Our Crunchgear colleague John Biggs has an item in the NYT today about Wal-Mart’s $200 Google PC that runs a version of Linux called the gOS (which does not stand for the Google Operating System, but rather is a version of Ubuntu). Excerpt:

What makes it stand out, however, is GOS, a version of Linux specially made to run Google applications like GMail and Google Documents. It also runs OpenOffice, an open-source office suite that can handle Microsoft Word documents, and some multimedia applications.

The interface features an intuitive desktop interface with a set of icons. Clicking on the Map icon, for example, brings up Google Maps. The ostensible goal is to move much of the processing from the PC to the Internet.

The Webtop is going to be a classic disruptive technology, starting out cheap and at the margins, but slowly working its way up the food chain. (Update: Duncan reviews the gOS computer).