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The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition

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Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition

#321

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.

They added it about 4-5 years ago, and really it just keeps getting better and better. I'm really in awe of the tech chops of the team that did this, especially around security. You'll often hear it referred to as crostini: https://chromeos.dev/en/linux

Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition

#322
I 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 much better things. Granted, if they believe that this will be a big boost to their bottom line / margins / sustainability, then I'm in favor of it on the grounds of helping make sure Framework is a successful company.

My 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

#323
post #202

Earlier 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

I just went through this process with Gentoo on a framework laptop. Here are some random, likely incomplete notes to make this work. It uses a swap file on an encrypted filesystem

  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

#324
post #302

But... why. Why would anyone get a chromebook? I still dont get it. Whats the point of having one?

Win11 and macOS and desktop Linux all suck in various ways. ChromeOS actually has far better security, boots faster, has less obtrusive automatic updates, supports Android apps, runs Steam (in beta), and has real Linux that you can use underneath instead of PowerShell or Cygwin or WSL or Apple's weird environment with no native package manager and a set of outdated utilities and a git binary that requires accepting the XCode license agreement again every time there's an update...

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

#325
post #293

Earlier 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.

Already on the internet we can choose to use our real name when we are comfortable having our reputation tied to our words giving them more weight, and we can also be anonymous other times when we are okay with our words holding very little weight, but also very little risk to us.

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

#326
post #282

Earlier 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.

Apple, Microsoft and Google are all data harvesting companies. And any other OS, including Linux, can have spyware, rootkits or other malicious software installed all the way down to the BIOS. If you want privacy when around an internet-connected camera and microphone there is no substitute for a hardware switch.

Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition

#327

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.

To be clear on what you're getting: It runs a (Linux) VM and you get root on (a container on) that VM. Not trying to rain on your parade (because it's really quite useful!) but it's limited in what it can do. (eg it can't change the host's wifi MAC address.)

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

#328
post #322

I 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…

While I share your concerns, the user experience and security of ChromeOS is so much nicer than Windows, or Linux (haven't used a Mac for ages so can't compare), for most tasks for most people. It's what I'd recommend to my grandparents.

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

#329

If 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.

I’d be just as satisfied for Google Sheets to become the standard. I have seen XLSX/DOCX as the standard format for a long time. The Google Workspace (GSuite) products don’t interoperate seamlessly, and they are not a compatible solution.

Re: The Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition

#330

Earlier 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…

Not going to comment much on how much of a risk it is to use a Google product in this way. Just going to say that ChromeOS is pretty much designed to work with Google's primary apps: GMail, Drive, Hangouts (or whatever it's called these days), etc. So my point is that if you want to stay out of the Google ecosystem, it wouldn't make sense to use ChromeOS in any case.
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