an all-in-one PC. Those systems presently run a Linux derived OS call Lemote Loonux (really, we can't make this stuff up), but that OS has been described as extremely ugly.

Reportedly Richard Stallman, the creator of the GNU software project upon which Linux was built and author of the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), owns a Lemote Loongson processor based netbook, which he chose because of its Free Software BIOS.

Chrome OS could conceivably be a good fit for Chinese netbooks expected to cost about $200. If Chrome OS and machines designed around the Loongson MIPS-based processor catch on in China and are exported in large numbers, Intel and Microsoft might well have something new to worry about soon.