There's a still a big catch: normally, when a computer "runs Linux", you can keep installing new Linux distros until the hardware dies, which could be decades in the future.
You can install Linux on some Chromebooks, but it's often a lot of work to disable the "press Space to erase your operating system" prompt. It would be better if all EoL Chromebooks received an update to disable secure boot, because secure boot stops being secure when it boots you to an unpatchable OS.
> it's often a lot of work to disable the "press Space to erase your operating system" prompt
That's not what this article is about.
Yes, you can put the Chromebook in dev mode, disable secure boot and deal with that prompt.
But today you can install Debian or Ubuntu or other distros in a container without enabling dev mode, and without disabling secure boot.
Containers were only available on selected Chromebooks until now, and they'll be enabled on all new devices from here on.
You can easily share files between Linux containers and the ChromeOS filesystem, with USB and SD cards, and with Google Drive. There's one-click backup and restore of containers.
Linux apps like Firefox, LibreOffice, Gimp and VS Code are fully integrated into the ChromeOS window manager side by side with ChromeOS apps and Android apps.
I think that's what p1mrx is saying as well. You can install Debian and Ubuntu in the containers, reaping the benefits of secure boot. However, after 6.5 years the devices are EOLd and stop receiving updates making secure boot useless since you're securely booting into out of date software. p1mrx wants secure boot to be disabled once the device is EOL so that they can install a distro without dealing with dev mode.
I agree, the real problem is after (and in my opinion ethically also before) EOL, we can't sign new distro's and bootloaders...
All we need that is currently missing is for end-users to be able (by law) to sign their own boatloaders, by entering their own public key into the most minimal inspectable ring infimum bootloader...
Otherwise it's just a long and slow road towards either fab at home, or alternatively blind computation on the host, and encrypted communication with a minimal IO system attached to the host...
I really agree on the user signed bootloader part. I think we should also have this for Android devices, since most Android devices only have two years of system/security update.
One should always be able to sign one's bootloader. If it's only 6.5 years later it can be that not even Linux support for that hardware would exist then?
On the contrary, I have direct experience with more notebooks that disproves your claim.
Linux support for the hardware of the notebooks was never as good as Windows. Experienced users, to be sure that they won't have problem with hardware, tend to buy either Thinkpad or Dell notebooks. Everything else is a lottery. From three non-Dell, non-Thinkpad notebooks that I've bought since 2000 only one had enough hardware support to be even usable for more than five years.
Moreover, the first one, an AMD-based Sony (also not cheap) worked better under Linux under the versions which were less than 5 years old than the model's introduction. Only since that point the problems with the drawing on the screen became so bad that it was not usable at all for anything but being used headless. I was installing every new Ubuntu version every 6 months there, and the hardware support for the video card came to be progressively worse. I've reported the bug behavior but was never contacted to help the investigation, the bug was closed unsolved eventually.
Recently, only two months ago, my Dell notebook, 2 years old, after an update stopped working with an external monitor under kernel packed in the 18.04 LTS Ubuntu (where everything worked for a year before that). It took only days to fix that, but the bug was wide spread enough to strike most users of external monitors.
So no, Linux won't magically work on a machine which is not continuously directly tested by enough developers. It will also even less work after 6.5 years of machine's introduction, again, unless there was a constant work to keep it working. Linux is not a magic pixie dust, but a product by humans that also needs active contributions to even keep working with the old hardware.
> On the contrary, I have direct experience with more notebooks that disproves your claim.
On the contrary, I also have direct experience with notebooks across a wide variety of makes, models, and eras (though most were from the Windows XP era, since a lot of my Linux installs were from migrating folks off XP).
> Experienced users, to be sure that you won't have problem with hardware, tend to buy either Thinkpad or Dell notebooks.
Well yeah. That tends to hold true regardless of operating system. The laptops that still manage to be terrible on Linux (which in my experience is constantly shrinking, even - and especially - for old ones) - were typically worse under Windows.
> So no, Linux won't magically work on a machine which is not continuously directly tested by enough developers.
Of course not. My point is that once it is working, it's typically unlikely that it'll regress all that much unless there's an explicit push to deprecate old hardware. The old laptops ain't popular now, but that doesn't mean they weren't popular enough 10 years ago (or similar enough internals-wise to popular notebooks from 10 years ago) to end up getting enough attention by Linux driver devs to still be usable to this day. Maybe someday bitrot will set in, but my experience with Linux support on old laptops suggests that to be relatively rare.
> The laptops that still manage to be terrible on Linux (which in my experience is constantly shrinking, even - and especially - for old ones) - were typically worse under Windows.
I gave already a direct counterexample, a Sony notebook. No problems under Windows for 10 years, unusable after 4-5 under newer Linux versions.
The example I haven't given: the Samsung notebook where touchpad never worked properly under Linux. The only response from community was "use an external mouse." Also the WIFi card on that Samsung never worked under Linux. Again the answer as "switch WiFi card or use an external one."
> once it is working, it's typically unlikely that it'll regress all that much unless there's an explicit push to deprecate old hardware.
For that I have 2 examples: Sony notebook graphic drivers regressed to make the notebook unusable. The Dell notebook regeressed with the LTS, it was fixed only because the bug stroke too much notebooks at once.
But hardware support does break in Linux unless enough of effort is made.
And some issues are totally broad. Last year I've bought a box with the APU which can't play videos under Linux without stuttering. No problem under Windows.
Nobody who claims that "Linux always works" seems to have an actual experience with notebooks which aren't intentionally pre-selected as "known to work." I don't know why would such claim be even controversial, it's widely known.
Another hardware device may not work at all; if you do not pay attention to wireless devices. Most laptops comes with on-board 802.11 (a/b/g/N) wireless cards. Not all card supported so make sure you get Intel Pro series card such as 3945 or Atheros based cards. My advice is use Google to search for your driver or use specialized databases (a more or less complete listing of wireless devices with information about the chipset they are based on and whether or not they are supported in Linux) to search for your laptop card."
