> The goal is banishing any and all questions of what to download, what desktop, what apps, packaging formats, software stores, user accounts, backing up, all of it: run the browser locally, sync the data – and only the data – to the cloud.

ChromeOS is dead simple. So much so that my otherwise computer-illiterate wife can (and does) use it regularly. There's no way that I'd get her to use debian, though, unless I set everything up for her in advance. Choosing the desktop, setting up PPAs / flatpack / whatever (if you don't want the stock firefox browser), tweaking power settings, there's all sorts of faffing about in comparison.

I'd have to set up syncing in Firefox for her (or whatever browser) but to be fair, I helped her set up her account in the chromebook too.

The author's point is to use an immutable or atomic system. Debian uses a traditional package manager and over time those packages can get in a weird state. Battery runs out during package update? Third party repo disappears? GPG key changes? Distribution eliminates 32-bit library support? Nvidia drivers change? Distribution deprecates Xorg? Your everyday user doesn't know how to deal with that.

An A/B partition scheme is very simple and the system as a whole is integration tested in CI. An OSTree based atomic system is pretty close, although there is some added complexity.

Not to mention Debian out-of-the-box is a pretty miserable experience for everyday users. Their Nvidia drivers won't work, they can't figure out how to install Chrome, videos won't play due to missing codecs, etc.

It's all about security, especially for non-technical user.

The Chrome OS is running trusted boot and immutable partition, and completely closed host system, with no user-installable apt [0]. This means it's impossible to completely break the system - nothing that user does will escape browser sandbox. And, for defense-in-depth, even if browser sandbox got compromised, there is no sudo nor ~/.bashrc nor any other executable per-user configs, so malicious software will disappear after reboot. And if you compromise kernel and modify disk directly, there is verified boot...

And this is not just theoretical benefits, it's stops practical attacks. Are you sure that "bash | curl" command you typed was safe? Are you sure that "pip install" or "npm install" you did didn't actually install malware on your PC?

It is possible to build systems like this based on open-source Linux, but this will be quite a lot of work, and may even require separated trusted builder machine. Definitely out of reach of non-technical user.

[0] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/...

Not even remotely close.

This is why it was such a revolution when Ubuntu came out and quickly dominated the Linux desktop space. When it was new.

It took Debian and made it something approachable. But even then it was a 1/3rd of what is described as needed in the article.

aren't there kiosk modes for various linux distros? I wouldn't be suprised if a kiosk mode can be configured to only allow a browser and wifi config, set it up once and then image it. There you go, now you can just write the image to whatever hardware is supported by that particular flavor and it's installed.

edit: i'll add, link your image to a github repo with a readme describing how to get it on disk. there's the project.

I think steamos would be a better example, also mentioned in the article. Focus on a single application by default, immutable A/B OS filesystems, but can be opened if desired.