Want to try out Chrome OS a little? Well now you can – via Virtual Machine. There has been a virtual version of Google Chrome made available completely free, you just have to have VMWare or VirtualBox (free) installed. You can head over to GDGT.com Google Chrome Virtual Machines to get image files for VirtualBox and VMWare. (I was only able to successfully install the VMDK (VMWare link) version so I'm not sure what the "VirtualBox" link does).
A few things to keep in mind, I did not create the image, it came from a torrent. This means that some open source guy could have injected some code to steal your Google info, probably not, but it could happen. Just use alternate/junk Google account credentials and that potential threat is nipped. Second, this is virtual machine, hopefully the people reading this blog are experienced enough to know that with a virtual machine, the OS will never run natively and the performance will reflect that. There will be no 10 second boot time and you may find things to be more sluggish than the native OS (running on a SSD no less) will perform way better.
OK, so I don't have VMWare so here are instructions on how to do this on VirtualBox. Download VirtualBox for whatever OS you have from here: VirtualBox Downloads. Install VirtualBox and start it. Click the "New" button:
A wizard will start and walk you through the OS setup process. Click Next:
Type in the name for your OS and select Linux for the OS Type and Ubuntu for the Version. Click Next.
Select the amount of RAM you want to give the machine and click Next.
Now extract the compressed VMDK image file you downloaded because it needs to be loaded into VirtualBox.
Select to "Use existing hard disk" and click the folder icon to navigate to the VMDK image file you just extracted. Click Next.
Review the settings and click Finish.
Now you can highlight the OS you just installed and click "Start"
The OS comes up as "chromium os" and the log in is via a valid Google account.
Have fun!
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