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Comment by 0manrho | Hacker News Reader

If you, like me, were wondering why Google thinks it needs another operating system (ChromeOS, Android, Fuchsia - which is presumably dead (edit/turns out it's not/edit)) or where it fits in with the "stack":

> ChromeOS and Aluminium Operating System (ALOS) Commercial devices across all form factors (e.g. laptops, detachables, tablets, and boxes) and tiers (e.g., Chromebook, Chromebook Plus, AL Entry, AL Mass Premium, and AL Premium) that meets the needs of users and the business.

Sounds like ChromeOS is Android for entry/thin and similar PC's and Aluminum is more upmarket/premium.

Also, to be honest, this doesn't seem like "a new OS" to me, but rather a shift in Android's roadmap and an associated rebrand to try to push ChromeOS/Android upmarket to try and expand their "Devices with Gemini/Google AI as a first-class service/product" footprint beyond cell phones.

Given the push for arm in the consumer PC space, I can kinda see why google is renewing efforts here even if you set the AI stuff aside.

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Let's be honest, nobody is asking for android based desktops, google just wants to normalize rent seeking 30% of all software sales.

For all the complaints against Windows, legit or not, I can't envision a world in which I want the world's largest advertiser to run my desktop OS.

Pixels and Chromebooks have never had any ads. Windows 11 is plastered with them.

That's hilarious. I never see ads on my Windows 11 PC.

Are you unaware that others do have issues with advertising in Windows 11?

https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/how-... https://windowsforum.com/threads/how-to-disable-annoying-ads... https://www.howtogeek.com/windows-11-wont-show-any-ads-if-yo...

The start menu cluster, incessant pushing of Edge and OneDrive are the reasons I installed Linux after about a decade of not using desktop Linux outside of work. I am genuinely shocked and impressed how clean and snappy the experience is (Arch + KDE Plasma). Thanks to Valve, Windows games run just fine, too. Not going back...

I’m on Linux too, but I still have a Windows 11 box…the reasons I still have it are just about gone but I’ve been too lazy to change it.

I never see nags about Edge. Basically you can avoid those by never opening Edge.

OneDrive can be fully uninstalled (this wasn’t always the case). It legit doesn’t even show up when I search for it anymore.

The start menu cluster, I mean, it’s not the best interface on the planet, but the annoying recommendations can be easily removed…or you can just replace it entirely.

I know this is a user choice and therefore way less egregious than being forced to endure it on the Microsoft side, but perhaps it’s even worth pointing out that running Steam on Linux as a respite from commercialization and ads of Windows is…not really accomplishing that goal. And you don’t really avoid the browser wars by switching to Linux either, as many of the top distributions have Firefox+Google Search as their default configuration.

How!? Mine is full of ads, and that's after buying a "Pro" copy of Windows, registry hacks, declining every ToS I can find, rejecting all the "free" trials, etc.

Do you have an enterprise install managed on a Windows domain where your admin has disabled all this stuff by any chance?

Where? I don't see any other than the nagging to update settings after larger updates (couple times a year).

The installer has 3 free trials in it (photos sync, xbox, office 365), and then re-runs that part of the installer periodically.

The start menu shows sponsored articles in it IIRC, although this was something I turned off as soon as I could. It also pushes apps like Candy Crush.

The lock screen has ads literally "dotted" around, again pushing cloud services etc.

I keep being prompted to turn on Copilot, and essentially the only options are "Yes" or "Not yet". Opt-outs aren't respected.

I don't use Edge but the OS keeps advertising Edge, keeps telling me in various places and at various times that Edge is better and that Chrome is dangerous.

These are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head, but it's truly pervasive throughout the whole product. Even just looking through Settings it's not hard to find upsells.

I made my usb install media with Rufus and I it had some option to remove a bunch of frustrating behavior (this option was on by default). For instance it allowed me to create a local account. That seems to have completely removed advertising you mentioned. I had a lot of it in windows 10. Maybe the person you are replying to used Rufus (which is recommended if you want to make the install media from Linux or Mac) and didn’t realize it made changes.

Hasn't MS removed the option to create a local-only account in Win11 and is forcing everyone to sign up for a Microsoft account?

They completely removed it from the installer GUI, yes.

