ChromeOS is splitting the browser from the OS, getting more Linux-y

[smoldesu]

> Previously ChromeOS was using a homemade graphics stack called "Freon," but now with Wayland, it'll be on the new and normal desktop Linux graphic stack.

More interesting than I thought it would be. Hopefully this means better upstream GPU support for the plethora of ARM tablets/laptops that run ChromeOS.

[nerdix]

This is good because Chrome on Wayland has been an adventure and not in a good way.

This will certainly mean that Wayland will become a first class citizen and be less prone to random breakage.

[1MachineElf]

It would be ironic if Microsoft took the OS, added Edge, and released EdgeOS running on Edgebooks, Edgeboxes, etc.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

That…feels very plausible? Microsoft has to be peeved at how much of the education market has been taken over by Chromebooks. Providing some locked down OS, with minimal specs, friendly to corporate management software, Teams preinstalled, etc feels like a pretty good move. The Chromebooks only work though an app store, so this idea could feed into Microsoft’s as well.

Unless Microsoft would rather target the cream of the market through their tablets.

Edit: then again, maybe they have become hooked on the Win11 telemetry + ad revenue. Stripped down OS has a harder time justifying the need to include Candy Crush.

[cykros]

Microsoft has had the sense to let Linux become the dominant OS on its cloud provider. Where it's the right tool for the job at hand, I suspect Nadella's Microsoft would be perfectly fine with being built on Linux.

[zer0zzz]

I’ve recently used a Samsung galaxy book 5g that goes currently for $260 on Amazon running windows on arm64 and I feel this could be an indicator of how they easily could do this.

[happymellon]

Microsoft selling consumer Linux?

That would be an interesting move.

[TrueSlacker0]

Will that result in longer than a 5 year support life? A LTS Chromebook or EdgeBook would be wonderful.

[verdverm]

would that make them our Edgelord?

[jauntywundrkind]

The really stunningly good ecosystem ripple effect of switching to Wayland is that anyone who wants to make hardware for Chromebooks now needs driver support for the one clear obvious huge target they should have had been targeting anyways, Wayland.

More directly obviously useful to most people though is just the fact that the shelf life of these units should hopefully be a lot longer. The OS might not longer get updates, but Chrome can keep upgrading & just run on whatever Wayland compositor is there.

[solarkraft]

Well, Wayland doesn't really depend on any drivers, but most Wayland compositors (as well as modern X11, as far as I know) depend on the Direct Rendering Manager/Infrastructure and related features. I suspect that Chrome OS already uses these, so there may not be a bit ecosystem difference from that side.

[sillywalk]

Project LaCros looks to be finally finished.

ChromeOS and Chrome browser can/will be updated separately, with Chrome being the same as the normal Linux version.

[dmazzoni]

I hope it was worth it. I worked at Google when the project was started, I think it was around 5 years ago.

One hell of a long and expensive refactor.

[samspenc]

I'm hoping this means we will be able to run Linux binaries on ChromeOS at some point - I'm specifically interesting in being able to run Visual Studio Code (for Linux) and some dev environments and use Chromebooks plus a Linux-compatible OS as my dev machine.

[Laremere]

This is already a thing: https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en

[sillywalk]

Very doubtful as running random binaries under ChromeOS would defeat the entire security model for ChromeOS.

[jauntywundrkind]

Crostini should already host a fine vscode. https://chromeos.dev/en/linux

ChromeOS seems to consider it an anti-goal for users to be using the OS like a general purpose OS. Crostini allows them to keep the rest of the system locked down, where-as just running vscode on ChromeOS directly would mean giving Vscode more unconstrained access.

[moondev]

You can already launch docker containers, lxc containers and windows, linux and even macos via KVM from crostini. You can even run nested virt inside those vms. Curious what the motivation is that those options do not address. Is it mainly resource allocation concerns?

[femboy]

Hopefully running Firefox becomes easier ;)

[podgib]

It would be hilarious if the European Commission forced Google to add a browser choice screen to Chrome OS like they did on Windows ;)

[1MachineElf]

Want to try a browser-focused OS experience that uses Firefox? Try Tails OS. It's the Tor Browser based on Firefox.

[daft_pink]

I don't really understand the point of turning ChromeOS into Linux. The point of ChromeOS used to be a hardened secure browser only computer that would work identically with your login across systems on the platform. If you want a Linux laptop, why not just buy a Linux laptop. Why use do you want Google's dumbed down implementation of Linux.

[sillywalk]

One of the main points of the project was for security reasons.

Updates to the Chrome browser build for ChromeOS came out later than the standard Linux/Windows/Mac Chrome builds because the special chromeos build needed time to be integrated/tested with the rest of ChromeOS.

With LaCros, the browser can be updated independently from the rest of the OS.

[freedomben]

They're not "turning ChromeOS into Linux." ChromeOS can and will still be a hardened secure browser-only computer that works identically with your login across systems on the platform. Having separate binaries for the UI shell and the Chrome browser doesn't nullify everything else. TFA even points out that users won't really notice any difference.

[fivre]

idk if you've used a chromeos device, but they have an infuriating update schedule where it seems like there are updates daily, and they _always_ require a full system reboot. they apparently can't be consolidated either, so half the time i'll reboot to apply one and immediately get a notification of another

this presumably allows them to ease that a bit and apply some updates with the system still running, with maybe a quicker browser-only restart

[pentagrama]

Wondering if they will let you uninstall Chrome now, I don't think so. Currently you can't even remove the Chrome icon from the task bar.

[unixhero]

Chromeos was Gentoo based at one point I believe.

[anonacct37]

As far as I know it still is. Just like the default image used for Google Kubernetes nodes, CoS.

[deafpolygon]

Probably needs to add more telemetry to the OS.

[NoZebra120vClip]

Microkernel architecture FTW.

[qbasic_forever]

ChromeOS is still using the plain old monolithic mainline Linux kernel.

[nektro]

what about fuschia?

[sillywalk]

They laid of a lot of the developers of Fuchsia.

[zer0zzz]

This is terrible. I use chromeos because I want a secure locked down browser not another shitty Linux distro.

[biblbroxxx]

They will not convert whole system into native nabraries like gtk or qt. It is about dividing chrome binaries in order to get easier update process for developers.