Who exactly are you arguing against here, who says that Linux always works? Your Samsung example is instructive here. One-off hardware that was never intended to run under Linux, never did and still doesn't. While you have had some frustrating experiences, the broad consensus, and my own experience, say that Linux tends to extend the useful life of older hardware.
For instance, I have a cheap asus notebook from the Windows 8 era. Windows 8 is EOL, so I upgraded it to Windows 10. Windows 10 takes literally half an hour to boot in the best case, which is after spending a whole day in the update-reboot loop, making sure the system is fully updated. (I do this every quarter or so.) So I dual boot Arch. Arch boots in 30 seconds.
And that's not to mention the stack of Thinkpads going back to 2002, all of which still work flawlessly. (But of course they work, because if Linux ever had a target laptop platform, it was 2000s era Thinkpads.)
The whole context of this thread is me responding to the answers to my initial claim (still hard to read, so let me repeat):
> One should always be able to sign one's bootloader. If it's only 6.5 years later it can be that not even Linux support for that hardware would exist then?
And your response finally, the way I see it, confirms exactly that: if you have some notebook for which Linux can't be normally developed and maintained, after 6.5 years the Linux won't "magically work." Which is what I claimed from the start. Full 6.5 years after the introduction, it can remain a non-target. Not as a notebook, but as a set of hardware parts which aren't openly supported. Like all non-Dells and non-Thinkpads for years were, as you also confirm. Being able to install VMs before 6.5 years are over is also not enough.
> today you can install Debian or Ubuntu or other distros in a container
This is far far from the title's promise of being a "Linux laptop"... you might as well also claim all Windows PCs are now Linux PCs because of WSL.
I know I'm not alone when I expect a computer that claims to support Linux to mean running it on the hardware, without a hypervisor, outside of a container or any other kind of virtualization.
Better resource utilisation, control, freedom, not requiring google's permission to do anything. When you are inside a container you are still under the control of another OS... the lack of a bunch of other practical limitations of running inside a container that I'm not familiar with because I don't run my frickin desktop inside a container! why would I do that, it's an unnecessary limitation and increases complexity - maybe some people do if they benefit from containers for a very specific use case, but this does not make it a "Linux Laptop" first and foremost.
A few weeks ago I tried to run Debian and Ubuntu on an older Chromebook with Crouton (also a container solution).
Systemd failed booting, because the last published Chromebook kernel for that device had an incorrectly applied backport of some patch, which made nonexistent system calls return garbage data instead of erroring out.
They're talking about Termina and the Google provided Linux solution.
It's misleading to people who haven't been in the ChromeOs ecosystem before to compare your Crouton setup to Termina. Crouton is not an officially supported Linux on Chromebook solution and requires you to turn on developer mode on the Chromebook which warns you that you are in unsupported land and things may not go as planned.
If you know how Debian works, the new solution Google has for Linux on Chromebooks should work fine for most people. There's only a few gotchas at all anymore. Snaps even work if you know what you're doing.
To be fair, there is a 15-minute mod (mrchromebox.tech) that allows for all Intel Chromebooks =<Kaby Lake to install an open UEFI that supports Windows, Linux and even Clover/MacOS in some cases.
One important difference to note. Google's policy is 6.5 years after "first device on the platform is released". Apple's policy is after last manufactured.
The Apple policy also only explicitly applies to hardware (repair parts), although software often falls not far behind (maybe supported for a year or two longer)
Yeah this. I bought a Nexus 6p on sale, just over a year after it was released. This meant it was less than two years before it was no longer supported. The battery was replaced twice and was junk anyway. Good riddance.
My Nexus 6p worked pretty well except had to do a battery replacement once after which the battery life remained excellent. After nearly 3 years of usage, dropped it and shattered the glass. Tried several places for a replacement screen but the feedback everywhere was "parts no longer available". The phone works perfectly otherwise and I had no intention of getting a new one soon. Finally gave up and bought a Oneplus 6.
This kind of forced phasing out of devices is really unfortunate.
This is eerily similar to my experience. I absolutely love my OnePlus 6. 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB storage is phenomenal, and double the resources of the pixel 3
Random question about OnePlus since I'm seeing it in a Linux conversation... do you happen to use Termux? If so do you happen to know how to run a daemon (e.g. SSH) without getting choked by BgDetect every few minutes?
Yeah I do run termux, but I don't run an SSH daemon anymore (mostly because of issues like that). I just plug in the USB cable and run `adb shell` whenever I need a shell on the phone.
Performance for file transfers is also way faster and more reliable using `adb pull /sdcard/DCIM ./` than with `scp -r phone:/sdcard/DCIM/ ./`
I use termux mostly just run my own ruby scripts or SSH to cloud servers and stuff.
Mind if I ask where the conversation is? (if it's public). That sounds like something I'd enjoy :-)
Your question was not directed towards me but would like to add that for synhing media between phone and computer, Syncthing[0] has been great for me. Once setup, no manual steps are required anymore - everything syncs automatically.
Oh, I was just referring to this post, which is about putting Linux on devices meant for other OSes. :-)
Ah I see. Yeah I use USB when I need to, but I neither always have enough data to warrant the speed (often just a handful of pics...), nor is it true that I only want SSH for file transfer. =P
The only good deal I got on Amazon was for 8GB/128GB storage - still have about 70GB left after having copied all my media over from the Nexus 6p. I think I'll be ready for a replacement by the time I get near filling that 70GB up.
Still rocking my Nexus 5X and will continue to do so until it physically dies. LineageOS works spectacularly and I still get Android updates faster than most flagships.
Another important difference: you can still install linux on a macbook after it is EOL'd by Apple. HArdware support is poor but the machine can still have an OS patched on a regular basis.
And it is worth noting that the 2012 13" MacBook Pro (non-retina, the last upgradeable MacBook) was sold by Apple at least until 2017, so it should be supported until 2024.
Those vintage macbook pros are still getting OS and software updates. Hardly "software-defined garbage". I have a 2012 retina that's still chugging along perfectly. Battery life is down from when I bought it, sure, but there's still enough juice for a few hours of unplugged work.