But local-only Windows 11 still works with minimal interference. The most common ways are creating the install medium with Rufus (which has an option to create a local-only installation medium), or by manually dropping into the Windows Command Prompt during setup and running a single command ("ms-cxh:localonly")

and despite the fact you can install AND uninstall numerous web browsers, for some reason Edge is (supposedly) built into the OS and core functionality and it can't be removed - and is the default app for countless file types.

It actually is built in as WebView2. It's like that so apps can use web views without shipping their own browser (Electron) and then it is kept up to date with the system.

Internet Explorer (MSHTML) also still lives on in Windows 11 because older software depends on it to embed browsers in their UI. It'll probably stay there for a long time to preserve backwards compatibility.

> The installer has 3 free trials in it (photos sync, xbox, office 365), and then re-runs that part of the installer periodically.

This is all I see and everything I disabled/uninstalled was done from the Windows settings UI (Windows 11 Pro).

> Even just looking through Settings it's not hard to find upsells.

I guess I see this too? Just a little box saying to get Microsoft 365 or install OneDrive on the home page of the settings UI. There's basically nothing of value there though so it's easily missed.

They already gateway everything through Google servers, especially Chromebooks.

Pixels literally have unremovable Google ad right on the home screen. The search bar. Just because it has additional functionality, doesn't mean it's not an ad.

You can trivially install another launcher without that search bar and disable nearly all bundled apps on Pixels. Show me how easy it is to remove all the ads and bloatware from Windows.

Note how you said "disable" :) . That's because it is impossible to remove bloatware from Android, praise be Google. I also have Chrome disabled on my phone for many years, but it is there still.

And regarding Windows, first I want to tell that I'm not a fan of recent MS trends too. Second - I personally never had a single ad on my Win10 and current Win11, so I wouldn't know how to remove those :) . And third - to remove bloatware just uninstall it from the Programs and Features, like OneDrive or Office. LLM can be disabled in Settings. Some bloatware will remain due to deep integration, but that's the same issue as with Google or Apple. For instance I may not want to see Stocks app on iOS, but that's not my choice to make apparently :) .

What benefit would there be to uninstalling those bundled apps entirely vs disabling them? It's a nice goal to aspire to, sure, but does it really matter?

You don’t get a choice on that unless you’re running Linux/BSD or a Mac.

I'm asking for Android-based desktop.

Windows is so bad, that I've lost any hope for it to recover.

MacOS is not that bad, but it's tied to Apple hardware and I don't like it. Also it's not getting better either, new releases bring more bloat and features I didn't ask for.

Linux is what I use, but I also lost hope for it to ever become polished experience. Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good. I can navigate Linux bugs and workarounds, but I'd prefer not to.

Expecting some new unknown operating system to appear and be ready is foolish, it won't happen.

So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future. Linux have good support for desktop hardware. Android have good polished stack for applications. Developers know how to write apps for android. Security story for Android is miles ahead that of desktop Linux. So I totally see that Android Desktop could actually be a good thing, with Google sponsoring its development. And if Google will put too much bloat in it, its open source nature would allow for volunteers to build better distributions of it.

It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase and their preferences,, why continue to use it instead of KDE or any of the other 10 DE environments?

I don't want extensible software. KDE is terrible in that regards. They have miriads of options, that's too much for me. I want opinionated software. I don't like GNOME, but it's the lesser evil and I learned to deal with its issues.

Also I don't like that KDE does not have its native launcher. I need to install some SDDE stuff which works under Xorg or something like that and looks ugly. Pretty weird stuff all that. GNOME just have GDM which just works.

My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want. It doesn't exist, unfortunately. May be I should try to write is, as I complain about it so much. Just have no idea about scale of such a project.

There are no other 10 DE environments. GNOME and KDE are the only two mature ones. Rest are either obsolete, especially with Wayland conquering Linux desktop, or for weird use-cases, like tiling WMs. I'm used to traditional windows managers, I don't want tiling WMs.

XFCE is plenty mature and very stable

Add Chicago95, and you've got some comfortable nostalgia.

https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95

This is just beautiful, thank you!

