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Android container in Chrome OS

chromium.googlesource.com

81–90 of 140 posts

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#81

I just had a vision of all major OS projects providing developer containers for their projects. Like, you could just pull the latest Firefox dev container and run a single command to have a running debuggable app. I know one of the major pains we have when on-boarding new people is the whole dance to get to that first working build / first meaningful change. I can imagine this being significantly more simple if a wor…

You know, there once was a time when we did everything in folders and didn't need the overhead of containerization just to keep well behaved things from stepping all over each other and breaking everything. Like all progress in computing we've reinvented the wheel, but now with a few additional layers of abstraction and the consequential performance degradation.

> You know, there once was a time when we did everything in folders and didn't need the overhead of containerization just to keep well behaved things from stepping all over each other and breaking everything.

Those were the days…when we didn't have stupid watchdogs like memory protection and preemptive scheduling, and we all shared resources nicely and fairly, all the time. There were never crashes because someone touched memory that they weren't supposed to, or hangs because someone decided they were more important than all the other processes. No siree.

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#82
post #73

I can't wait for the day that phone operating systems development environments are a docker pull away. It's encouraging to see Google approaching my ideal workflow using containerisation. Apple systems are great until you run into the garden walls and are forced to use closed-source single platform software like Xcode. Chrome OS and Android are a lot more open in many respects. Hopefully efforts like this continue wi…

Apple systems are great precisely because they’re single platform and closed-source. It would be unfortunate if that changed.

Interesting. Would say the exact opposite.

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#83
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you tell us exactly which part of Docker you think is "quite closed"? Docker (Moby) is licensed under Apache 2.0, and so is containerd, the default runtime.

A license unfortunately doesn’t tell the truth, but their actions. They’re extremely closed.

What actions?

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#84

You can use gnu/Linux on Android with a CB. But you have to use a fake Chroot. Just go to play store and install GNUroot. Then install the Android XSDL app for the GUI.

can you use this to properly replicate the functionality of dropbox, though?[1]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#85
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam is actually still a WIP. When I tried to install it following the Debian instructions (inside a Stretch container) I was unable to do so. It currently does not support the i386 arch necessary. Maybe that has changed since I tried, but it was not working for me a week or so ago.

There is instruction on how to use Steam on ChromeOS 67 with a Pixel Book on /r/crostini. Just visit the subreddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Crostini/

I had read that, but from what I read they get it to launch steam, but cannot run a game yet. So still a WIP.

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Docker is quite closed as well, so I am not sure if it is a good step in the right direction.

What do you mean? You can now run Docker fine on ChromeOS 67 and personally am doing it now on the machine I am typing this. But you could even use Docker before all this new stuff by putting in developer, install Crouton but you had to use rkt to launch the Docker containers but worked fine. With ChromeOS 67 no longer necessary.

How did you start running docker on 67?

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#88

I can't wait for the day that phone operating systems development environments are a docker pull away. It's encouraging to see Google approaching my ideal workflow using containerisation. Apple systems are great until you run into the garden walls and are forced to use closed-source single platform software like Xcode. Chrome OS and Android are a lot more open in many respects. Hopefully efforts like this continue wi…

To be fair you can't go very far without running into garden walls in Apple land. It doesn't just apply to development.

Want to change your launcher / dialer / etc? WALL!

Want to run a different web browser (an ACTUAL web browser complete with JS / CSS engine). WALL!

Want emulators or adult-themed apps? WALL!

Want to develop for iOS or macOS on Windows or Linux? WALL!

The list goes on and on...

Re: Android container in Chrome OS

#89

By looking at the comments this article is creating confusion. So I thought I might provide an overview of the two things happening with ChromeOS. 1) Android apps have been enabled on many Chromebooks using a locked container that shares a Linux kernel with ChromeOS. You do NOT have access to the container mechanism that is being used. It ONLY supports a container locked by Google. It is NOT using Docker also. This i…

Hey! Thanks for the detailed reply. What I don't get is: ChromeOS is open source, so why do all these things only work on certain hardware? Isn't there a way to install ChromeOS on any laptop today and already use Anroid apps et al, without said machine being a Pixelbook? I have a machine that is not an official ChromeBook and I'd love to install ChromeOS with Android support to try it out. But I've done quite some g…

To expand on andrewaylett's comment, that it is open source doesn't automatically mean "100% hardware compatibility."

Even for the linux kernel, someone somewhere has to figure out how to get it to boot on every piece of hardware.

It's not magic. The nice thing is that if the first person who gets it working can just 'git push' their code to kernel.org, then the next person doesn't have to redo all that work.

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