Chrome OS dev code only just went public, but Phoronix has already thrown it on a Samsung NC10 netbook to test its performance and battery-life against Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, Moblin 2.1, Fedora 12, and openSUSE 11.2. Interesting results ahead.
Ultimately, Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 did the best, and openSUSE 11.2 also did well. But Chrome OS performance was far from spectacular. That shouldn't be a huge surprise, though. It's not slated to ship for like a year, and its performance should pickup as builds continue. The main surprise looks to be Moblin 2.1's comparatively slower speed, despite Intel's efforts to optimize it for netbooks. It looks pretty, though.
All distros were tested with default configurations/packages, except for Chrome OS. They "needed to remount the root file-system in a read-write mode and add in the standard Ubuntu Karmic package repositories for which Google's operating system is based."
The Phoronix test suite included H.264 video playback, OpenArena, LZMA and 7-Zip file compression, IOzone, PostMark, WAV to OGG audio and H.264 video encoding. Full test results at: [Phoronix via Sla shdot]