Recently, I learned about Google’s plan to launch a “new” operating system.  The operating system will be designed for those “living on the web”.  The theory behind the new OS is to make it easier for people browse, get email, and read newsfeeds.  Also, developers can write applications that would be able to run in a browser, which the OS would be able to run by default.

But is the operating system really new?  The core of the operating system will be the Linux Kernel, hardly something that just sprang up.  But, it will apparently have its own windowing system built on top of that core.  What does this mean?  Essentially, the brain of the computer is being run byLinux with the visual interface being something of their own design.

So what does this mean for Windows?  Initially, probably not much.  Oh, there will be those who are curious and will try something just because it is new, but until it has been out for a while, unless it represents a significant improvement over the available Linux distributions or Apple’s Mac, I don’t expect Microsoft to loose significant share in the short term.  But if Windows 7 does not represent a significant improvement over Windows Vista, it could find its market share slipping.

What might this mean for the Linux community?  Validation and perhaps some vitally needed hardware support.  Over the last decade, Linux has made significant improvements in usability.  And the available software for it continues to grow at an enormous rate.  But the one thing that has been lacking is hardware vendor support.  If nothing else, because Google’s OS will be open sourced, and since it is being built on the Linux Kernel, we just might be seeing what could be the turning of the tide for widespread hardware support for Linux.  That is the one thing that has held it back, and if Google can find a way to get vendors to provide support for the Linux kernel, that will help the Linux community at the same time they are helping themselves.

Still, I don’t expect Google’s Chrome OS to be perfect out of the gate, but I can see how the release of Google Chrome can start to pave the way for a new way of thinking about software and how we use it, from the operating system to the web.