I use a mid 2009 Core 2 Duo. I replaced the battery on it ~6 months ago. I also installed Mojave on it, and with the exception of a weird quirk where apps that do not live in the Dock do not disappear from it when you close the app, it runs fine.
It is essentially a Hackintosh, albeit a legal one, as the hardware is Apple hardware.
I do dev work on it, though it is ruby and/or javascript, not a lot of true compiling happening. But it works well.
I'd love it to be officially supported, but I mean you have to draw the line somewhere.
Edit: I forgot to mention the SSD I put in it, or the RAM I maxed out. (I did the upgrade work, I was not about to pay the premium for Apple to do it.)
Where did you purchase the battery from, and how is the performance, if you do not mind me asking?
I also use a mid 2009 Core 2 duo, but lately I have struggled to find a source for a battery that will last more that 1.5 hours in typical usage. I assume the issue is that any authentic Apple battery must have been manufactured so long ago that its capacity is severely degraded after having been stored (at non-ideal temperature) for so long, and it seems like even many third party batteries available are old and had inferior capacity to begin with.
> I also installed Mojave on it, and with the exception of a weird quirk where apps that do not live in the Dock do not disappear from it when you close the app, it runs fine.
If you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about, this is a feature and you can turn it off by disabling “Recent Apps” in System Preferences.
What did you need to do to make Mojave compatible? I've seen a few installer patches around[0] but wasn't sure if you rolled your own solution. Thanks.
I have a 2011 non-retina that's chugging along pretty well, the battery life is good enough to stream a 3 1/2 hour NFL game without a charge. Haven't upgraded the os since 10.12, but it still works well enough.
That's impressive, I can't say the same thing about my 2013 retina.
It wasn't until the last ~6 months that I noticed a drop-off in battery performance. Not sure if it was from streaming football/hockey games or my tendency to throw it into sleep mode thinking "I'll have time later tonight" while keeping my server/db/container processes still running.
The Chromebook updates are not the same as the updates you get from Apple. Chrome gets security updates every 2-3 weeks and full OS updates around every 6 weeks. Apple's OS is updated much less frequently.
The newer Macs with T2 chips do prevent you from installing Linux, actually.
There appears to be some debate online as to whether turning off secure boot on T2 Macs allows Linux to work. It should, but there are some reports online that it does not, at least if you want to use the computer's internal storage. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/a4thsc/the_actual_fu....
I would have expected this to be sorted out by now, but that doesn't appear to be the case. If anyone knows more, please share...
Vintage and obsolete are two different categories. Vintage = 5-7 years after last manufacture vs 7+ for obsolete. Service is generally not available for vintage or obsolete products, however some places like California have service for vintage products available. Further details on Apple’s website: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201624
Ha! I remember buying a mac with a disk drive right after the Apple started offering macs with solid state drives. After upgrading the OS, it mac became super sluggish--Apple didn't support the computer for more than a few years.
No it was supported but it was obsolete which is two different things. But also why I don't have mac hardware any longer. One of my favorite machines is still my SamsunNC10, tiny (for it's day) 32 bit machine that runs a *nix. For what I do, which involves writing software, managing servers and browsing the web, it's great, though At some point, it will not have os support any longer for 32 bit.
This is mostly true, but you'll never get as good an experience with Linux on a Mac as on a Lenovo or Dell. There's just too much proprietary stuff. Even little things like the fan sometimes don't work
Apple doesn't always make things easy, but they do have a highly-uniform component set, which can simplify configuration so long as all elements are supported, and senior Linux devs running kit is an incentive to solve hardware issues.
I'm not implying either that all devices are supported (I don't know which are/aren't, though I've had success on Apple kit myself), or that Linus still uses an Apple laptop (he seems to have moved on). But some well-established Linux users have turned to those devices and ben satisfied.
Maybe good for me. The glass is half full but rising. Like many devs, I prefer a *nix-based client, one whose features are already working (not partially left as an exercise for the user), and that has a full range of available software. Macs have been in the sweet spot for many of us, but Apple's design ethos for the Mac has switched from "passion: best computer ever" to "courage: get used to it". I suspect the thing I'll need to get used to is using something other than a Mac.
So, every move made by MS and Google on their popular, mainstream platforms is a step in the right direction. Neither is a full glass yet, but if these moves prove popular, both companies might decide to take even bolder steps toward desktop Linux.
A lot of 7 year old computers are still totally usable, PCs aren't advancing like they used to. My 2012 retina Macbook Pro is a little bit slow in some cases, but it's still a great machine for normal tasks.
Yeah, I actually bought a 2011 MBP like 2 years ago for 200 bucks. Use it as my main driver for my home music studio. Big projects load a bit slow but aside from that everything works fine.
Only thing I don't like is that there isn't really a cheap and decent way to have 2 external monitors on it AFAIK. Which is why I built a low budget Ryzen 2200g build which is perfect for audio and coding and now share my work between the two.
There is no reason you shouldn't be able to use this hardware 10~15 years from now. People use old Apple IIs and C64s from decades ago. The trouble is the locked bootloaders, secure boot and all the binary blob drivers.
I don't know about Apple II's but some C64's died due to bad power supplies. You can still find working ones, but that doesn't mean you can count on any particular device to last. They weren't designed for that any more than today's computers.
Chromebooks are designed to preserve data. The hardware is presumed vulnerable to failure.
Yes, exactly. There are vulnerabilities to be aware of (primarily, losing control of your account, which would be catastrophic), but at least replacing the hardware is just a shopping trip.
This is much better than getting an elderly relative off Windows XP.
I don't see a similar situation happening where I'd have to do that. I can buy a new Chromebook easily, so no need to worry about hardware obsolescence, and ChromeOS auto-updates.
People still run Commodore 64s. There are demo scenes, old hardware enthusiasts that squeeze crazy performance out of old hardware, even a guy who use a Raspberry Pi to emulate an NES cartridge and get his unmodified NES to play SNES games:
Old hardware can often be repaired. If you told a C64 user back in the day his machine would break in two years, he or she wouldn't shell out the $$ on it, but today people buy $400~$800 cellphones that turn into garbage.
