I don’t understand the point of this article. It said all that it had to say with the headline alone. Everything else is filler.
“ChromeOS is Linux in disguise. But people already knew this.” Ok. And?
Welcome to journalism in 2023. You don’t write anything out of passion anymore, you’re just filling your weekly quota with random words
How much did you pay for journalism last month? And yet you expect quality and passion.
I don’t expect quality from them, that’s why I don’t really pay attention to corporate journalism. I get most of this kind of information from individual creators, and I do support those when I can
Good for you, and I’m impressed by your undefensive and unhuffy reply.
Because the amount of entitlement I see about professional journalism really pisses me off, personally. There is a reason that much (not all) journalism is not the quality it used to be. It’s because nobody is frigging paying for it any more. Journalists are not the perpetrators in this story, they are the victims. The internet has caused their profession to implode. It’s their jobs that have disappeared on a huge scale, their salaries that have shrunk, their career choice that turned out to be a catastrophic bad move. All because of a technical innovation, basically. Well, personally I think we may come to regret the demise of this profession which served society well for at least a century. But the least we can do is stop the victim-blaming.
Rant over. No, I am not a journalist. Very glad of that career choice.
The absolute last thing I’m going to do is use a Google product.
They have the best security of any desktop OS iirc
You’re not safe from Google though. And that’s quite a big backdoor if you’re a target of interest.
Forgot the /s
Security, not privacy
ChromeOS has sandboxing, which already puts it miles ahead of Windows and Linux (no, the Flatpak Sandbox doesn’t count)
It’s not the only desktop OS that has sandboxing.
windows sandbox is… getting there, macos is decent but iirc the app dev can choose to not use it. all Linux options require user intervention to ensure it’s set up properly. ChromeOS’ sandboxing technique is inherited from Android and is the strongest/strictest of any desktop operating system.
ChromeOS is just spyware that’s eye candy.
ChromeOS is a totally locked down distro of Linux. I prefer Debian Linux with an XFCE desktop thank you.
Does this mean I can reasonably expect to buy a Chromebook and install vanilla Linux without huge headaches?
There’s always been Linux distros that targeted Mac hardware. There’s got to be something like that for chromebooks, right?
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You can install vanilla Linux, but huge headaches are involved.
I did it, and it worked, but I had to open is and remove a foil (equivalent to a jumper), go to developer mode, then flash a new bootloader by running a script from GitHub.
Think flashing a ROM on a pretty locked down Android device.
The upside is that when the process is done, you have a regular PC and no need to do any cumbersome process again.
Chromebooks use some custom tailored coreboot variant, right? Not surprising that they’ve locked it down while they were at it.
Not even remotely. It requires custom firmware which often requires physical disassembly to install. From there you can install any distro, but you will continue to have many small issues and inconveniences often due to the nonstandard keyboard.
There was a Chromebook targeted Linux distro called eupnea that could be installed without custom firmware via depthboot, but it’s dead now and the original repo got deleted after the Dev got hacked, so the build scripts don’t work anymore.
No, this isn’t something you can expect.
There used to be a distro called Gallium OS, but it’s been dead for a couple years now.
Why would you not be able to? Isn’t a chromebook just a laptop with garbage specs?
Not really. A Chromebook to a laptop is basically what a gaming console is to a desktop pc. Yes, it shares a lot of hardware, and the ISA too these days, but even then a lot of it might be trimmed down without any notice, or on the software side, you might be locked into what you get. They did make it easier to install Linux flavors, bit you still get what you get
the true wysiwyg device
There are actually Chromebooks with very solid specs, but no, it isn’t that simple. They have custom firmware and components that often don’t play well with Linux, or Windows for that matter.
Okay, thanks for clearing this up. Chromebooks have turned me off since their inception, I just assumed since they are made by regular laptop companies that they are plain old low-spec machines running a lightweight OS with minimal functionality.
Hilarious title. Can you install Firefox?
Can you uninstall Chrome?
You can install from Android or from linux environment, but last one is a virtualization and it’s a bit slow.
Check chromebrew too https://github.com/chromebrew/chromebrew/tree/master/packages
It always was.
Does anyone actually buy Chromebooks apart from schools?
So sad and unfortunate that we’re indoctrinating children to be spied on.
My girlfriend bought a really cheap one from Lenovo. Besides watching movies and browsing the web there’s not much you can do because ChromeOS is extremely limiting. Wouldn’t ever recommend anyone to buy anything with ChromeOS on it.
Sounds like the perfect device for my parents and many many other people I know.
My parents, for whom the internet is the only worthwhile thing a computer can be used for, love their Chromebook
Yep, my parents have a few. Way easier than dealing with them installing windows malware constantly or having to maintain Linux for them.
Just keep in mind that after update support ends, it’s a ticking time bomb. And there’s basically no “second life” for it because it’s so locked down.
I mean, it was for on campus use, but I bought one in college to have a cheap note taker and basic homework machine for on campus that wouldn’t set me back too far if it got stolen or broken. I had a gaming desktop at home and was in a non-technical major, so it worked out great.
Yes
I bought one used as a Couch PC and replaced ChromeOS with a proper linux install.
I sure hope not 😅
Quite possibly one of the most misleading statements ive ever read.
And yet an onscreen keyboard for linux apps is still “on the roadmap”…
With wayland this also happens in the rest of linux.
In my desktop at home the main OS is Ubuntu, basically since more than 15 years, but I own also 2 Chromebooks laptops. I have a Lenovo Duet which i use mainly because I can run both Android and Linux apps, and it allow me to watch streaming services in offline. I would prefer to use any “gnu-linux” distro on a portable device, but if you wish to watch Amazon Prime or Netflix offline, you can only use a tablet with Android or iOs but on linux pc you are limited on web app typically, except in Chromebook which has some extra flexibility. Also I don’t find invasive so far, more or less we have the same privacy settings as in Android. As benefit it’s supported for 10 years for OS updates. And, in the future I may also decide to install a pure linux distro if I need.
Its called torrenting my friend. Real control, real offline, no proprietary DRM bullshit
I have used years ago different download platforms, years before Torrent, in the time of Napster, Emule etc. but so far the official streaming service provide a good offer, without wasting time. I don’t think it worst the effort to download illegally ie comparing with price of Prime. I see now a tendency when the platform cost will increase and users should, in theory have 10 platforms, where i may understand the reason for people returning to illegal download. The streaming service companies should think carefully before increasing the price or creating new rules to share the cost.
Sure, they provide a good offer but force you to use a Chromebook instead of a regular Linux distro… Sounds like a big constraint to me.
I understand. In this case we should blame the streaming companies about it and if I need this function I have not much choice apart illegal download.
I often find movies I dont get anywhere. Music even more, awesome quality.
Okay, aboutchromebooks.com
ChromeOS is Linux is technically correct I would say in the least helpful way possible. Linux but it misses the point.
The site is aboutchromebooks.com, hmm…
Some Chromebooks are pretty hackable. I’ve got an older one that I reflashed with tianocore UEFI firmware. It makes for a pretty decent cheap and lightweight low power laptop. You can run basically any standard ARM Linux distro on it.
