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Comment by carlosdp | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of people underestimate how cool this actually is. I use a Pixelbook now as a main dev device (used to use a Mac like everyone else in the valley).

With Linux in ChromeOS, this thing now runs basically 3 OSs (Chrome/Web PWAs, Android, Linux) in one environment. What this means is that I open my app drawer, and I see app icons I can launch. I don't know or care what actual OS those apps are running on! It could be a PWA or an android app or a linux app and it works and runs the same as any of the other apps. All without compromising on the security isolation benefits of ChromeOS.

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Do you actually not know what OS those apps are running on? Aren't there extremely stark and obvious differences between the three classes of apps?

I use an Android app called Squid[1] for drawing and taking notes on my Pixelbook with the pencil. It is technically an android app, but it's easy to forget that because it just runs so perfectly and it's optimized for tablets and large screens. Same experience with apps like Todoist and a few mobile games I play. It really is a wonderful and seamless experience.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.steadfasti...

Yes, you know what OS its running.

To install a Linux application, you explicitly have to open the Linux container command line (which is Debian Stretch) and run the install commands.

Ex: If I run 'apt install firefox', Firefox will be installed in the Linux container, but will be available to run from the ChromeOS app menu.

Edit:

Also, currently you need to explicitly go in the ChromeOS settings to download and install the Linux container. I'm not sure if this will change or not, but it is not currently included by default.

Sometimes only if you look for small details. The ChromeOS launcher mixes Chrome Apps, bookmarks, PWAs, and Android apps with only a small badge to differentiate if you have multiple of the same app (e.g. Keep Chrome app and Keep for Android).

But once they're running, don't they look and behave very differently? The last time I tried Android Firefox on ChromeOS, it had to quit to resize its window.

They don't really behave or look all that different. When was the last time you ran an Android app on ChromeOs? The original attempt that ChromeOs made at getting Android apps on ChromeOs back in 2015 or whatever was scrapped because it was buggy and had the sort of problems you describe.

Depends on the app. Some are resizeable and respond sensibly to mouse and the tab key. Some are stuck in phone mode.

I think the differences will be stark and obvious to those who remember the world pre-convergence. But a new generation will not know the differences, nor will they care.

For my parents' generation, TVs were a big deal. For me, I can hardly distinguish between a TV and a Radio and a Microwave and a Washer/Dryer -- they all have existed as long as I remember. But I can definitely tell the difference between an app written against User32/GDI/WinForms/VB versus one that uses the Android toolkit versus one in GTK+.

There's been a lot of work over the years to make most applications agnostic to the underlying toolkit and OS, including React Native, Flutter, Unity, Adobe Animate (formerly Macromedia Flash), and so forth.

You can tell but the point is you don't have to care.

Sounds awesome. I bought a chromebook last year but have not got Android nor Linux support. I dont think it ever will. Productivity is a bit limited. There are not many useful web apps or they are hard to find.

have you tried crouton? even my armv7-based 2015 cb still quite useful today. dart, py, php, nodejs all runs perfectly

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