We created NayuOS for multiple reasons. We use Chromebooks, because they are great for developing web applications, but are afraid of standard ChromeOS capturing too much data (some passwords, history of browsing).
Another reason is that it is very difficult to use ChromeOS is China. It is the same for ChromiumOS.
Chinese internet is not very reliable (see http://www.nexedi.com/NXD-Internet.China). We needed reliable network. So we embedded in NayuOS a technology called Grandenet (http://www.grandenet.cn/) that provides IPv6 wherever we are.
This way, we can reliably connect to our company servers when we travel.
Also, we thought that it would be useful to have a local git command line, because we could not find any good web equivalents for this particular tool (Gitlab or Github are nice for reviewing code, but command line is required for rebasing and cleaning up the repository).
Then, we also included Flask on NayuOS in order to run a simple and configurable DAV server (the WebDAV server is not included yet, but git clone-able), which is useful when doing JavaScript development.
It looks as if they are just removing all the connections to Google services and making the chromebooks developer friendly with things such as git and npm preinstalled.
I've been playing around with Freon on ChromiumOS - it's really a nice solution to pushing pixels fast and I prefer its simplicity to that of Wayland or Mir. The performance I get out of an ARM GPU is very good.
Only problem I have with my Chromebook is the screen stinks.
How have you been playing with Freon, if you don't mind my asking? Specifically wondering, does it expose some GLES context that you can work in, is that passed through, or is that reserved for the compositor... if you have anything at all to share I'd be interested in that.
My tale of woe, which is really OT in this thread, is that I've been trying to get an Enlightenment WM to operate in accelerated mode on my Samsung Exynos-based chromebook that has a Mali T-604 graphics chip.
Enlightenment says it can support accelerated mode with either an OpenGL or GLES driver, so my impression is this should be technically possible (even if it can never be done in an X server running alongside Freon). I have got free-standing Xorg to run very fast on ALARM Arch Linux, using framebuffer driver, and Arch which provides a decently recent Enlightenment... but damned if I'm able to get the two to talk together and let the WM acknowledge the graphics capabilities of the hardware.
I know this has nothing to do with Freon but I am curious what you're doing with it nonetheless, and I saw an opportunity and thought I might be able to corner someone with more knowledge and get some answers at the same time.
NayuOS is related to the chinese word "Nayu" which implicitely means "Open the Universe".
Nayu is also the name of Nexedi subsidiary in China, in Shanghai Free Trade zone.
I always wondered why I saw many dozens of references to the Wayland project (from writers who think it might be a good idea to replace X) and no references, until today, to the idea of turning ChromeOS into something more like a regular Linux-based desktop/laptop OS.
(ChromeOS does not rely on X but rather has its own windowing system developed by Google.)
Writers hopeful about Wayland love to talk about how Gnome or KDE already supports of will soon support Wayland, despite the fact that for a desktop/laptop OS, support from one of the major browsers is much more important than support from Gnome or KDE. (Yes, I know that Gnome includes a web browser: that browser will not work however with all or even most of the sites a typical user needs to visit.) And it is far from certain whether any of the major browsers will ever run on Wayland (without XWayland or some other large X-compatibility library that relies on X) whereas of course one of the major open-source browsers already runs reliably on the windowing system and low-level graphical libraries in ChromeOS.
Firefox works on Wayland now. So, unless you have redefined Firefox as a non-major browser, "is far from certain whether any of the major browsers will ever run on Wayland" is flatly wrong. Also: https://github.com/01org/ozone-wayland
And the obvious point is that turning ChromeOS into a full linux distribution defeats the point of ChromeOS itself: to have very few "moving parts", and only those necessary to launch Chrome. Also, the bulk of the work "for wayland" is not wayland itself: it is KMS/Mesa/glamor/libinput, which are already used by ChromeOS (except for libinput, I think).
Making it targeted only for Chromebooks makes it really inaccessible for masses. I would prefer to use my Thinkpad anyway, and not to throw another few hundred bucks on a Chromebook that is technically inept.
Why couldn't you provide a generic image with Linux firmwares added? Like ArnoldTheBat does (and Neverware for its CloudReady, but its a closed product) with his build: http://arnoldthebat.co.uk/wordpress/chromiumos-special-build... Things like "It was not reliable because of problems due to unsupported hardware (such as trackpad issues, ...)" will fly away and you will get a new blood of users and devs to your project. Probably you could also tweak kernel config for better hardware compatibility or set of kernel features, since all in all its a fork and you have total control over it.
