http://discuss.gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/general/Download-Chrome-OS-VMWare-image/
After Google announced the availability of the Chrome OS / Chromium OS source code, one of our engineers (Jon Ursenbach), immediately got to work on compiling the code, trying to see if he could get an instance of Chromium OS running in a virtual machine.
He was finally able to do it! You can download a copy of the virtual machine to use in VMware, VirtualBox, and on a USB drive here (300MB compressed / 700MB uncompressed):
http://gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/download/
Helpful tips, if you download it:
1.) To use the vmdk file, open VMware and create a new virtual machine. One of the options will be to use an "existing virtual disk." (In VMware Fusion, this is the last option below, "use operating system disk" and "use OS disc image file.")
2.) Make sure your VM is set to use bridged networking, rather than NAT.
2.) The username and password to login to Chrome OS / Chromium OS is your google account!
Alternatively, if you don't have VMware, some users have had luck getting this image to run using VirtualBox, which is a free cross-platform (Windows / Mac / Linux) virtual machine created by Sun Microsystem. You can download VirtualBox here:
http://www.virtualbox.org/
Anyway, get downloading and try out Chrome OS! And definitely share your impressions.
Update: we now have downloads for VMWare, VirtualBox, and USB-install! (Watch out for the USB one, you need Linux and it's a bit tricky.) Stay tuned for more details, but share your tips, tricks, and notes!
Update 2: Paul Miller from Engadget made a video walk-thru:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/20/how-to-run-chrome-os-
as-a-virtual-machine/
Figured some of you boys might be interested in this.
