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Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

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Re: Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

#31

Post by jcastro »

tapoxi wrote: post #23
jcastro wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An OSTree based atomic system is pretty close, although there is some added complexity. The author mentions this as well but there's no details there. We've been shipping chromeos-style images with universal blue for over 4 years and the ostree parts are invisible to end users. What do you feel takes away from the user experience?

Thanks for your work by the way, I'm a happy uBlue (Bazzite) user. I think my main concern is something like a known OSTree design issue around UID/GID drift, there was a bug that was partly fixed in 2023 but the issue comes from OSTree assigning known UIDs from the deployment once created, but this may not map to the proper UID on the system the deployment is being blasted to. You can get improper ownership out of t…

Interesting, I don't think I've seen this in the wild (~30 million pulls across ublue) - but I think I've seen this issue mentioned before.

I'll bring it up during the next bootc meeting[1], which are public btw! Thanks for using bazzite!

1: https://github.com/bootc-dev/bootc?tab=readme-ov-file#commun...

Re: Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

#32

Post by spankalee »

bgwalter wrote: post #8

The goal is banishing any and all questions of what to download, what desktop, what apps, packaging formats, software stores, user accounts, backing up, all of it: run the browser locally, sync the data – and only the data – to the cloud. That is not really popular in the open source world. Who finances the cloud, is it open, who can read or sell your data?

I think the idea pairing would be with with a very open cloud-app based solution. Something like Sandstorm where you can install your own cloud apps and have them available via the web on all your devices.

I really with Mozilla would get in this game. For most apps for most people, hosted PWAs make the most sense. But right now we're either stuck with local native software or only web apps from closed providers.

Re: Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

#33

Post by LordDragonfang »

I've been touting the chromeOS banner for years. It makes a huge amount of sense to have an OS optimized for the place most people are going to be spending 90% of their time - the browser - without any extra bloat. Then if you need more, just add those features. Gone are the days when you couldn't do certain things on a chromebook as well - assuming you have the hardware to support it, you can do almost anything you can do on a "proper" linux distro that you can on a chromebook, because you can run a full containerized distro and all the apps that come from it. I've got VSCode in my dock and can do web development easier than on a Windows desktop.

Re: Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

#34

Post by amlib »

lotharcable wrote: post #22
sussmannbaka wrote: post #4

There were a bunch of these during the netbook boom and they were grandparent-proof. Sadly, all of my favorites (Moblin/Meego, Joli OS and xpud) are long dead.

Netbook boom happened and then people actually started trying to use them. That is why the netbook boom died. Because while they promised to make cheap Linux devices that anybody could use none of them actually delivered on it. In fact the whole thing was a fiasco. The classic Linux problem can be described as "9 clicks to shit". Meaning that a Linux desktop looks, on the initial viewing, as something that is actuall…

Can't you say most of these things about Windows or even any other useful desktop OSes?

If you want a computer that does useful things and isn't just a locked down social media consumption machine, you end up with a lot of that baggage you've mentioned. Sure MacOS and Windows fare better (insert trillion dollar companies backing it spiel here...) but they are no smooth ride if you are doing anything more than consuming stuff or using a web browser.

Re: Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

#35

Post by mixmastamyk »

rapnie wrote: post #16

TIL about Endless OS: Recommended for Learners, Parents, and Schools https://www.endlessos.org/ > Many of our technologies are distributed together within Endless OS. This is not your typical Linux distribution. We don’t use rpm, apt, or any other packaging system. In our quest for simplicity and robustness, we use a read-only root file system managed by OSTree with application bundles overlaid on top. Most desktop L…

What are application bundles?

Re: Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

#36

Post by jacknews »

tapoxi wrote: post #5

I think that's just EndlessOS: https://www.endlessglobal.com/foundation/access/operating-sy...

"Endless OS: A PC as Simple as a Phone"

I get the sentiment, but honestly anytime I try to use a modern smartphone it almost takes a short flight. Hidden UI gestures, active sides, functionality limited to 'popular' cases, etc. Totally unusable and frustrating, IMHO.

