ChromeOS.dev

I think we're seeing another big step on the path to the deprecation of ChromeOS. Back in June this year, they were "embracing portions of the Android stack, like the Android Linux kernel and Android frameworks, as part of the foundation of ChromeOS"[0]. Now they're enabling a Linux VM on Android, which is the inverse of what they did on ChromeOS under the ArcVM moniker, i.e. running Android in a VM[1]. [0]:https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/building-a-faster-smarter-chromebook-exp… [1]:https://9to5google.com/2019/05/24/chrome-os-android-apps-vm/

You may be talking about 2 different things: 1. Yes, ChromeOS is based on Linux, but it's not really what most people would refer to as "Linux". I think this is what you're talking about. 2. ChromeOS does have, however, some great technology to run an unrestricted version of Linux in a container, called Crostini: https://chromeos.dev/en/linux . I used to use a high end Pixel book (which was a great machine, really sad Google discontinued it - surprise, surprise, I know) as a primary dev laptop, it ran VSCode, postgres, etc. very well.

Well, with Android/Chrome OS they just recently released Jetpack Compose Material 3 Adaptive which is further iteration by Google to try to unify UI development between form factors [1]. And there's the breaking changes with every major version of Android [2]. Then there are the incompatibilities for Android apps for Chrome OS [3]. You can shit on Microsoft all you want, but those listed APIs still work. People expect Microsoft APIs to exist essentially forever, so every breaking change pretty much has to be a new API. Having a single simple API for developing across different devices and inputs that automatically provides great UX across the board just isn't possible. It's going to be complex and it's on the developer to cater to each device. An API to cater to everything is literally web APIs. [1] https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/io-2024#android-on-chromeos [2] https://developer.android.com/about/versions/13/behavior-changes-all [3] https://developer.android.com/topic/arc/manifest

It's the other way around. If you want ChromeOS (in particular with its Verified Boot system for the OS image [1]), you need special hardware that comes with Chromebooks, including the Framework Chromebook. That has nothing to do with the ability to run Linux, though. If you don't care about Verified Boot, you can install ChromeOS-Flex on a Framework Linux device (https://www.reddit.com/r/framework/comments/um0mk6/chromeos_flex_frame… On the other hand, installing Linux on Chromebook hardware is straightforward. The options are: 1. Use the Debian Linux VM (Crostini) that is already present on Chromebooks: https://chromeos.dev/en/linux All you do is click on a few buttons in the settings. This approach preserves Verified Boot. If you want to replace ChromeOS on a Chromebook with a Linux distro, you can use Crouton: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton This approach removes verified boot. 1. https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/security-o…

The blog post doesn't mention it but Firecracker was originally based on crosvm [0] built at Google by the ChromeOS team for a WSL-like Linux sandbox on top of ChromeOS running debian-buster containers viz. penguin (afaik) in a gentoo-based VM viz. termina [1]. crosvm inturn is part of a much bigger crostini project [2], which I find to be super fascinating, as it supports UI workloads (over Wayland and X). If you're using ChromeOS to run any Linux app, you're using crostini which launches those apps in crosvm managed sandboxes (Container inside a VM) in seconds. In not so distant future, it looks like Android will sandbox platform workloads (running outside the Android framework?) managed by crosvm, to considerably improve security [3]. I looked for but couldn't find ChromeOS GCP instances. I mean, ChromeOS might be a great platform to run multi-tenant server workloads at this point. [0] https://archive.is/T1ZNJ [1] One can run custom Linux containers (other than the debian-based penguin) but not VMs (other than termina) at this point: https://chromeos.dev/en/linux/linux-on-chromeos-faq [2] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/containers_… [3] https://lwn.net/Articles/836693/

I believe you can run Linux in a container and use apt-get. https://chromeos.dev/en/linux/setup

No, I mean inside a VM: https://www.androidauthority.com/linux-terminal-graphical-apps-3580905… Chrome OS supported Steam through a VM as well, and it still does, if you manually install it. The tech stack they used for Steam on Chrome OS is apparently identical to the still-supported Crostini feature ("Linux on Chrome OS"), just with a different VM image that has Steam pre-installed: https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/bringing-steam-to-chromeos#borealis-vs-c…

Partially, it still has lots of issues that were never fixed. https://chromeos.dev/en/linux https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-linu… https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-library/guides/containe… Note specially the parts of WIP, missing features, to be yet done, and so on.

Google plans to deprecate ChromeOS in favor of Android: https://www.androidauthority.com/chrome-os-becoming-android-3500661/ ChromeOS runs sandboxed Linux via Crostini: https://chromeos.dev/en/linux ChromeOS also runs Android apps since the ChromeOS app store was essentially deprecated. For Android to replace ChromeOS it needs to be able to run sandboxed Linux similar to the way ChromeOS does.

Android uses Fluoride - which coincidently has now come to ChromeOS. And yes, they named the migration "Project Floss". https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/androids-bluetooth-stack-fluoride-comes-…

https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/androids-bluetooth-stack-fluoride-comes-… Looks like we can try to infer the real intention of the convergence from this project. It might make business sense to maintain 3~4 different OS, each targeting different user segments. But there is no reason to have one more different tech stack per each OS across everything.

Echoing: doing some "deep" troubleshooting of an issue on my Chromebook (since like 2006 + crouton/crostini), I read about their newer security/architecture for Linux apps running in chrome. https://chromeos.dev/en/linux/linux-on-chromeos-faq#why-run-vms-arent-… ...see also the linked: "security" and then "glossary" to get a feel for the component complexity. It is pretty astounding, and astoundingly complicated, but mostly transparent as to how the host + guest integrate. Yeah, you can run "Inkscape" and the GUI just "shows right up" on the chromebook... but there's like 18 layers of security mitigations and complexity with virtualized device drivers and audited communication channels that are all (nearly) completely invisible to make it look like "it's just running /usr/bin/inkscape on the same machine, what's so hard about that?"

ChromeOS uses it for Steam support which is generally available now, as well as for Android apps, so it must work reasonably well: https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/improving-vulkan-availability-with-venus

IIRC Crostini requires certain hardware CPU features, so you need a Chromebook model that supports it. Most Chromebooks released after 2019, as well as select earlier models in the list in the Wiki https://chromeos.dev/en/linux/linux-on-chromeos-deep-dive

Crostini should already host a fine vscode. https://chromeos.dev/en/linux ChromeOS seems to consider it an anti-goal for users to be using the OS like a general purpose OS. Crostini allows them to keep the rest of the system locked down, where-as just running vscode on ChromeOS directly would mean giving Vscode more unconstrained access.

FYI Android apps are also in a VM now. https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/making-android-more-secure-with-arcvm

Wasn’t manifest v3 supposed to prevent dynamically loaded code? As the article says these extensions are featured but (I think) the latest update to v3 says: “In January 2023, use of Manifest V3 will become a prerequisite for the Featured badge in the Chrome Web Store.” https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/manifest-v-3-migration-timeline-update

Seems like the FAQ makes a distinction between running the default container and running custom containers. From the description it seems like when using the default terminal app it is a container, not a VM, and when running custom containers it is in a VM: https://chromeos.dev/en/linux/linux-on-chromeos-faq#am-i-running-linux…

Better link: https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/making-android-more-secure-with-arcvm

Yes, on most[1] hardware: https://chromeos.dev/en/linux [1] Released since 2019 plus these: https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/chrome-os-syst…

You can even run Andoid apps on Chrome OS according to https://chromeos.dev/en/android.