61–70 of 90 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just get the normal Framework, install Ubuntu on it and delete all the icons except for Chrome
Much less secure.
The web services I use are more likely to be hacked than my personal machines.
I think what is always lacking in these reviews is: compared to what? I’m always curious to see what other devices authors have used prior to this “best device”. For example, I started with a 2010 MacBook Pro, then a T430 Thinkpad, then a dell, then a desktop computer, then Apple finally fixed the butterfly keyboard so now I use a 2021 MacBook Pro. In my experience nothing comes close to the trackpad of the MacBook.…
He is not claiming it to be a best device and clearly says it is deficient in most everyway but the complete package results in something so useful and handy and easy to carry around that it makes up for all of its faults. A favorite is generally not the best, the word implies being colored by emotion and lacking in logical reasoning.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How exactly is ChromeOS "secure"? Is it just a word that gets passed around in the marketing materials? Where is the evidence that it's more secure than Linux?
ChromeOS is Linux, as it's running the Linux kernel. As is Android for that matter. But anyway, Google doesn't let you run random binaries you download on ChromeOS, outside of a limited sandbox, making it more secure than a distro that lets you run curl | sudo sh outside of a VM. There are some other security shaped things they do as well. https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3438631?hl=en
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much less secure.
How exactly is ChromeOS "secure"? Is it just a word that gets passed around in the marketing materials? Where is the evidence that it's more secure than Linux?
Chrome runs with the usual privilege separation in multiple processes each in it's own tight sandbox.
There is no way to autostart anything.
Even in the nuclear case of a 0-day RCE + chained sandbox breakout + privilege escalation to root, the threat can not persist itself... you just reboot the device and are save again.
And the list goes on...
Their crosvm VMM puts every emulated piece of hardware in it's own isolated process[1]. The drive emulator is blocked from even open files itself.
Google has lot's of experience in security, they are one of the few who still build their own browser, the most hostile environment.
My favorite device used to be a Chromebook. I got a maxed out Pixelbook in 2018 and I loved it, especially as Crostini got better and better over the years. It was my primary dev laptop and I loved using it. I think we know where this is going... Like many other things Google over the past decade, it died on the vine - IIRC Google killed their Chromebook devices group a couple years ago. I would have loved a Pixelboo…
I flashed it's bootloader to the Mr Chromebox one and now it's been running Fedora Kinoite very well. So still my favorite device, just a new favorite OS. Kinoite (via RPM Ostree) gives that same feeling of no worry updates.
ChromeOS is great and has only improved. Its great as an OS that needs absolutely no care and feeding. It was amazingly efficient, it didn't start struggling until 120+ browser tabs. But Kinoite (combined with things like Distrobox) is more flexible. There's a lot more of how the sausage is made especially getting full disk encryption going (I used tang and clevis) on Kinoite. And ChromeOS has some of the things that make Distrobox and Flatpaks great (desktop integration basically).
So TL;DR, look at flashing your bootloader and installing Linux.
Agreed. WSL2 makes Windows really powerful too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much less secure.
How exactly is ChromeOS "secure"? Is it just a word that gets passed around in the marketing materials? Where is the evidence that it's more secure than Linux?
The average Linux desktop does not even come close to having a design as thorough as this, much less a full-blown, actually usable implementation of said design. Frankly, 99% of Linux desktop installs used by developers I've ever seen are nothing more than single-user systems with everything running under a user account that is morally (and in practice, technically) equivalent to root.
The bar for desktop security in the Linux world is actually very, very low.