Re: Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

#37

Post by NoboruWataya »

> Where Google's team put innovative effort into ChromeOS was in making it robust enough to be sold to the masses in the hundreds of millions of units, with no tech support. It's immutable, with image-based updates. It has two root partitions, one of which updates the other, so there's always a known good one to fall back to if an update should fail.

This is probably the only part of the article that is compelling. I guess having a simple, immutable Linux distro that prioritises being hard to break over many other things could indeed be a good thing for getting less tech-savvy users over to Linux.

But even then, who do they expect to maintain it? I would guess that many distros are maintained by people who are passionate about using them, and I suspect the overlap of FOSS maintainers and people who want to use such a locked-down, stripped-back system is small. And if the distro really didn't have many native apps, then users would either need to rely on Google for all their services anyway (somewhat defeating the point), or the "FOSS world" would also need to produce (and maintain, and host) a full suite of browser-based apps to rival Google's. Which is very far from easy.

The idea of "friction" comes up again and again whenever we talk about open products (whether it's FOSS or open platforms like the ones in the Fediverse, etc). People want an experience that is completely smooth and frictionless, while remaining free and open. But IMO freedom is friction. Fundamentally it means being able to choose, and not being completely reliant on megacorps, and being able to tinker and explore, and all of these things are sources of friction. Like, the author complains that there are so many distros to choose from, but how would adding another distro to the mix address that?

Re: Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

#38

Post by kbolino »

righthand wrote: post #20
floppyd wrote: post #17

Linux desktop in general suffers from not having good "default" options. I can't really recommend any single distro, can't recommend even a single desktop environment as good for most people. Mint is very good, but it looks painfully dated in many places. Fedora is very good, but Gnome Shell is not for everyone in the slightest and debian base is just too wide-spread to ignore. Ubuntu is very good, but actually it's…

> I can't really recommend any single distro, can't recommend even a single desktop environment as good for most people. I can and do all the time: KDE Plasma + Debian Testing

Probably fine for most people, but not a good choice for low-hassle setup with "recent" nVidia cards (last ~10 years). That's almost all nVidia's fault, and I can't say any distro handles their cards flawlessly, but Debian is one of the worst: the drivers are (accurately) classified as "nonfree" and so not available by default, setup may require config file tweaking, and KDE Plasma prefers to support Wayland while nVidia prefers to support X11, leading to weird issues (more than usual, anyway).

Re: Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

#39

Post by mixmastamyk »

floppyd wrote: post #17

Linux desktop in general suffers from not having good "default" options. I can't really recommend any single distro, can't recommend even a single desktop environment as good for most people. Mint is very good, but it looks painfully dated in many places. Fedora is very good, but Gnome Shell is not for everyone in the slightest and debian base is just too wide-spread to ignore. Ubuntu is very good, but actually it's…

What does ”looks painfully dated” mean? I hope that doesn’t mean they avoiding bad ideas like hidden scrollbars or menus.

I think mint+cinnamon is fantastic, my only gripe is that packages get old after a release has been out a year or two.

edit: specifics please.

Re: Please, FOSS world, we need something like ChromeOS

#40

Post by tytso »

This is ultimately a business model problem. There are FOSS projects out there; some of them are even listed in the article. The problem is that making it "Just Work(tm)" is hard; it's a lot of work, requiring a large number of engineers. And funny thing, engineers prefer food with their meals.

Saying "FOSS world" we need XXX is pretty useless. As a FOSS mainatinaer, the answer I always give people demanding their favorite pet feature is, "clean, maintainable patches are appreciated", ChromiumOS is free software; someone could take it use it as the basis for something like ChromeOS. But the author of the article has basically admitted that the derivitives of Chromium would quickly fail if Chromium stoped being something that they could free ride off of. Shouldn't that tell you everything about what the problem is with this picture?

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