Cinnamon DE (linux mint) is stable, mature and miles ahead of gnome

Cinnamon is probably the best to use right now followed by XFCE because it uses XWayland by default. It provides nearly full use in both directions while still allowing both the new plugins and old widgets systems. It's also surprisingly stable. The only bug I've ever encountered in my now ten years of using it is on an N100 powered laptop, where if I let the computer go to sleep instead of turning it off eventually Cinnamon's process keeps requesting CPU time until it uses an entire core to itself.

Cinnamon getting good recently kind of blew my mind. I'm an ancient Gnome 2.x elitist, and typically hated cinnamon every-time I've tried it.

Every now and then I distro hop and ended up on LMDE (linux mint debian edition, the real linux mint) which only has a cinnamon offering out of the box. Much to my surprise its actually good. It still has random bugs triggered by stuff I've tried adding to the panel, but that's par for the course with gnome, XFCE, and MATE lately anyway. Over all it's a solid DE now even if the stock start/menu is underwhelming everything is fixable.

Lots of opinions that are less than idea in gnome. But the only one that really breaks me is lack of typeahead in Nautilus.

I just want to type D, enter and open Documents/, how hard can it be. It's been almost a decade since they removed it, and I still can't use vanilla Nautilus.

I always end up with Nemo or a patched Nautilus.

rant aside, the rest of gnome seems fine. Don't love it, but also don't hate it. I can add my own shortcuts with rofi/dmenu.

Works for me. I'm typing D, it instantly filters the list of files and selects first item. That's "desktop" for me, so I need to type O or press Down to select "documents" and type <Enter>.

The filtering of files is not instant. If you type do<enter> it won't be fast enough. Maybe there have been slight improvements.

But afaik it still defaults to search.

Try: https://github.com/lubomir-brindza/nautilus-typeahead

> My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want.

Why would we have any reason to believe that there would ever be a super-opinionated desktop environment that would be good? The examples we have -- which notably DO NOT include Windows 95, which had a zillion tiny knobs, many in the UI, but others requiring dropping to the registry (which is no different from screwing with confirmation files)... and, frankly, doesn't even include macOS, the system with some of the best customization of key bindings and the most universal automation -- are mostly bad. Put in the day or two of effort to make something that isn't opinionated work the way you want, and then reap the rewards for the following few decades of your productive career.

This is an honest question, not trying to get into an argument...

> I don't want extensible software. KDE is terrible in that regards. They have miriads of options, that's too much for me.

Why not use the default provided then and take the defaults as opinionated? That's what I do actually. I might change very few options, but I generally use the defaults. It's not that you have to configure kde before it becomes usable, the defaults are pretty ok.

Extensibility ~= extra complexity will necessarily increase the chance of bugs.

In something as complex as a display stack this is an important tradeoff.

This is only true if complexity under the hood actually affects your default experience. I don't think it's the case for KDE. "The chance" is indeed higher, except in GNOME it seems the bugs are actually real.

> My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want. It doesn't exist, unfortunately. May be I should try to write is, as I complain about it so much. Just have no idea about scale of such a project.

Have you ever tried Icewm?

But you don't need to configure kde to use it, you can just use the defaults for everything, nobody is forcing you to configure stuff. It is not some exotic tiling wm where you have to set up everything.

Cosmic.

Help me understand your two posts. From your earlier post you don't like GNOME because it's make different choices about what to support, and here you're saying you don't like KDE because it isn't opinionated enough.

Is the problem that you don't want choices as long as the maintainers always makes the same choice you would have when taking options away?

> It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase

It's pretty openly in bad faith to assign malice to open-source developers.

GNOME does in fact have a long track record on this point. Decades old.

And in my option is finally good enough for me to switch from macOS and to recommend Gnome to others. Not everyone likes that Gnome 2 (wasn’t bad, I must admit, but I don’t like it) and especially Gnome 3 was. I quite enjoy modern Gnome, and whilst there are some minor inconveniences I’d prefer being different, I can live with that for the sake of overall simplicity.

Dunno, Gnome hasn't been hostile to me.

I'm sorry, but there are MANY users of GNOME who are happy with the direction. I'd personally choose GNOME over any desktop environment on any OS.

My pessimism is that with their coming clamp-down on external sources for -installing- "sideloading" apps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736479 this os may be somewhere between macos and ipados in terms of freedom in the coming years. I have hope that Valve's operating systems and unified platforms will provide a way not only for macos/windows users to move on while retaining compatibility, but for the company to make the transition to arm (as they are with deckard) and retain total binary freedom.