More than pre-installing packages I think it would be great to have a (working) package manager by default. That way users are able to choose whatever floats their boat.
I've been using Linuxbrew[1] (a Homebrew clone for Linux) on a Chromebook for a while, and it's the reason why I can actually use it for something else than browsing. It's a perfect fit if you need to install development tools or libraries.
Sweet its cool to see people building off of the Chromebook idea. This says its geared towards developers, however I can't find what exactly that means?
On the face, it looks like it comes with some important tools like git, npm, nodejs, ... preinstalled. Some tools for handling detachable crypto filesystems also might come in handy.
The Chromebook is actually a very developer-friendly platform, with a few notable exceptions; one of these is the dearth of software and difficulty of installing things in the developer-mode user's Crosh root shell.
This one neatly sidesteps that (from what I can tell) by installing a few tools you will probably need, and making every user logon happen in Guest mode. Therefore you'll have to get accustomed to connecting your external (possibly encrypted) user files if you want to do development work.
Basically take the popular paradigm of doing all of your "overhead/setup" work on vagrant hosts with chef scripts, and flip it over on its head.
Nexedi is an international company with offices in France, Germany, Japan and China (http://www.nexedi.com/contact), and NayuOS is made with much Free Software love. :)
Can you install this without opening up your Chromebook and flashing new firmware? Last time I looked into running anything but ChromeOS it seems you have to desolder a hardware write protection.
And if this works without that, do other non-google OSes work as well? My device is a Asus C300 without the SeaBIOS legacy emulation or anything like that.
Since NayuOS is still based on Chromium OS you should only need dev mode enabled to run it. It'll boot the same way that Chromium OS does. Legacy boot is only necessary for a traditional Linux distro that isn't using the Chrome OS format for kernel images.
For the record, the write protect is just a screw on Chrome OS devices and doesn't need to be desoldered.
With my Chromebook it was just a simple screw on the board. I have Ubuntu 14.04 on mine - the Arch Wiki has really good info on the general process and HugeGreenBug's Ubuntu flavor is customized for Chromebook
Edit: no firmware flashing needed. I use standard SeaBIOS
Nice idea. No idea if it's even remotely realistic but if you can add Docker then you can run pretty much everything. There are some ways of adding Docker to Chromebooks but then you lose all security benefits at the moment.
ChromeOS and ChromiumOS are both Gentoo-derivatives.
I just installed Gentoo on my fleet of chromebooks. One install image, takes about 5-10 minutes to modify/flash/partition/image a device. A lot less headaches, and runs screamingly fast. I have 12 users, all with the same stock image, running KDE Plasma 5.5 with Libreoffice and JACK running transparently in the background (A Poettering-free[0] experience).
Unless you're _really_ new to linux, and _really_ afraid of building a kernel, Gentoo is a powerful way to learn an operating system, and you'll end up with a stronger and more personal distribution than anything Redhat or Canonical could offer.
[+] [-] AdmiralAsshat|10 years ago|reply
Nonetheless, the more forks, the better. I think Chromebooks are great.
[+] [-] nayu|10 years ago|reply
Another reason is that it is very difficult to use ChromeOS is China. It is the same for ChromiumOS. Chinese internet is not very reliable (see http://www.nexedi.com/NXD-Internet.China). We needed reliable network. So we embedded in NayuOS a technology called Grandenet (http://www.grandenet.cn/) that provides IPv6 wherever we are.
This way, we can reliably connect to our company servers when we travel.
Also, we thought that it would be useful to have a local git command line, because we could not find any good web equivalents for this particular tool (Gitlab or Github are nice for reviewing code, but command line is required for rebasing and cleaning up the repository).
Then, we also included Flask on NayuOS in order to run a simple and configurable DAV server (the WebDAV server is not included yet, but git clone-able), which is useful when doing JavaScript development.
[+] [-] CCoffie|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] convivialdingo|10 years ago|reply
Only problem I have with my Chromebook is the screen stinks.
[+] [-] yebyen|10 years ago|reply
My tale of woe, which is really OT in this thread, is that I've been trying to get an Enlightenment WM to operate in accelerated mode on my Samsung Exynos-based chromebook that has a Mali T-604 graphics chip.
