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Comment by galleywest200 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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).

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.

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

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.

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