Home computers are inherently more open to sideloading. So I don't see a scenario where they would close it. But may be I'm spoiled by x86, wouldn't be surprised to find out that ARM computers would not be open to boot unlock and all that stuff.

If you're not accustomed to it, arm computers have no BIOS/UEFI boot selection and usually require a custom bootloader to load a new OS. I remember many fun hobby projects of old with x86 where I could take an old x86 appliance and put in a clean linux disk to use the hardware however I wanted, nowadays your OS needs to be signed, and because the root is owned, the software can be limited to that what the OEM or OS company desires, much like what MS is trying to do with TPM2 and Win11. Of all the ARM phones I've seen, perhaps 10% support bootloader unlock, and that's only with a certain carrier, the problem is that it's not a unified platform, support has to be implemented per-device, so even if the bootloader is open, the OS may not be up to date (as many have noted with dodgy third party arm boards)

Just think about how few Android devices have an open bootloader right now, there's no reason to think it'd be any different on larger hardware.

On the flip side, every Chromebook and Chromebox has a unlockable and open-spurce coreboot bootloader.

I love their mechanism where one opens the device and removes a screw to unlock it. Very novel and honestly kind of fun.

We used to call installing software on our own device, installing.

MacOS requires dropping to the terminal to install unsigned applications. There is literally no need for this, except to ensure apple profits.

When do you see this? For me, I just go to System Settings → Privacy & Security. Scroll down to Security and look for the message about the blocked app, click Allow Anyway, and then reopen the app.

If I install Xournall++[1], just opening the application will fail and MacOS will ask me to move it into trash. I am required to execute `xattr -c /Applications/Xournal++.app` to "remove quarantine".

I just reinstalled and can confirm that I don't see anything in the System Settings as you say.

[1] https://github.com/xournalpp/xournalpp/releases/tag/v1.2.8

What's the GNOME bug?

I'm using shortcuts <Super>+1 ... <Super>+4 to switch between virtual desktops. Let's say there's Xwayland application launched on desktop 1 and I'm on desktop 4. Vscode for example. Now I press <Super>+1 to switch to desktop 1. At this point, vscode starts printing "11111111" until I press Esc.

This bug manifests both for vscode and Idea. I configured these apps to run under native wayland, but they're not ready and other bugs manifest (e.g. no border around vscode window), which are less annoying, but annoying nonetheless.

Oh wow that explains a ton of problems I was having before I switched to KDE.

try cosmic desktop since it was made to be similar to gnome - it's maintained by system76 and is shaping up to be one of the most polished desktops out there, gnome has been feeling like it's going downwards for a while. I can't comment too much tho since I am too used to KDE at the moment and tiling support is just not there yet compared to KWin.

Interesting. I sometimes get similar behaviour on KDE / wayland, usually it is "2" or "3", and it seems to only affect electron apps. Always thought it has something to do with a dodgy ps/2 to usb converter I use to attach my old mechanical keyboards. I think it does not happen if electron apps are started with "--ozone-platform=wayland" but not completely sure, and I have no reliable way to reproduce or somehow trigger that behaviour.

Windows is bad because it has opinions about advertisements and AI.

MacOS is bad because it has opinions about what hardware you should use.

Linux is bad because it doesn't have opinions.

No opinions? Have you ever read a code of conduct? :)

My opinion is that I should be able to choose my window manager and have a proper tiling window manager if I wish, and Linux is the only one allowing me to do that.

It's a feature, not a bug.

Isn’t Valve having a go at making Linux more consumer friendly?

Depends what you mean by security, if by security you mean sanboxing of apps sure, if by security you mean that you trust what's in your OS and you can control it, it's worse than desktop Linux.

Security isn't just about technical features but also about trust, while I trust my Linux desktop, I don't trust my Android phone with the Play Store running as high privilege, advertising id in the OS and unknown manufacturer additions.

But that's more like talking about a particular distro, like I wouldn't trust North Korea's Linux distro either, compared to Debian.

Meanwhile something close to GrapheneOS running on desktop sounds fantastic.

Perhaps you may like Qubes OS.