Unsurprisingly, there's even a few hacks out there for upgrading old C64s with newer/better components, too, if you want to get another couple decades out of it. There's even new manufacture C64-compatible enthusiast boards being produced [1], although I believe you may have to supply your own SID chip. The latter doesn't count much for this topic, but it illustrates there's some interest. Further, the parts that are likely to break over time are fairly trivial for someone with soldering skills to replace. I know of at least a couple people who preemptively replaced capacitors on old C64s they bought and refurbished.
> If you told a C64 user back in the day his machine would break in two years, he or she wouldn't shell out the $$ on it, but today people buy $400~$800 cellphones that turn into garbage.
I wouldn't put money on that. A C64's starting price was $600 in 1982 dollars. For $154 in 1982, quite a few people might have been willing.
When was the last time a Commodore 64 received a vendor-issued software upgrade? Because that's what we're talking about. Not how long will the hardware last, but how long will the manufacturer release software updates.
"If you told a C64 user back in the day his machine would break in two years..."
That was pretty much expected. Hardware upgrades were just as fast and furious as they are now, if not moreso. Backwards compatibility with years-old systems at the consumer level was a byproduct, not a plan.
I'm just saying support for a few years would typically suggest 2-4 years. 6.5 years is considerably longer than "a few years" would imply. Particularly in the context of the other common computing platform - phones.
Is 6.5 a magic perfect number? No, I'd like to see more like 10 years honestly (which matches what Microsoft supports with Windows). But let's at least use the actual numbers and not easily confused vague terms like "few"
It is still planned obselescence, even at 6.5 years.
I still use a lenovo t420 that is almost 8 years old. I bought it with the fastest processor available back then, and it is still plenty useful as a Debian desktop.
That's a perfectly fine Linux workstation for most non-GPU purposes. I use a slightly older model ThinkPad, in which I upgrade the CPU, RAM, and keyboard. (It does mean running my own GPU server, over the network, for Tensorflow, etc., which is an inconvenience compared to onboard. But "cloud" is en vogue anyway.)
First, Windows 8(.1) is supported until 2023. Second, Windows 8 drivers will usually work smoothly under Windows 10, and I see plenty Windows 8 drivers for the T420 in Driver Matrix. There's even a BIOS update from 2018-06-25.
My T430 (one generation later) received a BIOS update in February and I expect more to come.
If using outdated drivers on unsupported hardware is your idea of full vendor support then enjoy. Your mention of a newer model doesn’t change anything about the op.
My newest computer (the XPS I'm typing this on) is 7 years old. My desktop computer is about 11 years old (upgraded to quad core Phenom, 16GB) and is more than enough for anything I'll need for many years to come (maybe provided an upgrade of the GPU).
I read a some time ago about them working AltOS mode, for Chromebooks, that was going to make installing other operating systems easier. Not sure what happened to it though.
For me I won't mess with a Chromebook until they've consolidated Android and ChromeOS into a single platform (likely Fuchsia). Until then I don't expect any real support for edge cases to be adequately addressed. It will always "kind of but not really work" because Google's already working to replace it with something different.
why not just a UEFI menu where you can implicitly authorize the private key by simply entering a public key of choice? 1024 bit = 128 bytes = 256 hexadecimal digits. Totally feasible to enter manually...
Because that’s still something an MITM in your hardware logistics chain could do to
keylog you, which is what the trusted-boot sequence is designed to prevent.
It might make sense to have a the ability to enter a UEFI key that would disable the dangerous “press to erase” prompt, but I don’t think it would ever make sense to make such a modified machine boot completely silently and “out-of-the-box like” (unless you don’t believe they should have secure boot as a design goal in the first place.)
Probably the most burning in a UEFI key would do is change the “this is a dev-mode laptop” warning to a “this is a customized deployment; if you were expecting a device direct from Google, you are being attacked!” warning.
That prompt has been changed in some newer Chromebooks. Specifically, you have to navigate a menu sequence to re-enable OS verification (which then wipes everything).
Given that most of Androids stop receiving updates around 1-2 years on the market, official statement of support for 6.5 years actually sounds not bad, does it?
I didn't know about the EoL for Chromebooks. I have one on the list that will reach it next year. Yes, I've had it for ~5 years, but I didn't expect it to just stop receiving updates after a certain period of time. Especially because it is still usable. I even got an older model chromebook because it was the best in the market for the price point at the time. Little did I know I was shooting myself in the foot.
This will make me rethink chromebook purchases in the future. I feel sorry for the people who bought into pixel.
> A Chromebook with all three operating systems running at once is also darn useful for an ordinary Jane or Joe. For example, I can edit images using Linux GIMP and write with LibreOffice Writer while looking at pictures using Android Pinterest and simultaneously check my Gmail in Chrome OS. It's all good.
For example, I can edit images using Linux GIMP and write with LibreOffice Writer while looking at pictures using Firefox on Linux and simultaneously check my Gmail in Firefox on Linux. It's all good.
Maybe Pinterest is a poor example, but there are Android apps that offer functionality unavailable in Linux and Chrome. For example I used Word for Android to edit a Word document with suggestions and comments (could not do that in Office 365 apparently).
Actually I'm pretty sure there are many Android apps that offer functionality unavailable on Windows and OS X.
Also, it's nice to have the possibility to mess around with Debian in the VM, yet always have a browser available and with the best security.
Linux apps are run in an unprivileged container, inside a VM that uses a stripped down kernel. By default all apps run in the same container in the same VM, but that can be controlled by the user (through the command-line, there's no GUI for that yet). This is detailed here: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/c...
Big usecase for me is a linux platform with a functional version of Onenote: the android version. The web version doesn't take handwritten notes well at all on any convertible device I've tried it on, the android version works perfectly.
I think the charitable interpretation is that some of those apps were written and published only for Android. In that case, comparable functionality wasn't artificially removed from desktop versions, it just never existed in the first place.
> But it won’t be secure, because the whole point of Chrome is to feed your data back to Google.
I trust Google more than other companies to handle my data with care. Pragmatically speaking, I think it's more likely to get hacked with a ransomware on Windows or OS X, than to suffer of <something> because of the data Google has on you. I'm not even sure what this hypothetical something is?
