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Comment by tonymet | Hacker News Reader

Does this imply that Crostini/ Crouton / Linux developer mode will go away? I'm quite proud of the development I've done on a $200 chromebook and it was one of my favorite features.

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> I'm quite proud of the development I've done on a $200 chromebook

High fives!

My main Linux computer died a year ago and I needed something to write emails and browse on, so I ran out to Costco and got a Chromebook, expecting it'd tide me over until I could figure out a replacement computer.

I'm still on the $250 Chromebook machine. It does everything I need and I'm pretty amazed at that. I've been doing some side projects with Elixir/Phoenix and it's not the speediest machine for sure, but it's quite serviceable. And for that price... that's amazing.

Same story here, except my quick and temporary purchase was about five years ago. It's been my daily driver for off-desk work ever since. It's still snappy and the battery life is great, too.

I went full Linux on it using MrChromebox[0] a few years back with zero complaints.

[0] http://mrchromebox.tech/

It's uncanny how many devs have a story like this. There's something about compiling software on a barebones machine, almost like restoring an old VW and taking it to the track.

I've ended up gifting the 4 or 5 budget chromebooks to nephews , pre-installed with Crouton / Crostini set up and accounts on leetcode / hackthebox to train on.

It's remarkable how capable Chromebooks are. I tried using my $600 iPad Pro to code on and I never found it to be as capable as my $200 chromebook

It's great for reducing distractions and getting a better feel when the code you're writing is slower than it ought to be. My desktop is an M1 Mac Mini, which has been phenomenal, but it can certainly hide inefficiencies in code.

Once I get my office situation set, I want to start doing everything on an RPi.

Termux has been a great resource on Android:

https://termux.dev/en/

If the future ChromeOS-Android hybrid (ChAnroid?) loses Crostini Linux, but is able to run Android applications then Termux might be a good option depending on the task.

Aside: this ChromeOS-Android merge brings to mind the Chenjesu-Mmrnmhrm merge to create the Chmmr in SC2. Maybe the ChromeOS-Android merge will similarly yield a wonderful hybrid result?

> Chenjesu-Mmrnmhrm merge to create the Chmmr in SC2

I'm having a Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch moment here

Knowing Google it'll be more like the Zoq-Fot-Pik... all jumbled together till no one knows what's what.

You can run a full VSCode on Crostini -- the "real" Electron app -- but not on Termux. There are ways around it like using code-server on a Linux environment, but far from the same thing.

I love Termux but I'm a bit worried about its future. Google has been hardening Android in ways that harm Termux quite a bit (e.g. https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/2366).

It does seem that new Android lets you turn off the phantom process killer, so maybe there's hope, but still Termux is forced to target an old API version and can't be published on Google Play.

The issue you linked is more or less resolved at this point. If you find Termux processes being killed, just run this command over adb shell and you're good:

    settings put global settings_enable_monitor_phantom_procs false

Google added this setting in response to a bug report submitted by a Termux maintainer. It's also persistent, so you only have to run the command once.

The more pressing issue at this time is: https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/2155

I had the same thought reading the title, but then remembered Crostini is a container running in a VM (Goddammit), so they can keep it intact, at least if they want so.

Why would it imply that?

They don't provide a lot of detail, but moving to a new OS platform would mean migrating functionality, and often that means dropping less popular features.

Crouton / Chrostini seem to have a lot of dependencies on the current ChromeOS platform that would be costly to migrate.

> Crouton / Chrostini seem to have a lot of dependencies on the current ChromeOS platform that would be costly to migrate.

Being careful not to make any pronouncements here since I do work in the group, but no, not really.

Crostini is just a fairly standard VM manager with a handful of custom virtio and IPC mechanisms (some of which are really clever, to be fair). It doesn't require much of anything that hasn't been in the upstream kernel for years. And Crouton is just a community-maintained Linux chroot. People (including me) were doing exactly that kind of hack on rooted android devices more than a decade ago.

If anything, the work on top of pKVM has very nearly brought the same feature to Android already, though they haven't to my knowledge finished executing on that vision.

As it understand it, pKVM is mostly to run privileged vendor bits and not user apps.

I'm sure that's where it started, but it's perfectly usable from userspace; https://liliputing.com/nestbox-makes-running-linux-virtual-m...

They have something called microdroid which is a special VM which runs special android apps: https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization/writeavf...

Of course, running a custom VM image like crostini would require system level support but that doesn't seem like it would be a problem or outside the scope of the avf architecture.

thanks for sharing that's good to hear.

I had assumed the current linux-on-chromeos was complicated due to it taking so many years of dev-mode hackiness to become a turnkey product

The ChromeOS team is pretty conservative with major feature releases and generally won't make something available by default until it goes through a ton of testing internally and with external testers.

ChromeOS is quite different that other Linux based OSs in that it's supposed to "just work".

