This is awesome! I still use my Pixelbook, and I love it, and was always dismayed that it seemed to be yet another great product that Google lost interest in. For folks wondering "who's the market in this?", the Linux container support in ChromeOS is awesome - my Pixelbook was actually a great dev laptop (I ran postgres, VSCode, Node, etc on it), just with age it's lack of upgrades is starting to show. So for me, on…
This is actually the first I’m hearing of Chrome OS supporting Linux apps out of the box. I always dismissed Chrome OS as a glorified iPad or Android tablet with a keyboard and desktop. I’m mostly happy with my Linux-based HP dev one, but this is causing me to seriously consider a Chromebook (like this Framework variant) next upgrade.
The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition
321–330 of 476 posts
Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition
#322My hope was that this is just running on the standard Framework laptop hardware, but it looks like it required a bit of a mainboard redesign, as well as a different input cover and keyboard. Extra hardware like that just makes their offering more difficult for a customer to navigate and understand, not to mention the added support and manufacturing burden on the company's side.
Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
The usual reason for a lot of those boil down to "poor driver support", but this is the same hardware with what I would presume is the same Linux kernel so same drivers, so what's the difference?
The usual reason is that you can't enable hibernate with disk encryption
1. Create a swap file. Our rule of thumb is ram + sqrt(ram) for hibernate
fallocate -l 72GiB swapfile
chmod 600 swapfile
mkswap swapfile
swapon swapfile
swapon --show
2. emerge suspend
3. Get the number to use with resume_offset later. In the current case, it was 125798400
swap-offset /swapfile
emerge sys-boot/grub
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot
vim /boot/grub/grub.cfg
timeout=5
menuentry 'Gentoo Linux 5.18.19' {
root=hd0,1
insmod all_video
linux /kernel-5.18.19 root=/dev/mapper/root resume=/dev/mapper/root resume_offset=125798400
}
4. Fix suspend.conf
vim /etc/suspend.conf
resume device = /dev/mapper/root
resume offset = 125798400
5. Setup an initramfs
cd /usr/src
mkdir initramfs
cd initramfs
mkdir -p bin dev etc proc sys new-root
cp -a /dev/{null,console,tty} /usr/src/initramfs/dev/
cp -a /bin/busybox ./bin
cd bin
for i in `./busybox --list`
do
ln -s ./busybox $i
done
cd ..
cp -a /sbin/cryptsetup ./bin
mkdir -p ./run/cryptsetup
lddtree -l /sbin/cryptsetup
Copy in all of those files until the local cryptsetup works appropriately
vim init
#!/bin/sh
# Define a rescue shell
rescue_shell() {
echo "Error in boot process, dropping to a shell"
exec /bin/sh
}·
# Mount our devices. We sleep prior to dev to hopefully finish loading.
mount -t proc none /proc
mount -t sysfs none /sys
sleep 2 && mount -t devtmpfs none /dev
# Decrypt the root partition
cryptsetup --allow-discards luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p2 root || rescue_shell
# Attempt to resume
printf '%u:%u\n' $(stat -L -c '0x%t 0x%T' /dev/mapper/root) > /sys/power/resume
# If we're not resuming, mount the new root
mount -o noatime,discard -t ext4 /dev/mapper/root /new-root
# Unmount (cleanup) our devices
umount /proc
umount /sys
umount /dev
# Boot from the unencrypted partition
exec switch_root /new-root /sbin/init
6. Suspend should be working with:
echo shutdown > /sys/power/disk
echo disk > /sys/power/state
or preferably
loginctl hibernate
Anyway, there's a lot of missing detail in there, but the idea is that there's a swapfile inside the normal encrypted root partition. For me, I've enough ram where I don't really use swap unless hibernating, so a swapfile versus a separate encrypted swap partition suffices.Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition
#324But... why. Why would anyone get a chromebook? I still dont get it. Whats the point of having one?
Seems like half of HN readers think Google is the literal devil, but for the other half, why not ChromeOS?
Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
Giving ChromeOS devices to low tech users that cannot understand the privacy and lock-in risks feels like a tech version of giving kids cigarettes. It is simply unethical. The HN crowd can make informed decisions to give Google control of their entire digital lives but we should not make that choice for others. I would never recommend Windows or MacOS to anyone for similar reasons so those are not a comparison I care…
>but we should not make that choice for others. Much of the HN crowd has their finances intertwined with forcing these kinds of choices on consumers. Sometimes I dream of an awful de-anonymized internet where your financial holdings are bound to every post that you make online. I think binding that incentive might change how we ingest opinions.
I think many people, if they find a comment really impactful, will take a look and see if this was said by someone using their real name and if there are obviously relevant major corporate biases they didn't disclose. Or maybe I am weird and am just trying to justify that I personally do this often.
Regardless, both anonymous and identified communication are very valuable depending on the particular goal, and it should always be a switch everyone is empowered to be able flip at any time.
Sometimes when I am testing out ideas to decide how I even feel about something myself, I may choose to be anonymous.
Most of the time, I am fine with most of my posts on HN being under my real name and tied to my reputation and that of the security and privacy consulting company I run.
I still reserve the right to change my mind and be wrong sometimes and trust most of my target customers to give me some room for that :)
Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because when I'm using my camera I make sure not to do things like walk naked in front of it forgetting that there's a camera there? For other people the thing they don't do while on a video call might be having an affair, or using drugs, or... Your argument seems similar to "why would you care about a microphone spying on you 24/7 if you're willing to sometimes have conversations that might be overheard?" Yes obviou…
The other guy is arguing that you don't have to accept that risk at all if you don't use an OS from a data harvesting company. I don't care who watches me through my camera, I was just trying to point out that people aren't stupid about the hardware switch. Some just find it ironic that there is a hardware shut off for a camera on a computer operated by Google.
Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition
#327This is awesome! I still use my Pixelbook, and I love it, and was always dismayed that it seemed to be yet another great product that Google lost interest in. For folks wondering "who's the market in this?", the Linux container support in ChromeOS is awesome - my Pixelbook was actually a great dev laptop (I ran postgres, VSCode, Node, etc on it), just with age it's lack of upgrades is starting to show. So for me, on…
This is actually the first I’m hearing of Chrome OS supporting Linux apps out of the box. I always dismissed Chrome OS as a glorified iPad or Android tablet with a keyboard and desktop. I’m mostly happy with my Linux-based HP dev one, but this is causing me to seriously consider a Chromebook (like this Framework variant) next upgrade.
Chromebooks have easy access to developer mode which gives you root access to the host OS though, so it's kinda moot.
Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition
#328I hesitated posting this, because I don't want to be too negative, but: ugh. ChromeOS is just more Google adware/tracking-ware, locking people into the Google ecosystem, and (by default, at least) creating a more locked-down environment than a general-purpose OS would have (not quite iOS or even Android, but still not with the flexibility of a "mainstream" OS). I feel like Framework could be spending their time doing…
Also, completely disagree with your point about locking people into Google ecosystem - this is an OS that just runs a web browser. You need a Google account to log in, sure (actually, there's a guest mode too), but otherwise it's just a browser.
Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition
#329If Google partnered with Microsoft to bring the complete Excel/Word/PowerPoint programs to ChromeOS, I would jump ship in a heartbeat for our office fleet. I wonder if CodeWeavers CrossOver can run Office on ChromeOS reliably.
That is a space they are quite directly trying to win with their in browser suite of office tools, and chromeOS is, partly, a vehicle for that. I would be surprised to hear that G and MS partnered in that sort of a way.
Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't.
Which means that Google can simply lock you out of your Chromebook, for entirely arbitrary (and not even necessarily disclosed) reasons, at any moment. There's no practical avenue of appeal - Google is vast and even governments have trouble keeping it to heel. Individuals have no chance against these obdurate nation-sized entities. I think any Chromebook purchase, beyond the most cheap and cheerful throwaway, would b…