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Comment by dirkg | Hacker News Reader

Google has been making half hearted attempts to merge ChromeOs and Android or at least provide a proper Linux distro without resorting to chroot hacks or replacing the fw.

I'm sure they have internal builds which are pure Linux with a compatibility layer to run ChromeOS legacy. There is absolutely no reason a Chromebook can't run that - but then its just another laptop and loses the marketability.

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I think I like the current Linux (Debian 9) in a VM approach: it's off by default, easy to turn on for people who want Linux, runs fast enough (for me at least), and is simultaneously fairly well integrated but isolated so you can't easily screw up your Chromebook: if you hose your Linux installation, Chrome OS is still fine and you can just delete the VM and start over.

Crostini is still an esoteric dev only feature. No user is going to use it, or even be aware. When they need to run any apps or work with files, they don't have any options.

Why can't ChromeOS be a standard Linux distro which runs apps in a flatpak (and validated by Google). That way you can't screw up your machine, you don't really lose any perf, and you have the best of both worlds.

I think I agree with you if you change "dev only" to "prior Linux-user only" (I am a non-dev Linux-user and know plenty of others).

Flatpak sounds worth exploring, although many of the cheaper Chromebook have pretty limited storage space.

You're right. Although being a Linux user I'm pretty sure you know your way around a terminal and are the equivalent of a power user.

Chromebooks are targeted at people who find even Windows too complex.

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