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ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

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Re: ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There’s no reason schools or parents can’t hand kids unmanaged/unrestricted Chromebooks Holy cow. Are you serious? Kids break stuff for fun. This is basically a “You’re holding it wrong” argument. Schools are gonna have heavily managed chromebooks, because it’s the reality on the ground that they can hardly afford anything, much less insane IT support for every student. Like, kids are going to actively sabotage the…

Virtually any Linux distro can be turned into a managed OS.

I think you are greatly over simplifying it

Re: ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

#142
post #18

You could say that ChromeOS is Google's desktop environment with a Linux kernel, also. Which actually is!

This might be a bit more accurate, especially if they ever switch to Fuchsia under the hood.

At this point I'm convinced that if Google ever succeeds in making Fuchsia a "success", they would drop it all together within a year.

Re: ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think is incorrect, exactly? ChromeOS is a GNU/Linux distribution - a Linux kernel with GNU and other userspace components on top - derived from Gentoo. Android, it's true, is a non-GNU Linux distro, which does use mostly custom userspace parts over the Linux kernel. I wasn't intending to discuss Android, just to point out that ChromeOS is a GNU/Linux system, and a surprisingly vanilla one at that.

>ChromeOS is a GNU/Linux system Personally, it doesn't qualify as GNU to me as the only GNU software included AFAIK is Bash. To me GNU requires coreutils to be there and usable.

Yeah, ChromeOS uses GNU coreutils and glibc; it's a Gentoo derivative, not some alien like Android. I don't know how you define "usable", but if you switch to developer mode to let you get a shell at all then it feels about like any other GNU/Linux distro.

Re: ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

#144
post #92

Can I install Firefox without jumping through a bunch of hoops and without it feeling like a second class experience?

Yes. I use Firefox on my work Chromebook so I can access my personal Gmail while logged in as my work account. It integrates perfectly and is installed as easily as e.g. vscode is. The do not put up any barriers just because it is Firefox.

How do you install it? Do the fonts look good?

Re: ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly but the equivalent yes. Workstation and VMs. All tests and builds are basically run in borg by default. For most Google developer developing on a Chromebook basically means running ssh and chrome remote desktop.

For students, unless there are allocated server resources with network access, it SHOULD/MUST scale down to one local offline ARM64 node (because school districts haven't afforded containers on a managed k8s cloud for students at scale fwiu, though universities do with e.g. JupyterHub and BinderHub [4] and Colab). For Chromebook sysadmins, Instructors, and Students learning about how {Linux*, ChromiumOS, Android, Git…

> ChromiumOS's [sommelier also crosses] container/vm boundaries IIRC.

chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/containers_and_vms.md > Can I run Wayland programs? with Sommelier: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/con...

But that doesn't solve because containers and vms aren't on and aren't supported for their accounts.

A school chromebook's access to containers could be controlled by setting the containers.conf repo URL to a Container Image Repository controlled by the school. GitHub, Gitea, and GitLab all support storing (OCI) container images.

An instructor would import a container image with an associated Pull Request that causes an Action to run to (1) scan the container and its SBOM Software Bill of Materials; before (2) hosting the container image for the students and (3) regularly (along with e.g. Dependabot, which for security regularly checks for references to outdated versions of software in GitHub repos) .

It looks like GitHub supports 3rd party code scanning tools, too; so Instructors and Students could auto-scan for security vulnerabilities and get reports back in the Pull Request https://docs.github.com/en/code-security/code-scanning/intro...

GitHub Project Templates are designed to be forked; e.g. like an assignment handout to be filled out (that already has an /.github/workflows/actions.yml and README.md headings). Cookiecutter is another way to create a project/assignment/handout/directory/git_repo skeleton; with jinja2 templates to generate file names like `/{{name}}/README.md` and file contents like {% if name %}Hello World, {{name}}{% endif %} . jinja2 is a useful skill also for ansible [collections of roles of] playbooks of tasks.

chromebook-ansible installs a number of apps by default (including docker and vscode (instead of podman and vscodium or similar)), but because there are variables in the playbook, you can change which parts of the playbook runs by specifying different parameters with ansible inventory: https://github.com/seangreathouse/chromebook-ansible#include... https://github.com/seangreathouse/chromebook-ansible/blob/c8...

