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Comment by i_am_proteus | Hacker News Reader

> A Chromebook with all three operating systems running at once is also darn useful for an ordinary Jane or Joe. For example, I can edit images using Linux GIMP and write with LibreOffice Writer while looking at pictures using Android Pinterest and simultaneously check my Gmail in Chrome OS. It's all good.

For example, I can edit images using Linux GIMP and write with LibreOffice Writer while looking at pictures using Firefox on Linux and simultaneously check my Gmail in Firefox on Linux. It's all good.

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Maybe Pinterest is a poor example, but there are Android apps that offer functionality unavailable in Linux and Chrome. For example I used Word for Android to edit a Word document with suggestions and comments (could not do that in Office 365 apparently).

Actually I'm pretty sure there are many Android apps that offer functionality unavailable on Windows and OS X.

Also, it's nice to have the possibility to mess around with Debian in the VM, yet always have a browser available and with the best security.

Anbox[0] does exactly what Google made available for ChromeOS in reverse: it runs Android apps inside Linux containers.

[0]https://github.com/anbox/anbox

Does Chrome OS run Linux apps in Android containers?

Edit: Thanks for pointing to this. I have been wishing for this for a while.

Linux apps are run in an unprivileged container, inside a VM that uses a stripped down kernel. By default all apps run in the same container in the same VM, but that can be controlled by the user (through the command-line, there's no GUI for that yet). This is detailed here: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/c...

Android apps are run directly in a container (and each Android app runs in a sort of container, whether on smartphones or on chromebooks). See https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform2/+/mas...

Big usecase for me is a linux platform with a functional version of Onenote: the android version. The web version doesn't take handwritten notes well at all on any convertible device I've tried it on, the android version works perfectly.

All those are artificial limitations imposed by the app developers.

I'm not judging you, as you are not the app developer, but I don't use software where the developer is my adversary.

I also recognize most people aren't me, but still I wonder "Why would I want to run software that's intentionally crappy?"

I think the charitable interpretation is that some of those apps were written and published only for Android. In that case, comparable functionality wasn't artificially removed from desktop versions, it just never existed in the first place.

> always have a browser available and with the best security.

But it won’t be secure, because the whole point of Chrome is to feed your data back to Google.

Being able to wipe the disk, install some other Linux, and run an (ephemeral?) android emulator in a sandbox would be nice though.

> But it won’t be secure, because the whole point of Chrome is to feed your data back to Google.

I trust Google more than other companies to handle my data with care. Pragmatically speaking, I think it's more likely to get hacked with a ransomware on Windows or OS X, than to suffer of <something> because of the data Google has on you. I'm not even sure what this hypothetical something is?

Also, the amount of data Google gets specifically from Chrome OS users is negligible, compared to what they get through other means such as GMail (which Chrome OS users presumably use already).

The discussion about the "input" has been had often enough, but I'm also concerned about the "output" part by now. If they find that the Linux support does not fit their strategy for some reason, they could choose to "retire" the feature tomorrow and remotely remove it from all Chromebooks. If they find software X to conflict with their business interests or obligations, they can just ban it.

As a user without control over your device, there is nothing you can do about it.

This is a peculiar definition of security advocated by people who think Google is the enemy.

For other people, Google having some access to your data is no more a security breach than your bank seeing your bank transactions or Kaiser having your medical records. (Internal controls do matter for defense in depth, but that's different.)

Not sure about this line of argument. Bank has my data but only those trusted my transaction with them. Google is much more general in nature. Storage is not a transaction. Safety deposit does not mean the bank shall open it already or any time they like without telling me and ask for permission.

Security and privacy go hand-in-hand, but are not the same thing.

Instagram might be a better example -- Instagram messaging isn't available on the browser version at all. On OS X, there are some third-party programs available to make messaging available, all of varying quality.

You can do that in Office 365, but it's janky as hell in FireFox. If you are collaborating simultaneously it gets way worse.

I didn't think to try Chrome at the time, though.

The idea that "an ordinary Jane or Joe" would want to use GIMP is laughable.

