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Comment by _imnothere | Hacker News Reader

I can't think of any valid reason for a person with sane mind to do this. Yes, macOS is somewhat closed, but it's definitely more open than ChromeOS.

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What do you mean by open and closed? ChromeOS is based on ChromiumOS, which is open source. I guess macOS is based on Darwin technically, but the ratio of open source to proprietary is much higher for ChromeOS than macOS, no?

I think they mean closed as in it is more difficult to install whatever you want on a ChromeOS machine as opposed to a MacOS machine.

What is it that you want to install on ChromeOS that you are unable to? All of the usual Linux and open-source stuff works fine on the built-in Linux environment on it. Possibly even a little better than MacOS in some cases, since you don't need to worry about Apple app signing. There's not literally nothing you can't do, but the list is a lot shorter than most people think, especially those who haven't really tried ChromeOS in a decade and think they're all a glorified web browser on $200 hardware.

You can technically run anything you want on both without resorting to hacks, it's just a question of how annoying it is.

On a Chromebook you can install the Linux Dev VM with 5 clicks in the settings and get a fully featured Debian VM.

I'm willing to bet it's easier to set up a Linux VM on a Chromebook than on a Mac. But the other side is that anything not explicitly requiring Linux will work natively in macOS, where you also get a nicer terminal. Like I've not needed a Linux VM in years, and the author doing web dev probably won't either.

pretty dang easy to run a Linux container on MacOS using Colima (https://github.com/abiosoft/colima).

Relative to native Docker and Crostini, my experience using Colima at work was like pulling my own teeth out.

Crostini is built into the Chromebook, vs macOS where I hear a different container solution every time someone asks about it. Colima is a new one to me. Maybe it works great and the others do too, but full 1P support is a step up.

Yes, however most of us don't really need to use Linux containers for our work, plain traditional UNIX works just fine.

But if I don't want to have to use a VM?

Well, then you can only put it in dev mode and use chromebrew. Which I am glad exists, but even installing node can be a pain and the way to get it running changed over the years.

But how? You can install Linux and android apps on chrome os. I understand this perspective might intuitively make sense, but we need to analyze if it's actually true.

You can even install linux on Chromebooks, and ChromeOS has upstreamed / opensource many of their codes.

In other perspective, ChromeOS supports running Linux apps w/ GUI without much differences. You just open your terminal, type `apt install XXX`, then `XXX` should work out-of-the box.

I don't see any reasons that ChromeOS is less open then macOS

Any? Crostini is neat and all, but it's a VM running inside of ChromeOS, so it's restricted in what it can do.

The entire system firmware is open source, so it’s relatively straightforward to replace the system firmware with Coreboot and EDKII to boot normal UEFI Linux. It works excellent. mrchromebox.tech and docs.chrultrabook.com have all the nitty gritty details.

x86 only tho

> but it's definitely more open than ChromeOS.

I don't think that's entirely true. For instance, ChromeOS supports Mesa, which macOS has spent the past decade pretending doesn't exist.

ChromeOS will run on any standard machine and subsystems (qndroid, linux) work decently good.

What concrete points makes you put macos as more open ?

Root on the host OS. Can't change the MAC on the wifi adapter, for instance.

You can change the wifi mac on any chromeos machine with literally `ifconfig`.

I can't think of any sense in which this statement could be supported by facts.

ChromeOS is the absolute last desktop operating system I would choose to use for myself. Linux, macOS, and Windows would have to be completely dead and buried before I would switch, and at that point I might just consider abandoning tech altogether and joining an Amish commune or something.

When was the last time you tried ChromeOS, out of curiosity? I'd always reach for Linux first, but I'm hard-pressed to put Windows or macOS in second place when both are so miserably bloated.

It's not about bloat, it's about Google. The only tech company I despise more than Google is Facebook.

For small businesses using Google Workspace, Chrome book is so easy to manage.

Ha, same. I absolutely love everything about my MacBook Pro.

...except the operating system. And the silly notch. And the weird keyboard. And the hard palm-cutting corner. And the reflective screen. and the finger-print-magnet materials. And the small amount of RAM. and the small SSD. And the weight.

Other than that, it's perfect! (On the blance,still better than any other laptop)

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