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Comment by jpab | Hacker News Reader

Do you mean Chrome OS?

Google is a web company; they want people to use the web. They made a laptop/desktop operating system built around their web browser, because they want everything to be on the web. It does most of the things you list, including synchronizing between devices since your data is all "in the Cloud".

As for market share, I'm not sure what power you think Google has, but getting 10% of the desktop OS market has got to be pretty difficult for anyone. I do not know what share of the market Chrome OS has.

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No. I mean a full-fledged alternative to the major operating systems. Do people in charge of Chrome OS say "In 5 years, we want developers, designers and project managers at Google use this OS"? I don't think so - it's not their ambition to compete with Mac OS or Linux.

why 5 years? They can already if they want to.

Developers , PMs already use Chrome OS at Google. Designers can / will also happen.

So Chrome OS team's explicit ambition is to provide a full-fledged alternative to Windows and Linux distributions?

I don't know what the ambition is. But it sure looks like it's a perfectly fine machine for developers and PMs.

They don't say that, because that's not their goal. Google makes money from consumers being online, searching, browsing the internet, and using Google apps. It doesn't matter if that person is using Windows, Mac, Linux, or some imaginative Google OS to connect to the internet. They profit either way.

… which is kind of his point, yeah?

It's already the case that ChromeOS can run a Linux environment in a VM. The question is whether this is enough for most developers?

I'm really enjoying ChromeOS for software dev. The Linux container is tightly integrated with the rest of the OS. On top of that I can run all my favorite Android apps as well, making it an excellent OS for personal use.

One interesting example is that if I have a file I want to open, it doesn't matter if it's Chrome, Android, or Linux that has the executable to open it. I just click the file and it opens in the right app. I can also open it in any other apps via a dialogue that lists things I can open it with. The list shows all relevant Android and Linux apps.

The app launcher is similar -- all apps, regardless of how they are run, show up together.

I'm still not sure I could give up my Mac for my day job, but for personal use, I love it.

So you don't need to turn on dev mode and use crouton to install a chroot for Linux anymore?

Nope, it's just a toggle now.

No, it's as simple as "Turn On Linux" in your Settings menu

Let me guess, the user cannot "Turn on Linux" in developer mode, the user must "sign in" with Google.

? You don't know what dev mode is. Yes you can of course turn it on in dev mode lol. I liked how you've been rebutted on every post in this thread.

Perhaps you would like to share a screenshot or a pointer to some documentation. Chrome OS forces users to sign in to run apps and use extensions. Sounds like this is no better than crouton or crostini.

This feature is Crostini. I now know you have either half knowledge or are intentionally posting in bad faith.

You don't need to turn developer mode on for this feature. That means you get verified boot , updates (including your Linux distro) as well as the security guarantees of Chrome OS. Crouton requires you to give up all of that. You can't get sync without signing in. Cloud sync is the foundation of the OS. It's what makes it stateless. If you don't like that it's not for you but stop spreading half truths about the product in bad faith.

I figured it was just Crostini.

As others have mentioned, it's an officially supported feature and it's well integrated into ChromeOS itself. It's still "Beta", but it's now in a really solid state.

Ok, but the Linux container is completely at odds with Google's ChromeOS pitch.

Google says that ChromeOS has "simple setup" - but not the Linux parts. They say you can "search anything on your Chromebook" - but not Linux. They talk about "Chrome sync" - doesn't apply to Linux. Etc.

I think that ChromeOS has value as a web-browser host, and also as a development machine for vim-jockeys. What's missing is the middle part: a real desktop OS.

What part of the Linux setup is not simple ? Turning "on" is as simple as it gets.

You can search linux files and apps as usual.

As for sync, feel free to look at open bugs and features and see the work being done.

Another data point: I was an intern at Google last year and they gave most of the interns Pixelbooks. It worked fine for development (granted, development consisted of SSHing into a dev box and using a web-based IDE).

ChromeOS is not compiled on those Pixelbooks.

While true, it's equally true that chrome os usually isn't compiled on Google employees Linux workstations either.

You don't think _Google_ has the resources for a proper build server? They're not doing builds on a dev machine anyway.

Actually many engineers use chrome OS at google. Perhaps even a majority.

What makes it work is that everything you could possibly want to run either runs in the browser or in a remote machine.

