Will Chrome OS support Java applets?
As far as I know there's some kind of Linux in the Chrome OS foundations and Java is already supported there, so I don't see a technical problem. The question is whether or not they want people to run applets at all.
I would certainly appreciate it...
Answer
No, there will be no stock support for Java within ChromeOS.
No, you should assume that there will be no JRE in stock Chromium OS builds, or in Google Chrome OS.
Phrase is by Chris Masone. Having an @chromium.org-Mail-Adress, he should know what he says.
He also states, that
the community is more than welcome to adapt the chromium os code as they desire. If folks want to get java working on Chromium OS, please go ahead.
imho: Yes, somewhere in the future, there will be someone porting an (maybe open source) JDK/JRE to comply with Chrome OS, as there are already Java DK/RE for Linux nowadays. There are even screenshots available today which show java code being executed within Chrome.
edit: according to blog post with images as proof: Yes, mostly sure! Well - still not out of the box, but after probably modifying the repositoriy list, a
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre
should do it, as it's ubuntu based. If we don't trust this news, the chance is still very high that google forks another distribution and customizes that one only on the surface, so that we can apt-get/urpmi/...
edit2: according to http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/how-tos-and-troubleshooting/add-a-new-package/package-management, you can build your own packages and install them. There is a sample for emacs, so java should be no problem.