Also, the amount of data Google gets specifically from Chrome OS users is negligible, compared to what they get through other means such as GMail (which Chrome OS users presumably use already).
The discussion about the "input" has been had often enough, but I'm also concerned about the "output" part by now. If they find that the Linux support does not fit their strategy for some reason, they could choose to "retire" the feature tomorrow and remotely remove it from all Chromebooks. If they find software X to conflict with their business interests or obligations, they can just ban it.
As a user without control over your device, there is nothing you can do about it.
This is a peculiar definition of security advocated by people who think Google is the enemy.
For other people, Google having some access to your data is no more a security breach than your bank seeing your bank transactions or Kaiser having your medical records. (Internal controls do matter for defense in depth, but that's different.)
Not sure about this line of argument. Bank has my data but only those trusted my transaction with them. Google is much more general in nature. Storage is not a transaction. Safety deposit does not mean the bank shall open it already or any time they like without telling me and ask for permission.
Instagram might be a better example -- Instagram messaging isn't available on the browser version at all. On OS X, there are some third-party programs available to make messaging available, all of varying quality.
The idea that "an ordinary Jane or Joe" would want to use GIMP is laughable.
When a raving Linux evangelist publishes a fawning article about how it's actually a "good thing" that GIMP has lost its User eXperience (UX) maintainer, is that really a sign that GIMP is finally on the right track for "an ordinary Jane or Joe" to easily use?
>The GIMP has lost its User eXperience (UX) maintainer. Jack Wallen thinks this could be good news for one of the most powerful open-source image editing tools.
>This month, the GIMP lost its User eXperience (UX) maintainer. This is important. Why? Because, over all, the UX of Gimp has always had a very bad rap. People don't like it. I should preface this by saying 99% of the graphics that I do are done in GIMP (all of my TechRepublic images, all my book covers... everything). I've always been a big fan of the platform. That being said, it can't be denied that an overwhelming majority of people do not find the GIMP experience to be positive.
I love this spit-take worthy quote, showcasing the author's extreme case of Stockholm Syndrome:
>"GIMP is really just a proper UX maintainer away from graphic design domination"
Look out Photoshop! As soon as GIMP finally finds that one proper UX maintainer with infinite patience and leadership abilities and free time (and a trust fund to live off of), who manages to convince all the GIMP developers working for free on their own time to stop bickering and fucking around and for the first time in history drop the pet projects they're doing and follow the UX genius's innovative new directions and disruptive sweeping designs to make GIMP easy to use, Adobe's doooooooomed I tell you!
I think your hate for GIMP blinded you to their point. There are plenty of useful apps that "an ordinary Jane or Joe" could find useful. Substitute any of those for GIMP if you don't think the average user would use it. My dad (not a technical person) uses Pinta, Libre Office, RhythmBox, and many other apps on his Ubuntu machine every day.
No local state. You can do a full wipe then login and all your settings, apps, data are there (because they are in the cloud, not the device). Wipe your Linux partition and tell me how long until you have your computer back to how you had it.
Also, I love Chrome OS for my kids laptops because I don't have to worry about viruses or malware. In the case, I purposefully want a less feature rich OS.
When my mother's last Windows laptop finally bit the dust, I bought her a Chromebook. Haven't had another service call in the three years since.
She's old and tends to believe anything a computer tells her, from "YOU HAVE A VIRUS CLICK HERE TO REMOVE!!!!" to "Click here to claim your prize money!", so her Windows box was basically enough of a fetid cesspool of disease to approach supervillain powers on its own.
Does that really appease border guards? If you present a blank laptop they would probably get very suspicious, since you are obviously trying to hide something. They would probably make you log in and sync before they let you enter the country. The whole point is to search your online life, if you don't let them do that, you don't get in.
you can even set the machine up to use guest then just use the web services you want (or even your own) and each session is ephemeral if that's what you want.
> Wipe your Linux partition and tell me how long until you have your computer back to how you had it.
This is how I use my Chromebook: any important configuration gets checked into Git. Granted, I don’t use it as my primary computer, but it does decently well as a device I can carry with me and wipe when necessary.
Guix System or NixOS could allow something similar. You can make an image of your system trivially. Also most configuration is done in one file which can be applied during install.
Battery, browsers are a huge power hog and ChromeOS is basically just Chrome as an OS ui, so it's heavily optimized and running a browser tab doesn't effect battery as much as it would on a Mac, for example.
I use a Pixelbook now as my primary dev machine and compile a decently heavy Rust codebase in the linux env all day long and the battery doesn't die. If I move compilation to a cloud-based IDE, it'll last even longer.
I don't think this is meant to attract people who are ok with managing a Linux distro as their desktop today, I think it's for people like me that need a Unix environment for development, but want something that "just works" for rest-of-life stuff. Today, in the tech world at least, that need is largely filled by Macs.
You haven't had any problems with external monitors? I tried to use a Samsung Chromebook plus as adev machine and terminal fonts on external monitors looked terrible.
The only issue I've had with external monitors are sometimes it has random flickers, but reconnecting it fixes it. Pixelbook hardware is pretty decent.
That said, finding a good USB-C to HDMI adapter is tricky (can't use the apple ones cause they're actually thunderbolt). I have a USKY one, but it has an annoying tiny fan that makes a high-pitched sound when power is plugged in but the laptop is unplugged, and it heats up quite a bit.
I'll give you one perspective: a lot of enterprise apps are developed for Android as well, though not at all for Linux.
While using Linux, I may not be able to access my organization's Exchange server from Linux ( at least not without running quite a few hoops ) OR I can install one of the myriad suite of enterprise apps for Android that let you access your enterprise exchange.
Similarly, 2FA token generation apps for the enterprise are not all made for linux but you can install an android app for it.
Idea is: use linux for your workflow, android apps for connectivity to your organization's walled garden.
ChromeOS is an incredibly secure and simple base. There are a few Linux distributions that act like it (Fedora Silverblue, Endless OS) but they're not ideal for everyday use yet.
