I think there's a big misunderstanding as to what exactly gLinux _IS_.
Nearly every large company I've worked at worked hard to standardize the dev environment. Ensuring the right set of dev tools (and more) is available on every machine. It's not as simple as 'apt-get install build-essential' and you're done. For example many large companies use perforce, which also has a licensing requirement. Google in particular has a large set of custom binaries, remote file systems, unified login (think krb but maybe not exactly that), unified management, etc, etc.
That is what gLinux is. This isn't something you're going to want or need. In fact it doesn't even run outside of the Google hard wired VLANs really (for setup).
There are a LOT of net benefits for much of google to being on gLinux. It means, for example, that nearly every product works on Linux - google docs, spreadsheet, meet, etc. That's a huge win. Not only that, they are on par with Windows or Mac support (thanks browser as a platform).
While this is true, I think a consumer gLinux (i.e. a Debian spin with support from Google) would be more appealing to Vendors than Ubuntu and similar just because of brand recognition.
I think Google had the opportunity to accidentally displace some of the Windows monopoly, not by doing a land grab a la ChromeOS or Android, but instead by just releasing a version of something they use themselves which would be appealing to like minded developers and companies that would follow Google's 'stamp of approval'.
Nearly every large company I've worked at worked hard to standardize the dev environment. Ensuring the right set of dev tools (and more) is available on every machine. It's not as simple as 'apt-get install build-essential' and you're done. For example many large companies use perforce, which also has a licensing requirement. Google in particular has a large set of custom binaries, remote file systems, unified login (think krb but maybe not exactly that), unified management, etc, etc.
That is what gLinux is. This isn't something you're going to want or need. In fact it doesn't even run outside of the Google hard wired VLANs really (for setup).
There are a LOT of net benefits for much of google to being on gLinux. It means, for example, that nearly every product works on Linux - google docs, spreadsheet, meet, etc. That's a huge win. Not only that, they are on par with Windows or Mac support (thanks browser as a platform).