Dennis Howlett is amongst the realists when it comes to GoogleOS, and he rightly reminds us that:

Linux has not fared so well in the Netbooks market and I don’t see anything here that makes me think Google ChromeOS will do any better. Where’s the secret sauce here other than the Google halo effect painted over with the browser and duly hyped by the SV Google lovers? Sure, I can see why Google might make subtle statements that people wish to interpret but the reality is no-one outside the Silicon Valley tech bubble gives a damn what operating system and browser they use. Many are still mandated to use IE6 as a colleague reminded me the other day. Simply having Google wave its hand is not going to sway hard nosed enterprise buyers – even if it is free. Which neatly brings me to another point

Google has said it wants to get help from the open source community. I’ll bet they do. All those drivers that Arrington dismisses with a wave of the hand WILL need to be served. If he thinks I”m wrong then a quick call to any of the major banks’ CTO offices should put him straight on that one. Better still, listen to some of the discussions at CloudCamps where the problem of driver capabilities in the Internet Cloud matter a great deal.

I haven’t an intelligent thought about enterprise-related issues as it has to do with … well, pretty much anything.  But the lusty failure of Linux as an OS for Netbooks (according to some accounts) for the lay-public (the Word-using, WOW-playing, I-just-canceled-my-AOL-subscription-6-months-ago public) is something no one should discount out of hand.