Why do you think Fedora Silverblue isn't ideal for everyday use? I'm going to try out F30 Silverblue here pretty soon, but I had heard that is was great, so I'm just curious what problems you've run into.
For example, the PyCharm Flatpak has difficulty understanding the window scaling setting I use, and appears unreadable. Some RPMs wouldn't install because they needed to write to /opt, but that may have been fixed. I had difficulty using external repos.
I'm running normal Fedora 30 now and tried Silverblue during the Fedora 28/Fedora 29 release cycles. I hear it's getting better but I'll give it another year or so.
Makes sense, thanks. My buddy said that installing RPMs was easy, but the more I hear the more I think that is bad information :-) The Silverblue docs seem to imply that you're really going against the grain by doing that and that it may not work. You also have to reboot after every install IIRC. I'm still gonna try it out but I may be on regular F30 pretty soon.
It is very secure. A lot of the Kernel Self Protection project patches that Kees Cook and other push into Linux upstream start out as patches they deploy to ChromeOS to keep users happy and secure. Look it up.
If you're mainly just going to be using a browser (which is true most of the time for me) I don't know why you would want to boot anything else. At the end of the day most operating systems I use are interchangeable for my workflow so unless you need a specific tool there's rarely a reason to use over over another.
ChromeOS power management is amazing, and makes 8-12 hours of battery life while using the browser a reality. Firefox saps the battery incredibly quickly, though I prefer to use it when that's not an issue. For me, the battery life is a huge technical value add, and is why I prefer to use linux via crouton on my acer c720 over installing it directly. I haven't tried the new Android app support but I think that will be huge as well for mobile-centric consumers.
Functional hardware accelerated video playback is a pretty big value to have (neither firefox nor chrome supports hwa video decoding on linux, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Hardware_video_accelera... ). It also has a much better system compositor than X11, actually shaking off the broken legacy cruft that Linux distros seem determined to cling on to.
The Best Buy qualifier makes it a lot harder. If you're willing to let that go, System 76 and Purism sell amazing devices with not only good Linux distros pre-installed, but also as much free software (close to 100%) throughout the whole stack, which is a real benefit to security and freedom.
If you weaken "turnkey" a bit to include installation you'll find that most Laptops on sale today will run the popular Linux distributions flawlessly.
Oh nice, that's great to hear! This was not really a deal breaker for me as I mostly use my laptop for work, but it was definitely frustrating when I was a student and used my laptop for everything.
I don't believe you. Maybe some obscure distro, but I tried multiple back in 2015/2016 and couldn't get it to work without some strange package to attempt to install Silverlight.
I think a lot of people underestimate how cool this actually is. I use a Pixelbook now as a main dev device (used to use a Mac like everyone else in the valley).
With Linux in ChromeOS, this thing now runs basically 3 OSs (Chrome/Web PWAs, Android, Linux) in one environment. What this means is that I open my app drawer, and I see app icons I can launch. I don't know or care what actual OS those apps are running on! It could be a PWA or an android app or a linux app and it works and runs the same as any of the other apps. All without compromising on the security isolation benefits of ChromeOS.
I use an Android app called Squid[1] for drawing and taking notes on my Pixelbook with the pencil. It is technically an android app, but it's easy to forget that because it just runs so perfectly and it's optimized for tablets and large screens. Same experience with apps like Todoist and a few mobile games I play. It really is a wonderful and seamless experience.
To install a Linux application, you explicitly have to open the Linux container command line (which is Debian Stretch) and run the install commands.
Ex: If I run 'apt install firefox', Firefox will be installed in the Linux container, but will be available to run from the ChromeOS app menu.
Edit:
Also, currently you need to explicitly go in the ChromeOS settings to download and install the Linux container. I'm not sure if this will change or not, but it is not currently included by default.
Sometimes only if you look for small details. The ChromeOS launcher mixes Chrome Apps, bookmarks, PWAs, and Android apps with only a small badge to differentiate if you have multiple of the same app (e.g. Keep Chrome app and Keep for Android).
But once they're running, don't they look and behave very differently? The last time I tried Android Firefox on ChromeOS, it had to quit to resize its window.
They don't really behave or look all that different. When was the last time you ran an Android app on ChromeOs? The original attempt that ChromeOs made at getting Android apps on ChromeOs back in 2015 or whatever was scrapped because it was buggy and had the sort of problems you describe.
I think the differences will be stark and obvious to those who remember the world pre-convergence. But a new generation will not know the differences, nor will they care.
For my parents' generation, TVs were a big deal. For me, I can hardly distinguish between a TV and a Radio and a Microwave and a Washer/Dryer -- they all have existed as long as I remember. But I can definitely tell the difference between an app written against User32/GDI/WinForms/VB versus one that uses the Android toolkit versus one in GTK+.
There's been a lot of work over the years to make most applications agnostic to the underlying toolkit and OS, including React Native, Flutter, Unity, Adobe Animate (formerly Macromedia Flash), and so forth.
Sounds awesome. I bought a chromebook last year but have not got Android nor Linux support. I dont think it ever will. Productivity is a bit limited. There are not many useful web apps or they are hard to find.
My $150 (Acer) chromebook has lasted me 5 years (and counting) and is still just as fast as the day I bought it.
My $1500 macbook pro that I bought at the same time got noticeably more sluggish over the years by comparison, and I've had to bring it in for repairs twice for hardware failures (once for hard drive cable, once for HDD itself) - I sold the MBP last year and bought a Lenovo.
Truly amazing. With this change, I could probably even get rid of the Lenovo and just have a single Chromebook for all my needs since all I really used the MBP for was the unixy CLI.
Considering that the Acer Chromebook probably has flash memory, I don't see how this is a fair comparison. I have a 2012 Macbook Air and Macbook Pro that have had no issues. The Macbook Air is my general around the house laptop and the MBP is used as a Plex box. Still do everything I need them to do and the only issue is the battery life of the Macbook Air since it's gone through way too many charge cycles.
So why is that Acer is able to afford an SSD in a $150 computer, but Apple can't afford an SSD in a $1500 computer? Heck, Apple still doesn't have SSDs in their latest gen (2019) iMacs...