It would be helpful to be able to provision [Android and Chromebook] devices with [Ansible] like it is possible with Mac, Windows, and Linux devices (without a domain controller; decentralizedly and for bootstrapping). It appears that there happens to be no way to `adb install play-store://url` with Ansible, but there is news about Ansible support for Enterprise Chromebooks.

There are [vscode] IDE mentions in the chromebook git repos IIRC. The [vscode] [docker/podman extension] could work with aforementioned functionality to limit which containers can be pulled or are running at a given time.

USE CASE (for a "STEM workstations for learning" spec): Create a minimal git repo project from a project template with cookiecutter-pypackage or similar.

A minimal project [template] would have at least:

  /README.md            # h1, badges, {{schema:description}}, #install, #usage, #license, #citation
  /LICENSE || /COPYING  # software/content license terms
  /devcontainers.json   # for vscode and other IDEs
  /environment.yml      # which packages to install (conda, pip, repo2podman)
          
  [/src]/example/__init__.py
  [/src]/example/main.py
  
  /tests/
  /tests/__init__.py
  /tests/test_main.py

  /example/tests/  # this dir would ship with the package, so that that tests Could run in production

  /example/data/  # will be installed in site-packages
  /data/          # will not be installed in site-packages without a special setup.py

  /docs/
  /docs/conf.py                                                    # sphinx
  /docs/index.rst      # .. include('../README.md') .. toctree::   # sphinx
  /docs/_toc.yml       # jupyter-book
  /docs/_quarto.yml    # quarto
  /docs/_metadata.yml  # quarto

  # When we need to vendor _other projects in
  # we then need src/ (and/or lib/) for _those (and maybe ours_ 2)

  [/src][/example]/tests/
  [/src][/example]/tests/__init__.py
  [/src][/example]/tests/test_main.py
  [/src][/libexample2]/COPYING
This is a very common workflow for STEM (PyData) software; how is it done with Win/Mac/Lin (and bash and git) and how do we do this with our Chromebook with no Terminal or Containers?

Re: ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

#146
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I use Firefox on my work Chromebook so I can access my personal Gmail while logged in as my work account. It integrates perfectly and is installed as easily as e.g. vscode is. The do not put up any barriers just because it is Firefox.

How do you install it? Do the fonts look good?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/run-firefox-chromeos

Indistinguishable from any other native app - fonts are fine.

Re: ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

#147
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you install it? Do the fonts look good?

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/run-firefox-chromeos Indistinguishable from any other native app - fonts are fine.

Thanks! Sounds like it's improved a lot since I tried it years ago.

Re: ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

#148

Google put in a ton of work to make all the Linux and Android sandboxing while still being able to do file sharing into the sandboxes, Wayland GUI app bridging, usb pass-through, and a bunch of other stuff. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/con... ChromeOS got good and is wildly underrated for software development. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Couldn't agree more. I recently bought a cheap $200 Chromebook and I have to say that it outperforms my high end Windows + WSL2 machine from work for programming related tasks. Linux just works without all the WSL issues, I can run Visual Studio Code, Docker and anything that I tried so far. It's actually a delight to work on. I can only imagine how much better yet it will be with a top tier Chromebook

It’s fine if what you like about Linux is running Linux apps. But for me, it’s the privacy, the control, the choice of desktop environments etc. I can run VS Code on anything. And Firefox runs like garbage on a Chromebook, so, what’s really the benefit of using the only OS that won’t even run my preferred browser?

Re: ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

#149
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shut all of my computers all the way off when I’m finished using them, which means I have to turn them on when I start using them.

Is this an adaptation to some past trauma? I can't imagine a good reason to do this today, certainly not with ChromeOS.

I used a Samsung Chromebook sometime 5 years ago, and it couldn’t handle suspend/sleep well. I could leave it overnight with 80% and find it with 0% in the morning. So I learned to turn it off each time I stop using it. It booted within seconds anyways, so the only issue was to enter my gigantic generated password.

For me ChromeOS’s top UX fault is the password. You either do it with pin, or with a Bluetooth device to unlock. Otherwise it’s pain to enter the password.

Re: ChromeOS is Linux with Google’s desktop environment

#150
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shut all of my computers all the way off when I’m finished using them, which means I have to turn them on when I start using them.

Is this an adaptation to some past trauma? I can't imagine a good reason to do this today, certainly not with ChromeOS.

Isnt suspending an adaptation to trauma? The trauma of slow drives/startup or being interrupted constantly?

When I put my machine e away I am usually 'done', and when I open it, it isn't to see where I left off.

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