Enlightenment says it can support accelerated mode with either an OpenGL or GLES driver, so my impression is this should be technically possible (even if it can never be done in an X server running alongside Freon). I have got free-standing Xorg to run very fast on ALARM Arch Linux, using framebuffer driver, and Arch which provides a decently recent Enlightenment... but damned if I'm able to get the two to talk together and let the WM acknowledge the graphics capabilities of the hardware.
I know this has nothing to do with Freon but I am curious what you're doing with it nonetheless, and I saw an opportunity and thought I might be able to corner someone with more knowledge and get some answers at the same time.
[+] [-] tantalor|10 years ago|reply
Huh? What's a "Nayu"? How is that a fitting name?
[+] [-] nayu|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nayuki|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atrus|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hollerith|10 years ago|reply
(ChromeOS does not rely on X but rather has its own windowing system developed by Google.)
Writers hopeful about Wayland love to talk about how Gnome or KDE already supports of will soon support Wayland, despite the fact that for a desktop/laptop OS, support from one of the major browsers is much more important than support from Gnome or KDE. (Yes, I know that Gnome includes a web browser: that browser will not work however with all or even most of the sites a typical user needs to visit.) And it is far from certain whether any of the major browsers will ever run on Wayland (without XWayland or some other large X-compatibility library that relies on X) whereas of course one of the major open-source browsers already runs reliably on the windowing system and low-level graphical libraries in ChromeOS.
[+] [-] baghira|10 years ago|reply
And the obvious point is that turning ChromeOS into a full linux distribution defeats the point of ChromeOS itself: to have very few "moving parts", and only those necessary to launch Chrome. Also, the bulk of the work "for wayland" is not wayland itself: it is KMS/Mesa/glamor/libinput, which are already used by ChromeOS (except for libinput, I think).
[+] [-] pepijndevos|10 years ago|reply
I think the Crouton project has a section with more details about the setup, because people want to mix chroot windows and Chrome windows. Maybe relevant: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton/wiki/crouton-in-a-Chrom...
[+] [-] gtk40|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwertyuiop924|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnidorah|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marssaxman|10 years ago|reply
Do I understand correctly that this removes the need to hold down a special key combination every time you boot?
[+] [-] honua|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nayu|10 years ago|reply
No, you still have to hold Ctrl-D every time you boot.
[+] [-] tomaspollak|10 years ago|reply
More than pre-installing packages I think it would be great to have a (working) package manager by default. That way users are able to choose whatever floats their boat.
I've been using Linuxbrew[1] (a Homebrew clone for Linux) on a Chromebook for a while, and it's the reason why I can actually use it for something else than browsing. It's a perfect fit if you need to install development tools or libraries.
[1] http://linuxbrew.sh/
[+] [-] devsquid|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yebyen|10 years ago|reply
The Chromebook is actually a very developer-friendly platform, with a few notable exceptions; one of these is the dearth of software and difficulty of installing things in the developer-mode user's Crosh root shell.
This one neatly sidesteps that (from what I can tell) by installing a few tools you will probably need, and making every user logon happen in Guest mode. Therefore you'll have to get accustomed to connecting your external (possibly encrypted) user files if you want to do development work.
Basically take the popular paradigm of doing all of your "overhead/setup" work on vagrant hosts with chef scripts, and flip it over on its head.
[+] [-] petra|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nayu|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pepijndevos|10 years ago|reply
And if this works without that, do other non-google OSes work as well? My device is a Asus C300 without the SeaBIOS legacy emulation or anything like that.
[+] [-] smbarber|10 years ago|reply
For the record, the write protect is just a screw on Chrome OS devices and doesn't need to be desoldered.
[+] [-] honua|10 years ago|reply
Edit: no firmware flashing needed. I use standard SeaBIOS
[+] [-] jtblin|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonbanker|10 years ago|reply
I just installed Gentoo on my fleet of chromebooks. One install image, takes about 5-10 minutes to modify/flash/partition/image a device. A lot less headaches, and runs screamingly fast. I have 12 users, all with the same stock image, running KDE Plasma 5.5 with Libreoffice and JACK running transparently in the background (A Poettering-free[0] experience).
Unless you're _really_ new to linux, and _really_ afraid of building a kernel, Gentoo is a powerful way to learn an operating system, and you'll end up with a stronger and more personal distribution than anything Redhat or Canonical could offer.
0. http://www.bloodbathsoftworks.com/xylemon/xlennart.php
[+] [-] michaelmior|10 years ago|reply
Can anyone explain why this name is fitting?
[+] [-] nacs|10 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10996267
[+] [-] twog|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nayu|10 years ago|reply