The Acer is probably flash memory, not an SSD. The $1500 iMac has a "1 TB fusion drive" which is apparently a hybrid of flash memory and an HDD (and all iMacs have the option to be configured with an SSD). I have no idea why they don't have it by default. They probably have a bunch of data that shows that the main consumers of iMacs don't know the difference or don't care. I'm just pointing out that your comparison was not genuine because you compared a problem with a component on one laptop that the other doesn't have.
I as a consumer don't care if the comparison is apples to apples at a component level.
I am doing a high level comparison between laptop computers. One has been fast and reliable, the other has not. One was 10x more expensive than the other.
I don't care if the MBP had a quantum drive from the year 3000. If my user experience with it is worse than a Chromebook, I'm not buying another one.
According to Apple, the 5 year old Macbook Pro was only offered with "PCIe-based flash storage". So if you had an Acer from 5 years ago and a Macbook Pro you bought at the same time, you have an SSD in the MBP.
It definitely had a spinning disk. It was actually closer 6 years ago and it was a 2012 model I believe. It shipped with OS X Lion and got slower and slower with each OS X upgrade. By the time it had El Capitan it was a far cry from when I bought it in terms of snappiness to open programs.
This is arguably a deceptive title. Why not something more clear such as, "All Chromebooks will now support containers." Chromebooks are already running a modified Gentoo Linux kernel. They are already "Linux" laptops.
Chromebook users currently employ chroots to run non-Chromium userlands from Debian, Arch, etc. Ideally, they would like to run their own kernel, usually one they get in binary form from those public distributions such Debian, Arch, etc., but also kernels they compile themselves.
It is possible (=good) but still a pain to install one's own kernel on a Chromebook. The Google Corporation could, but is not, making that any easier.
Instead, what is happening here is that they are adding support for containers. Chromebook is still running Google's modified kernel.
Pure coincidence I am sure, but looking at how Microsoft is marketing using the term "Linux" we see the same thing. They like to use the word "Linux", but the user is still running a proprietary kernel. In that case, it is the Windows kernel.
Linux is a kernel. If you cannot compile it yourself and easily install it on your laptop, then whose "Linux laptop" is it, really? The issue is one of control.
It implies Google is working to make sure third party Linux distros work reasonably, presumably by backporting their fixes and mandating OSS drivers, and easy dev mode support.
From what I can tell, none of those things are true.
One thing to remember is that as of a month or so ago, there are serious limitations on the functionality of Linux apps. For instance, accessing your Google Drive files with Linux isn't straightforwardly possible, and another big one for me being that Linux apps cannot record audio. Additionally, backing up the Linux partition wasn't straightforward and wasn't a part of the normal 'Powerwash it and it restores' backup element of ChromeOS.
I tried to use this to reduce my dependence on a MBP, but found a number of these little gaps that just couldn't quite be filled. I'm hoping these get improved with time, but as of right now, it's promising, but not delivered.
It is rapidly improving. Relating to two of the items you mentioned: In just the last few months they added cloud backups for linux containers, and linux access for your google drive.
I switched from the mac for my full-time machine a few months ago and have been blown away.
It does two things really well and securely: web browsers and linux. These are the two things I need to do my job.
Completely agree. I switched full time to a Pixelbook from Mac after getting frustrated with the new Macbooks (hate the touchbar, and a Macbook with a stuck key is basically an unusable computer).
One more thing to add is that they just added the ability for Linux apps to output audio in the latest stable release, so don't think recording would be too far away, although that has greater security issues of course.
I've been doing this for a little while on a cheapo chromebook.
It works, but it is brutally slow and clunky (this is on a 2018 entry-level intel celeron n3350 + 4gb ram chromebook) to run something like firefox. It is usable, but you'll get frustrated fairly fast.
Unfortunately the same can be said about the chromebook in general - have more than one browser tab open on a javascript heavy page (e.g. large google doc + gmail + calendar) and its really slow there too anyway so I guess I cant hope for much.
I feel like web apps have got significantly more complex, while the compute in the entry level chromebooks has more or less stagnated over the past few years. Just doesn't feel like there is enough power to make things comfortable and seamless to use. I've used a couple of intel i5/i7 chromebooks and they've been lovely to use with snappy performance, but the price for that performance is approaching/exceeding that of a "real" laptop (sometimes wildly exceeding the price of a normal windows laptop, or even a mac for the case of Google's chromebooks) so it kinda defeats the point in my mind.
I used to recommend chromebooks to all non-tech savvy people who asked me (parents, relatives, friends etc), now I hesitate to do so because the performance is just not there unless you really pay huge sums.
The script heavy stuff in general is a pain in my experience. I have a 2995U + 4gb ram chromebook that just runs Arch, and gmail/drive/etc are crazy slow. Even scrolling through the newest stuff on thingiverse for an hour with however many loaded images is faster than some of google's pages/apps. On the plus side, Firefox seems to handle 50-100+ loaded tabs well as long as there isn't too much stuff going on with them.
Thanks for the heads up! I enabled layout.display-list.retain (two other options related to HW acceleration were already enabled), and it might be faster, but I'm not sure about that.
One thing I never quite understood is why is it so hard to install a regular GNU/Linux distro on a chromebook. Why is it not possible to just put a liveUSB in the USB port and install it like you would on any personal computer?
Chromebooks use Coreboot firmware with a specialized payload called Depthcharge. This bootloader is customized for ChromiumOS and doesn't boot Linux/Windows.
To install Linux/Windows on a Chromebook, you have to flash this firmware, usually replacing it with Coreboot with the Tianocore payload, which is a bootloader capable of booting other OS's. (MrChromeBox supplies this custom firmware for lots of devices)
Yea I feel like this article is pretty misleading. It would be better if Google officially supported removing the entire ChromeOS and doing a full install of any Linux distro you want. This isn't really running Linux on your Chromebook. It's running a chroot of another distro under their Linux kernel/GUI layer. It's pretty different.
It's not even a chroot. That's how crouton works.
Crostini, the google provided solution, actually runs all the "containers" under a KVM virtual machine. So it's even more abstracted.