Suggesting Qubes OS as the GNU/Linux equivalent of Android is admitting defeat. Android sandboxes multiple apps running on the same system/kernel. Qubes OS sandboxes multiple apps running on multiple different systems (VMs). Qubes, laudable as it may be, is not a parallel to Android.

Qubes is a much more secure alternative to Android without its main downside, which is that Google owns it and steers its development toward enshittification and control [0]. The latter even affects security directly [1].

Android's sandboxes are weaker and AFAIK rely on closed, non-auditable hardware (which is owned by Google in, e.g., GrapheneOS). Qubes protects you more reliably and doesn't require to abandon root privileges or a possibility to take screenshots.

Also, you don't have to run every app in a dedicated VM on Qubes: Instead you group them into security domains, which allowed me to organize my digital life like never before [3].

In addition, Qubes can protect you from supply-chain attacks by isolating VMs from the network and using different OSes side by side. I dream of using Qubes on mobile.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028

[2] https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/latest/user/how-to-guides/how-to...

Are you pretending android doesn't have bugs?

> Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good.

Classic straw man: a single GNOME bug doesn’t mean all of desktop Linux isn’t worth investing in.

Developers have been writing Linux desktop apps successfully for decades. Moreover, who cares about polished desktop apps when most apps are just web apps that look the same on all platforms?

For the record, I despise web apps.

> So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future.

Ready for what ? Working with files on Android is ... interesting. Real app support on Android (shells, compilers, CAD/CAE) is ... interesting and the UX is... total crap.

> google just wants to normalize rent seeking 30% of all software sales

Most Android applications are free. Furthermore, Google allow you to install a separate store where you can buy from, allowing you to not have to pay those 30%, or to pay them to someone else other than Google.

And if anyone is trying to normalise 30% rent seeking on desktops, it's the incumbents already directing you towards their store (Microsoft, Apple).

> Google allow you to install a separate store where you can buy from

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45017028

Oh, Fuchsia isn't dead [0]. Apparently it's what the Nest Hub launched with and the latest update is pretty recent: from Oct 2025. Interesting.

(Replying to my own comment instead of editing it as this is tangential to the topic at hand)

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)

Not only is it not dead it’s under HEAVY active development and has been for quite some time now.

They seem particularly focused on the Linux compatibility layer (starnix) as far as I can tell.

I’d say they are most likely going to end up becoming the thing that Android sits on top of. There is already public indications of some variant of it called “microfuchsia” coming to Android. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this is all part of the same launch that they are working towards here.

> Linux compatibility layer

I can't wait to play Windows PC games on a Linux compatibility layer (Proton) on a Fuschia compatibility layer (Starnix) and still have them inexplicably run smoother than on the system they were originally developed for.

> Oh, Fuchsia isn't dead

It is resting ...

I don't trust Google anymore or what their business model has become over the years.

I won't be using Aluminum OS.

Don't think it is targeted at you. A lot of people like you say so - but will be shoved Win11 or Apple Intelligence. Enjoy.

How? What leverage does Google have in the Desktop space? They have no captive market that they can leverage a forced installation of Aluminum OS.

Rugpulling the education market that got suckered into buying all those Chromebooks and grooming the kids into Google products from kindergarten onwards.

Curious to hear what other technical products you use that are from companies that are pure as the driven snow.

Don't do this. Don't put words in others mouths. I don't see anywhere where the parent comment said they only use software from perfect companies. They only asserted one company fell below their threshold of trust.

Aluminum and fuchsia are largely implementation details. The reasons these projects have value isn't necessary user facing, however they will have outcomes that enable products to be more useful with time. Maybe ai features are easier to ship, or it's less costly to maintain device support, or maybe they just save Google some money allowing for cheaper prices. Ultimately, they are closer to what's in the sausage than the sausage itself though and so most folks will not care. And that's okay.

> The reasons these projects have value isn't necessary user facing

The value is what then? Promotion for the tech lead that convinced a bunch of other googlers that they should contribute to this OS project?

I went on to describe positive side effects that are user visible. Users will see benefits but it's not in the form of UI necessarily. There are a lot of projects that companies take on that never reach end customers, but they help make the organization more efficient and capable which is why they are funded. I've never met someone who created a project purely to fund their own promotion. People genuinely care about trying to make a positive impact.

Google wants an OS with Play Market on any and all devices possible. That's the end goal.

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