Everex, a longtime personal computer vendor, has unveiled its latest PC featuring Ubuntu Linux-based open-source productivity software and Google-based Web 2.0 applications, for a mere $198.

The San Francisco-based company announced the details of gOS 3 Gadgets, the newest version of its Linux operating system for consumers, this month. The main feature of gOS 3 Gadgets is its ability to instantly launch Google Gadgets for Linux on start-up, allowing users access to more than 100,000 iGoogle and Google Gadgets applications.

Good OS (gOS) has achieved a major new release of its Ubuntu-based operating system. Targeting OEMs that want quickly customizable Linux netbook OSes, gOS 3.0 integrates closely with Google Gadgets, as well as with Google Mail, Calendar, Reader, News, Applications, Picasa, and so on.

Google has released a platform for running their widget applications (Google Desktop Gadgets and web-based Universal Gadgets) on Linux. Google Gadgets for Linux is an open source project, and includes front-ends for GNOME and KDE environments.

Google has been slowly, but surely, displacing Microsoft as the number one PC technology company. Google has done it by misdirection. Instead of taking Microsoft head-on in desktops, Google first consolidated their hold on Web search and only then started moving into Web-based desktop applications.

The hype over this operating system has been so heavy that failure would be a heavy blow. Google introduced Chrome OS July 7, promising a lightweight, Linux-based operating system for netbooks that will enable speedy Web applications. The move was a major shot at Microsoft, whose Windows desktop operating system Google intimated was antiquated.

Since version 2 came out in 2005, Google Desktop for Windows has included a sidebar that users can fill with screen gadgets, but the Linux version (version 1, from June 2007) provided only indexing and search functions, with no eye candy whatsoever. This has finally changed. Google recently released Google Gadgets for Linux (GGL), which closes the gap between the operating systems.

The gOS operating system is an open source Ubuntu derivative published by Emeryville, Calif.-based Good OS LLC. gOS gained fame when it showed up in a line of inexpensive computers sold at Wal-Mart.

This tutorial shows how you can set up a gOS 3.1 Gadgets desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.