When a raving Linux evangelist publishes a fawning article about how it's actually a "good thing" that GIMP has lost its User eXperience (UX) maintainer, is that really a sign that GIMP is finally on the right track for "an ordinary Jane or Joe" to easily use?

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-gimps-bad-news-coul...

>The GIMP's bad news could be good news

>The GIMP has lost its User eXperience (UX) maintainer. Jack Wallen thinks this could be good news for one of the most powerful open-source image editing tools.

>This month, the GIMP lost its User eXperience (UX) maintainer. This is important. Why? Because, over all, the UX of Gimp has always had a very bad rap. People don't like it. I should preface this by saying 99% of the graphics that I do are done in GIMP (all of my TechRepublic images, all my book covers... everything). I've always been a big fan of the platform. That being said, it can't be denied that an overwhelming majority of people do not find the GIMP experience to be positive.

I love this spit-take worthy quote, showcasing the author's extreme case of Stockholm Syndrome:

>"GIMP is really just a proper UX maintainer away from graphic design domination"

Look out Photoshop! As soon as GIMP finally finds that one proper UX maintainer with infinite patience and leadership abilities and free time (and a trust fund to live off of), who manages to convince all the GIMP developers working for free on their own time to stop bickering and fucking around and for the first time in history drop the pet projects they're doing and follow the UX genius's innovative new directions and disruptive sweeping designs to make GIMP easy to use, Adobe's doooooooomed I tell you!

I think your hate for GIMP blinded you to their point. There are plenty of useful apps that "an ordinary Jane or Joe" could find useful. Substitute any of those for GIMP if you don't think the average user would use it. My dad (not a technical person) uses Pinta, Libre Office, RhythmBox, and many other apps on his Ubuntu machine every day.

ChromeOS adding almost zero value here.

Faster Gapps? Kinda. The explorer is better for drive files, for sure. Can unlock with my Android phone. Cool, I guess?

Can't think of any other reason to boot to ChromeOS.

No local state. You can do a full wipe then login and all your settings, apps, data are there (because they are in the cloud, not the device). Wipe your Linux partition and tell me how long until you have your computer back to how you had it.

Also, I love Chrome OS for my kids laptops because I don't have to worry about viruses or malware. In the case, I purposefully want a less feature rich OS.

One of my parents has a Chromebook, one has a Macbook. Guess who I have to field more support calls from? Hint: The one that thinks different.

When my mother's last Windows laptop finally bit the dust, I bought her a Chromebook. Haven't had another service call in the three years since.

She's old and tends to believe anything a computer tells her, from "YOU HAVE A VIRUS CLICK HERE TO REMOVE!!!!" to "Click here to claim your prize money!", so her Windows box was basically enough of a fetid cesspool of disease to approach supervillain powers on its own.

The first paragraph sounds like you are describing using Firefox sync or chrome with a Google login.

Not really, because you can factory reset, cross a border and log back in in 10 minutes and everything is up to speedish.

It's not your threat model but it's someone's threat model and a chromebook does that better than anyone else, and your mom can do it.

Does that really appease border guards? If you present a blank laptop they would probably get very suspicious, since you are obviously trying to hide something. They would probably make you log in and sync before they let you enter the country. The whole point is to search your online life, if you don't let them do that, you don't get in.

> Does that really appease border guards?

Doesn't matter, you've protected your clients, that's what matters.

The worst case scenario is they seize it and prevent entry, which can happen with a blank or non-blank machine. Better it happens with a blank one.

> They would probably make you log in and sync before they let you enter the country.

This would be where you just don't enter the country. In the other scenario, you don't get in and they get to keep the machine anyway.

That assumes the laws regarding this are humane and border guards follow them, which are both untrue of lots of countries, including the USA.

you don't have to sync to your main account? You guys are way over thinking this.

You can sign is as guest, you can use a Chromebook without signing in at all.

You can have a second account that is empty that you log into and isn't connected to anything.

My mom can still do both of those.

I wish there was a way to do this without being locked in with Google as the backend.

Chromebooks are locked to using Google for authentication, but you don't have to use most Google services once logge din.

