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You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

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Re: You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

#181

Post by rileyphone »

redial wrote: post #101
dfaigonio wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the Chrome OS team do anything the Chrome OS team does? They decided the best idea for low-end hardware is to run everything as a web app. They decided to make it practically useless without an Internet connection because clearly no one will use an ultraportable somewhere without Internet access. They decided to develop their own distro mostly from scratch because contributing to an existing project would be…

> Linux desktops could catch on in the mainstream market just fine if they had the marketing budget, brand recognition, and vendor support of Google The problem with Linux on the mainstream is Linux, it has nothing to do with not having a huge brand like Google's nor with marketing, just ask Dell. Linux offers exactly what the enterprise market needs and it is a huge success, far bigger than anyone in the 90s ever im…

Linux isn't the problem: with enough money and time, you could build an OS around Linux that a user can use just like MacOS or Windows. Sony built an operating system around FreeBSD for the PS4 that noone recognises as such. The problem is that open source software (which Linux necessarily attracts due to licensing and reputaion) is designed by people with a fundamentally different view of ergonomics, and the number of disparate HW components (audio, graphics, etc) create a similar number of software components that make integrating them cumbersome and frustrating.

Re: You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

#182

Post by vatueil »

terminalcommand wrote: post #39
timvisee wrote: post #4

I wonder why they are using a VM running Debian for Linux applications, as Chrome OS is already Linux (Gentoo) based itself.

I'd guess they wanted a simpler solution. Debian mostly has stable packages, but if users want more it is easier to get it compatible with Ubuntu repositories and packages. For example if chromeos users wanted to install steam on their system having a Debian base would help. Aside from this I'm really surprised that they are using Wayland instead of X11, this decision ought to bring some stability issues until Waylan…

> If I were to guess this feature has been added as a freetime project amongst Google employees.

I believe the impetus was enabling Android app development on Chrome OS. Google first said they were working on that a long time ago. I guess in the process of doing so they figured they might as well expand the functionality to cover all Linux apps, not just Android Studio.

As such, I expect support will be stable. Chrome OS in general has had very solid support, too.

Re: You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

#183

Post by williamstein »

thesandlord wrote: post #144
williamstein wrote: post #80

Will this make it possible to run Docker in a Chromebook? With Crouton, which is just a chroot, you can't run Docker at all (without changing the ChromeOS kernel), and can only run rkt containers. If this new Linux apps support really runs in a Debian KVM virtual machine, then maybe it will be possible to run Docker in that, which would be a massive advantage over what crouton provides. Anybody know?

Yes, you can run Docker. Source: I've been testing Crostini for a while now, and Docker works great!

Thanks! This is really fantastic news!

Re: You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

#184

Post by donatj »

mschuster91 wrote: post #74
jmagoon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other good thing about this is that the Pixelbook is a 3:2 screen, so finally there's a laptop with a proper display resolution that can run Linux nicely. There's a good community of folks over at https://www.reddit.com/r/Crostini/ who have been tinkering with this for quite some time.

> with a proper display resolution 3:2? No thanks I don't really want black bars when watching movies... What I'd really really like is something with the build quality (especially the touchpad!) of a MacBook Pro, with decent and recent hardware, first class Linux support for all features, support for both USB-C and "old" USB and a decent keyboard with it. And that without paying more than for an technologically outd…

> No thanks I don't really want black bars when watching movies...

I genuinely never understand people that watch movies on laptops. I find it a wholly unenjoyable experience.

Do you own a TV? You’re missing so much of the experience watching a movie on anything smaller than 45” and TVs are dirt cheap these days. I saw a 65” the other day for $250...

Re: You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

#185

Post by esprehn »

hutzlibu wrote: post #109
derefr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly–ChromeOS being Linux-based is, at this point, an implementation detail. No ChromeOS "apps" depend on that fact, because they all run under their own VMs or ABI sandboxes. This means that Google could make a Fuchsia-based ChromeOS and nothing in userland (save for the code of those VMs and sandboxes) would have to change.

Isn't Fuchsia OS as well, kust no GPL?

Fuschia doesn't contain any Linux at all, hidden or otherwise. There's a compat layer you can run on top, but it's closer to the Windows subsystem for Linux than Chrome OS.

Re: You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

#186

Post by vatueil »

hutzlibu wrote: post #109
derefr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly–ChromeOS being Linux-based is, at this point, an implementation detail. No ChromeOS "apps" depend on that fact, because they all run under their own VMs or ABI sandboxes. This means that Google could make a Fuchsia-based ChromeOS and nothing in userland (save for the code of those VMs and sandboxes) would have to change.

Isn't Fuchsia OS as well, kust no GPL?

Yes, various parts use BSD/MIT/Apache licenses, e.g.: https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/docs/blob/master/LICENSE

That said, parent comments seem to be talking about two different topics. Later comment about Google switching the underlying foundation of Chrome OS from Linux to Fuchsia sounds plausible, while earlier comment complaining about Fuchsia being proprietary is nonsense.

Re: You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

#187

Post by calcifer »

simonh wrote: post #175
tambourine_man wrote: post #70

You hear that Adobe? You now have a lot of potential costumers to sell your Creative Cloud package to. I bet those Chromebooks are selling like hot cakes and many schools would love to offer training for your tools. As a side benefit, you'd get a lot of neglected Pro Apple costumers (well, one at least), which would love to use some blessed by Adobe Linux distro. Also… >…meaning that even less powerful machines shoul…

>Wine is not an emulator, for crying out loud To those of us that used it back when Wine officially stood for Windows Emulator, people nowadays getting all upset on this point is an ever green source of amusement.

It never officially stood for that.The backronym was there even when the name WINE itself was very, very new [1].

[1] https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.os.linux.misc/_g3F2H4ie...

Re: You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

#188

Post by beagle3 »

toast0 wrote: post #131
magissima wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely asking, what makes apt-get that much better than other package managers? Outside of Slackware I think good dependency resolution is pretty much universal at this point, and I can't say I've ever noticed any major problems with pacman, for instance.

Apt-get got there first. Debian does a pretty good job of trying to make upgrades work (which isn't really an apt thing, plenty of apt based distributions don't actually care to make upgrades work). It's been a while, but my understanding is redhat figured out dependency resolution too, though.

Depends on what you mean by "figured out". Yum was capable of dependency resolution 15 years ago, maybe more, but was unbearably slow compared to apt-get. Maybe dnf solved that, maybe yum is faster now, I don't know, I switched to Debian more than a decade ago and didn't have a reason to retest RH since.

Even on the slowest systems I still have access to (64MB VPS, RasPi 1), apt-get is reasonably quick and responsive.

Re: You can now run Linux apps on Chrome OS

#189

Post by thomastjeffery »

Koshkin wrote: post #129
willtim wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A metal body is heavy, prone to dents and attenuates radio. Why are you so keen on having one? The X1 Carbon is lighter, tougher and more serviceable than a MacBook Pro, in part because of a better choice of materials. As for trackpads, Apple keep making them larger and larger, so a ThinkPad trackpad is no smaller than a MacBook from a few years ago. The keyboard is surely the primary concern.

> A metal body is heavy You are thinking of cast iron, probably.

Aluminum is relatively heavy. Certainly heavier than plastic.
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