The easiest way to try the ChromeOS UI on another platform is currently on Windows 8, where if your regular Chrome build is set as the default browser it will run the ChromeOS desktop environment/window manager in Metro mode (you have to close all the desktop windows for this to work).
Likely way more work than you're interested in but on Linux:
export GYP_DEFINES=chromeos=1
gclient runhooks
ninja -C out/Release chrome # May take a while!
./out/Release/chrome
... this produces a build of Chrome very similar to the one run in ChromeOS (we use it for 99% of UI development & testing on our Linux workstations). You can run this and get a feel for the desktop environment, window manager, etc. Similar steps will work on Windows but with use_aura=1 defined in GYP_DEFINES, and chrome run with --open-ash on the command line.
Likely way more work than you're interested in but on Linux:
Follow most of the steps on this page: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxBuildInstructio... then:
... this produces a build of Chrome very similar to the one run in ChromeOS (we use it for 99% of UI development & testing on our Linux workstations). You can run this and get a feel for the desktop environment, window manager, etc. Similar steps will work on Windows but with use_aura=1 defined in GYP_DEFINES, and chrome run with --open-ash on the command line.