Now you can even use an alternate Android or Linux browser instead of Chrome.

you can even set the machine up to use guest then just use the web services you want (or even your own) and each session is ephemeral if that's what you want.

It is, but more. When it's tied into the OS, wiping data is much easier. Resetting / removing your profile just takes seconds.

It's a great OS too to give your parents who only need it for web browsing. Less maintenance and tech support.

> Wipe your Linux partition and tell me how long until you have your computer back to how you had it.

This is how I use my Chromebook: any important configuration gets checked into Git. Granted, I don’t use it as my primary computer, but it does decently well as a device I can carry with me and wipe when necessary.

"Wipe your Linux partition and tell me how long until you have your computer back to how you had it."

30 minutes to restore the same environment or 1 day to install something totally new and learn about it. Probably the latter.

What about your data? That generally takes a lot longer, and a lot of people don't back up their stuff as much as they should.

To me, that is one of the single largest value adds of being in the Google ecosystem on this one- peace of mind.

Google doesn't back up all data on android/chromebooks

A separate SSD if it's a desktop PC.

> Wipe your Linux partition and tell me how long until you have your computer back to how you had it.

I think my last install was about five minutes. SSD drives are surprisingly fast. The older laptop surely took a lot longer than that.

But, my /home partition was not touched, only the root partition was formatted. Don't tell me this was not allowed in your mind experiment.

I wipe my /home and still have all my data, because I save it in a separate SSD.

That actually makes little difference. :)

Guix System or NixOS could allow something similar. You can make an image of your system trivially. Also most configuration is done in one file which can be applied during install.

I love NixOS, but you can't seriously think you'd get fewer support calls by using it.

Battery, browsers are a huge power hog and ChromeOS is basically just Chrome as an OS ui, so it's heavily optimized and running a browser tab doesn't effect battery as much as it would on a Mac, for example.

I use a Pixelbook now as my primary dev machine and compile a decently heavy Rust codebase in the linux env all day long and the battery doesn't die. If I move compilation to a cloud-based IDE, it'll last even longer.

>so it's heavily optimized and running a browser tab doesn't effect battery as much as it would on a Mac, for example.

What sort of optimizations can they do for ChromeOS that they can't do for Chrome on Macs?

IIRC, directly hooking into the kernel / modifying the kernel directly, instead of working around it.

It's also sort of a "home base" in the Chrome development world.

>as much as it would on a Mac

We're comparing Linux to Chrome OS, not Mac. I wiped my CB and loaded Gallium OS and have yet to see any significant battery depletion.

At most I'm sacrificing some battery for a whole host of other tools, so it's a pretty decent trade.

I don't think this is meant to attract people who are ok with managing a Linux distro as their desktop today, I think it's for people like me that need a Unix environment for development, but want something that "just works" for rest-of-life stuff. Today, in the tech world at least, that need is largely filled by Macs.

Totally agreed. Just today compared the cost to get a mac air 2018 16 gb 512g with asus s. Just double the costs. Not sure chromebook can help.

My Pixelbook was $600 on sale, it's why I tried it out before going for a new Mac, and I just stuck with it

You haven't had any problems with external monitors? I tried to use a Samsung Chromebook plus as adev machine and terminal fonts on external monitors looked terrible.

The only issue I've had with external monitors are sometimes it has random flickers, but reconnecting it fixes it. Pixelbook hardware is pretty decent.

That said, finding a good USB-C to HDMI adapter is tricky (can't use the apple ones cause they're actually thunderbolt). I have a USKY one, but it has an annoying tiny fan that makes a high-pitched sound when power is plugged in but the laptop is unplugged, and it heats up quite a bit.

Do you use crouton or have you switched to the linux containers?

I'm using Crostini, so yea I'm using the container

I'll give you one perspective: a lot of enterprise apps are developed for Android as well, though not at all for Linux.

While using Linux, I may not be able to access my organization's Exchange server from Linux ( at least not without running quite a few hoops ) OR I can install one of the myriad suite of enterprise apps for Android that let you access your enterprise exchange.