ChromeOS VMs use Wayland over VirtIO for the GUI. Quick search tells me at least some people think Android has made design choices that are difficult to use Wayland with. Anyone know better?

https://www.gfxstrand.net/faith/projects/wayland/wayland-and...

FWIW this part is true, but sort of mixed up. It's not really "wayland" that's at issue (Wayland surfaces are just shared memory like they are with any other compositor). It's that the Android GPU HAL wasn't designed with the sharing of contexts in mind, and so getting accelerated rendering out of the VM isn't a natural thing.

And this isn't my area, and I have no expertise to offer except to say that I too am hopeful folks work this out in both a HAL- and open-source friendly way.

And also to say that I'm running routine wayland apps on a chromebook every day and they render and composite just great with Mesa/LLVMPipe contexts, even things like e.g. STL slicers you'd expect to want the GPU. The need for acceleration is real, but limited to some special use cases.

Android is already using crosvm in the latest release. Launching a crostini VM is probably not a large lift.

It wouldn’t- it would just be running on the Android (still Linux) terminal instead of actual Linux

Android exposes very little Linux to userspace, as per official APIs.

It's more than you would hope.

True, but since they aren't official, OEM and Google are free to take them away any time they feel like across Android releases.

is there an android terminal? I'm only familiar with debugging mobile devices over adb and it's restricted.

I'm aware of android terminal apps, but they typically connect to a remote terminal via SSH.

Does android boot into a terminal like a typical linux device? I thought it booted into fastboot

> is there an android terminal? I'm only familiar with debugging mobile devices over adb and it's restricted.

> I'm aware of android terminal apps, but they typically connect to a remote terminal via SSH.

You certainly can run a local terminal (I think I've seen it baked in as part of developer options, but also as an extra app), though if you don't have root it is somewhat restricted in what you can actually do.

> Does android boot into a terminal like a typical linux device? I thought it booted into fastboot

I think you're slightly misunderstanding how boot works on both Android and Desktop Linux. The kernel is perfectly happy to run whatever you want on such displays as are available. Android tends to boot from firmware (which also implements fastboot) to a bootloader to the kernel and the kernel brings up the system with SurfaceFlinger (the Android display manager) owning the screen. On desktop linux there's more diversity; you can have the kernel initially hand your screen to the old in-kernel virtual terminal, the newer KMS implementation of a terminal ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KMSCON ), or to Xorg or a Wayland compositor (in that case, optionally using plymouth or the like to replace even the earliest text messages). (Actually, full disclosure: I'm only about 70% sure I've got that sequence right. The point is that even desktop linux is perfectly capable of booting only in graphical mode; booting to a text terminal is available but optional.)

sounds like it'll take some work . but these are some great ideas thanks for talking through it.

I'm not following; what will take work / what ideas? I'm describing existing software that ships and works today.

Look it's a bunch of theory right now. From what I can tell, your examples would still need integrating into AOSP-- not something that is running right now. I may have a different definition of "shipped" but this wouldn't meet my bar and seems to be more work.

It's possible you are a wizard and I'm a novice so I can't wait to see your demo soon.

No, it's not a theory; I'm describing to you how Android has worked for at least the last decade. If you have an Android phone, this is how the device in your hand works today.

ok how do I run a linux VM on my phone? It's not as simple as a command or click as it is on chromeOS is now.

All of the concepts as you've described will take some dev time to actually turn into a product.

It took Google years to make Linux VMs part of the ChromeOS product and that was with a working hack solution already available for them.

My point is that your theory will not be shippable on day one.

It appears that you and I are having different conversations. I said that 1. it is currently possible to run a terminal on Android, which lets you run commands as an unprivileged user on the Android system, and 2. both Android "typical" Linux are perfectly capable of booting into a graphical environment, though non-Android Linuxes frequently allow you to boot to a virtual terminal as well preferentially. Having gone through the whole thread, I guess by "is there an android terminal?" you actually meant to ask "is there an android terminal that gives you a shell inside a transparent VM like ChromeOS does with Crostini?" If that's what you mean, then it's true that that's less developed (though it does exist - https://www.esper.io/blog/android-dessert-bites-13-virtualiz... is one of the better practical guides I've seen for "how do I run a linux VM on my phone?"). Although if that's the main thing you're asking about, I don't understand why we're talking about boot processes at all; VMs in both Android and ChromeOS (and server and desktop Linux, while we're mentioning) are more or less just fancy user applications, they don't affect the boot process.

What are you looking for ? Thumbs up on your hackernews design doc?

You asked questions, I tried to answer. If you don't like answers, I suggest that you not ask questions.

ChromeOS Linux Developer Mode is Debian containers in LXC (with ability to run custom containers existing but being very painful). Anything else than a real VM running LXC-style containers means the feature would be going away.

bookmark your comment and comeback a year or two later. Nothing is implied. Wait.

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