I hear through the grapevine (read: RSS reader) that Google is Holding Chrome OS Event Thursday. Complete Overview And Launch Plans To Be Revealed. Guess we'll get to see what's going on there finally. I'm hoping it's not just a skinned linux running Chrome browser. Should be interesting though.
If you are interested in free, alternative operating systems, don't forget Haiku (which is looking more and more promising) and has just released version Alpha 1. Read more here:
http://ninjarabbits.blogspot.com/2009/11/download-haiku-os-alpha-1-release.html