gOS is an Ubuntu 7.10 derivative that uses Enlightenment DR17. Enlightenment DR17 has not been officially released and is not supported by the Enlightenment team, and Ubuntu pulls packages from Debian testing, unstable, and experimental, so gOS is a bundle of bleeding-edge packages. It's not clear who the target market is--I hope it's not unsophisticated users or Windows refugees who are not experienced with Linux, because there is no help for noobs.

One difference between the free download and the Everex GPC is you won't get multimedia by default; you'll have to install DVD and mp3 players yourself.

It found all of my hardware, except for the AC97 modem on the Thinkpad. This isn't well-supported on Linux, so that's no big deal. The default menus are well-organized. It lacks a font manager, a graphical sound configuration tool, and a graphical firewall builder. Suspend worked fine, but Hibernation was a total bust--it never worked at all. Adding and removing USB devices worked fine. It found and mounted all local partitions, and it found local networked printers. It did not configure any wireless NICs that I tested during installation, which seems a strange omission for a Web PC.

The real prize of gOS is Enlightenment, and it's a shame there isn't even a basic howto on using it, because it's beautiful, fast, and very configurable.

gOS seems raw and unfinished, and visibly bolted together; a slapdash slightly-modified Ubuntu with Apple-flavored artwork, and Ubuntu splash screens and other Ubuntu bits all over the place. Experienced computer users from any platform will be able to poke around and run applications without much fuss, but if they run into trouble they're not going to find much help.

Check out the Everex GPC owner reviews--the ones complaining about the lack of Windows drivers are good for a few chuckles.

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