Like others have said, once you install the Mr Chromebox stuff, you can technically run any flavor of linux you like.
The major issue you'll run into is support for wifi, the proper keyboard layout and audio. The GalliumOS team has built a custom kernel for a range of Chromebooks, though. I believe a lot of their work will be merged with the main kernel in the future, but its not there yet.
I run Gallium3-Beta (Xubuntu 18.04) on an old Toshiba Chromebook 2, and it runs like a dream (considering the hardware) with around 8 - 10 hours on the battery.
Something in the specialized firmware/BIOS prevents it, I think?
The only Chromebook I ever did this with was the original Chromebook Pixel, and flashing a regular BIOS onto it to let me treat it like any other computer required specifically opening the laptop up to remove the Write-Protect screw on the motherboard.
Yes - for security reasons. Chrome OS has a full verified boot chain, starting from the BIOS, like a smartphone.
You cannot tamper with Chrome OS or access user data without password even with physical access to the device.
None of this works with a 3rd party OS, so you have to disable the secured boot and possible re-flash a different BIOS (similar to unprotecting the bootloader on a phone).
And like most "security reasons" they just take away control from the user and give it to whoever implements that security.
Security against whom, i wonder. The narrative says, against malicious actors, but way more often than not, it ends up being security against the computer's owner.
>Chrome OS has a full verified boot chain, starting from the BIOS, like a smartphone. You cannot tamper with Chrome OS or access user data without password even with physical access to the device. [emphasis added]
Ooooh interesting, I'd love to read more about this.
Does this logic apply to iOS as well? (Can't evil maid an iPhone due to verified BIOS?) What about macOS?
CoreBoot, BIOS, and UEFI are alternatives to each other. While you might have firmware that has various compatibility modes, my understanding is that CoreBoot does not provide a BIOS interface at all, and you need the SeaBIOS payload if you want BIOS from CoreBoot.
Security. By default, Chromebooks use a trusted boot path. The boot sequence starts in ROM and the firmware image is verified during boot. Booting unsigned firmware is possible but slightly inconvenient by design, to ensure that no user would do this accidentally or as a result of malicious actions.
I don't see why this is specific to Chromebooks. On x86_64/UEFI, I can sign my Grub EFI loader, load my keys into secure book (delete the stock/microsoft ones), re-enable secure boot, password it and now I have a reasonable expectation that I am booting the OS I think I am.
It'd be nice if Google opened up their actual bootloader so you could do the same with Chromebooks without needing 3rd party tools.
Two main reasons. Chromebooks ship seabios as a legacy payload, but they do not explicitly test or support it for any particular use case. Second, chromeos kernel deviates from mainline and it takes a lot of time for the changes to make their way to the mainline kernel.
- Working hardware and driver stack - including HW video decoding/encoding and graphics acceleration (there are laptops that work with Linux well, but even the verified ones can be hit and miss at times - e.g. wierd Dell XPS issues with USB-C).
- Very good support for high-res retina screens (Linux is getting there but font rendering is still better on CrOS).
- Reliability - it's really hard to break a ChromeOS device (software-wise). It can almost always just be powerwashed and your next login completely restores it back to how you remember it. Don't underestimate this for less developer use-cases.
The last point is especially useful for schools and companies- having laptops which you can easily replace within minutes is very useful for many employees. Especially since CrOS comes with good enterprise management suite.
Thank you but I don't need help, my comment maybe wasn't really clear. I was just pointing out Snap as a good sandboxing tech for apps in the Linux world.
For sure. Snaps still unfortunately isn't extremely straight forward on the Debian install in Termina(maybe a normal Debian install as well, IDK, I don't normally run Debian) so I figured you might need help! :D
Snaps are nice though for lots of software things and overall a nicer experience than apt, the sandboxing is just icing on the cake.
This has been the big difference for me of using a Chromebook+Crostini vs installing Linux on a typical PC. The battery life on the chromebook just lasts forever and is buttery smooth out of the box while the laptops with linux installed have always had markedly worse battery life than when running their intended OS in my experience.
Maybe 10 years ago I would have agreed but nowadays not so much, the latest Ubuntu is very polished and I had a lot of success with it with completely non-technical users.
Personally it's not the UX that I'm afraid of but when random drivers don't work or updates break things. Once upon a time I enjoyed learning and doing that kind of thing but nowadays I just don't have the time.
Admittedly I haven't installed Linux for a few years and don't even have my own computer now so maybe the situation has improved.
Battery life, convenience of being able to wipe the whole thing and having your settings restored completely (if you're ok with storing everything with Google, of course)
>(if you're ok with storing everything with Google, of course)
*online. You don't really need to keep anything with google other than a log in. My kids have chromebooks, and a google account for logging in and machine control, but then once logged in, they have access to entirely non google resources. (outside of the browser).
... to do what?
You can vote to change the government in most countries, you can't with Google. But Google won't leak your data and will delete it when you request it. What do you trust the government to do better? Or what do you think google will do with it?
Edit: I understand you don't want Google to have your data, that is fully your choice. I'm just curious what risk you are concerned about.
> You can vote to change the government in most countries, you can't with Google
There's a point for the government. Google is basically beyond my influence. They can do whatever they want with nearly no public oversight.
Google might leak my data. Just like countless other private companies have leaked my data.
> what do you think google will do with it
god only know but the government already has all my sensitive information as it is. Warn about leaking SSN or tax information or addresses...but the government knows all that already. It's nothing new to them
Exactly, a private corporation has no public control/oversight board. Our government is run for and by the people. I wonder where this mindset was started.
Agreed. I'm of the mindset that the government is me basically. Maybe I disagree with them sometimes but I have the ability to change their behavior. I have no control over private companies (even if they are publiclly traded)
Chromebooks reach "end of life" after a few (edit: ≤ 6.5) years, effectively becoming software-defined garbage: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366
You can install Linux on some Chromebooks, but it's often a lot of work to disable the "press Space to erase your operating system" prompt. It would be better if all EoL Chromebooks received an update to disable secure boot, because secure boot stops being secure when it boots you to an unpatchable OS.