Per fare un parallelo, spero chiarificatore, Chromium OS sta a Chrome OS come Fedora sta a Red Hat. OK?
Anzi, in realtà la faccenda è anche un po diversa. Perciò quoto
Google Chrome OS is to Chromium OS what Google Chrome browser is to Chromium. Chromium OS is the open source project, used primarily by developers, with code that is available for anyone to checkout, modify and build their own version with. Meanwhile, Google Chrome OS is the Google product that OEMs will ship on Netbooks this year. Specifically, Google Chrome OS will run on specially optimized hardware in order to get enhanced performance and security. Chromium OS does not auto-update (so that we do not blow away any changes you may have made to the code) while Google Chrome OS will seamlessly auto-update so that users have the latest and greatest features and fixes. Google Chrome OS will be supported by Google and our partners, whereas Chromium OS is supported by the open source community, but they fundamentally share the same code base. Google Chrome OS also has some cool firmware features, verified boot and easy recovery, which require corresponding hardware changes and thus also don't work in Chromium OS builds.