Similarly, 2FA token generation apps for the enterprise are not all made for linux but you can install an android app for it.

Idea is: use linux for your workflow, android apps for connectivity to your organization's walled garden.

I was never able to get android apps to install onto my Chrome OS.

ChromeOS is an incredibly secure and simple base. There are a few Linux distributions that act like it (Fedora Silverblue, Endless OS) but they're not ideal for everyday use yet.

Why do you think Fedora Silverblue isn't ideal for everyday use? I'm going to try out F30 Silverblue here pretty soon, but I had heard that is was great, so I'm just curious what problems you've run into.

For example, the PyCharm Flatpak has difficulty understanding the window scaling setting I use, and appears unreadable. Some RPMs wouldn't install because they needed to write to /opt, but that may have been fixed. I had difficulty using external repos.

I'm running normal Fedora 30 now and tried Silverblue during the Fedora 28/Fedora 29 release cycles. I hear it's getting better but I'll give it another year or so.

Makes sense, thanks. My buddy said that installing RPMs was easy, but the more I hear the more I think that is bad information :-) The Silverblue docs seem to imply that you're really going against the grain by doing that and that it may not work. You also have to reboot after every install IIRC. I'm still gonna try it out but I may be on regular F30 pretty soon.

It is very secure. A lot of the Kernel Self Protection project patches that Kees Cook and other push into Linux upstream start out as patches they deploy to ChromeOS to keep users happy and secure. Look it up.

If you're mainly just going to be using a browser (which is true most of the time for me) I don't know why you would want to boot anything else. At the end of the day most operating systems I use are interchangeable for my workflow so unless you need a specific tool there's rarely a reason to use over over another.

>I don't know why you would want to boot anything else

The privacy and convenience Firefox offers me over Chrome, to start. Containers, etc.

Programs that run as programs but not Chrome Apps (Signal, Email, ETC)

ChromeOS power management is amazing, and makes 8-12 hours of battery life while using the browser a reality. Firefox saps the battery incredibly quickly, though I prefer to use it when that's not an issue. For me, the battery life is a huge technical value add, and is why I prefer to use linux via crouton on my acer c720 over installing it directly. I haven't tried the new Android app support but I think that will be huge as well for mobile-centric consumers.

> ChromeOS adding almost zero value here.

Functional hardware accelerated video playback is a pretty big value to have (neither firefox nor chrome supports hwa video decoding on linux, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Hardware_video_accelera... ). It also has a much better system compositor than X11, actually shaking off the broken legacy cruft that Linux distros seem determined to cling on to.

You can get some of this on "regular" linux with projects like https://github.com/intel/ozone-wayland but the state of graphics & video support on Linux continues to be a joke (relevant xkcd from 10 years ago https://xkcd.com/619/ )

Great high-DPI (which Linux is still not great at); great trackpad support (ditto).

Ok, what turnkey Linux laptop with a touch screen (for Android games) can I go to Best buy and pick up today?

The Best Buy qualifier makes it a lot harder. If you're willing to let that go, System 76 and Purism sell amazing devices with not only good Linux distros pre-installed, but also as much free software (close to 100%) throughout the whole stack, which is a real benefit to security and freedom.

If you weaken "turnkey" a bit to include installation you'll find that most Laptops on sale today will run the popular Linux distributions flawlessly.

Dell XPS developer edition

I can't actually find a link to buy these any more.

You can get on dell.com. Don't know about in store.

But can you watch Netflix?

The Netflix DRM stuff has been mostly solved at this point. Most of the modern distros + chrome will work just fine.

Oh nice, that's great to hear! This was not really a deal breaker for me as I mostly use my laptop for work, but it was definitely frustrating when I was a student and used my laptop for everything.

Watching Santa Clarita Diet on Fedora as I type this. Just requires Chrome.

Yes, for about 4 years now

I don't believe you. Maybe some obscure distro, but I tried multiple back in 2015/2016 and couldn't get it to work without some strange package to attempt to install Silverlight.

But how will Google show you ads based on those pictures? Major oversight on your part.

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