The whole point is that you can't fight the old "full-fledged" OS with a new one. The aim of the Google's web is to reduce the role of the OS to the "BIOS".

The problem with Chrome OS is that it's designed around treating your hardware like a kiosk. This is evident from design decisions like including an SSH console, but then disabling the escape sequences (see: https://codereview.chromium.org/5183004/).

ChromeOS does solve many of criteria listed by the GP, if one doesn't mind Google ecosystem; then a Chromebook is a good computing device at lower-medium price range[1].

Btw, people are already doing some interesting projects with Fuchsia like this desktop shell written in Flutter for a Fuchsia fork[2].

[1]https://abishekmuthian.com/reviewing-the-chromebook-google-s...

[2]https://github.com/dahlia-os/pangolin-desktop

Do you mean Chromium OS?

Chrome OS is not 100% open source and the bits that are not in Chromium OS are significant. It is also effectively tied to certain hardware. Users cannot easily install it on whatever hardware they choose.

The Chromium OS FAQ contains no link to download the source code and contains this little gem:

"Keep in mind that Chromium OS is not for general consumer use."

https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromium-os-faq

What a disingenuous comment.

"The Chromium OS FAQ contains no link to download the source code" -

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/d...

LOL a whole guide "secretly hidden" on the Internet, to get and build the source code.

Right above that line -

"Where can I download Chromium OS? If you are the kind of developer who likes to build an open source operating system from scratch, you can follow the developer instructions to check out Chromium OS, build it and experiment with it. A number of sites have also posted pre-built binaries of Chromium OS. However, these downloads are not verified by Google, therefore please ensure you trust the site you are downloading these from."

What if the user is not "the kind of developer who likes to build an open source operating system form scratch"?

The fact is that this FAQ on www.chromium.org gives no pointers into Google Git to find the files to which you refer. It does not even give a link to chromium.googlesource.org, aside from the BSD license. If the reader following the "For everyone" link is not a developer, not a "UI designer" and not a "Contributor", she does not want to be treated like those types of people, she just wants the source code. If she were a developer she would have followed the "For developers" link at www.chromium.org. Interestingly, there is no "For users" link at www.chromium.org.

Not everyone looking for source code is a "developer", or thinks like one, and even if they are a developer, they may not be one "who likes build an open source OS from scratch".

I am an end user, not a developer, and I have been building an open source OS from source code for over 15 years. This FAQ makes some bold assumptions about end users. I do not believe that calling this out is "disingenuous", a "put down", nor "snark", at least, not according to the definition of that term I found on FOLDOC. I have always run my customised systems in a configuration similar to what Google calls "developer mode" (in fact, I use a more flexible, simpler configuration), however I am not a developer. The name "developer mode" is suggestive and silly.

One does not need to be a "developer", or think like one, to read, edit, write or compile software. Google seems to prefer to pretend such users do not exist. A Chrome OS user who is not a developer, UI designer nor contributor who wants the source code gets funnelled to the Chromium OS website, and then is provided with the advice to "follow the developer instructions". No link to the source code, or even to the "For developers" section. Too add to this, the user is given the caveat that "Chromium OS is not for general consumer use". This "For everyone" page is a dead end for non-developer users who want source code.

Imagine you are a "general consumer", i.e., an end-user, who is told Chrome OS is "open source". You go looking for the source code tree and tarballs and you are directed to Chromium OS. Then you arrive at www.chromium.org and are told Chromium OS is "not intended for general consumer use" and "if you a developer who likes to build an open source operating system from scratch you can follow the developer instructions". This is extremely presumptuous.

Nor everyone who wants to see the source code wants to build Chromium OS. Building "modern" web browsers like Chrome from scratch is unreasonably resource intensive. Some people may not want to read through all the opinionated developer instructions whose primary audience appears to be Google staff. Some people just want the source code to Chrome OS. That's it.

Yes, people not working for Google can get it. I can get it (with some effort). I never said otherwise. However, as I pointed out, it is "Chromium OS" not "Chrome OS" and there is a lot of cult-like mumbo jumbo for non-Google staff to wade through in order to find what one is looking for. The "open source" OS is Chromium OS not Chrome OS. That is not a "half-truth" it is a fact. Is all this a deterrent for those interested in Chrome OS source code? That is for the reader to decide. I think it could be made easier but that is only my opinion.

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