[dfaigonio]

Why does the Chrome OS team do anything the Chrome OS team does? They decided the best idea for low-end hardware is to run everything as a web app. They decided to make it practically useless without an Internet connection because clearly no one will use an ultraportable somewhere without Internet access. They decided to develop their own distro mostly from scratch because contributing to an existing project would be too easy, to useful, and would get them too much goodwill. They decided the best way to make the system easy to use was to split your files between local storage and the cloud so you don't know where anything is.

It's a stupid idea from start to finish. You shouldn't try to make sense of it.

And it depresses me. Its success demonstrates that Linux desktops could catch on in the mainstream market just fine if they had the marketing budget, brand recognition, and vendor support of Google. This team of idiots could have ended the hegemony of Microsoft and Apple for good.

[johnvaluk]

On the other hand, Chrome OS has finally ended my nightmare as the family IT support specialist. I have to help people who don't know what a "mouse" is, what a "browser" is, or that you can read the same email on multiple devices. When I switch them to a ChromeBook, life is much easier. Do they still have problems? Yes, because they don't understand the underlying concepts and face an enormous learning curve. But they don't get viruses anymore and nearly any problem is solved with a restart. Plus, Chrome OS is truly multiuser in the sense that anyone with a Google account can log into the device and access all of their online resources without affecting any other users, so I've been able to modify the owner's idea of what it means to share the device in a secure manner. Frankly, it's a godsend for some types of users who are incapable of maintaining any system running Windows, MacOS or a mainstream Linux distribution.

[tbyehl]

So much this.

Frankly, the more I use a ChromeBook myself, the less I want to use another mainstream OS for day-to-day computing. I don't game or do much photo / video editing so I go weeks at the time on the ChromeBook without reaching for something else. It's nice having a computer that I genuinely don't need to think about.

Next step is ditching my work-provided Windows laptop for a ChromeBook...

[keithpeter]

You can add the education market into that as well, for similar reasons.

Local storage is available on later instances of ChromeOS I gather.

[lunchables]

This entire screed is based on the incorrect premise that Chromebooks don't work offline.

https://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/everything-you-can-do-offline...

[dfaigonio]

Firstly, no it isn't. The fact that they need an Internet connection is just one of Chrome OS's many problems.

Secondly, I never claimed Chromebooks don't work offline. I claimed they are nearly useless offline, which they are. They default to storing things in the cloud and using web apps. Getting them to be useful offline requires effort from the user and special effort from the developers of any offline web apps. The fact that users have to keep track of where all their data and programs live is needless complexity which is quite opposed to Chrome OS's supposed focus on ease of use.

[jacksmith21006]

You do not need an Internet connection. You are way, way behind.

[hutzlibu]

Did you actually used ChromeOS?

Anyway, short answer: because they heavily customized and changed a lot of things. They could not have done this with an existing Distro so easy. And sad as it is -> their goal is and was not to help the linux desktop - it is to help the google Eco system. Cloud-Service. Webapp. Makes perfect sense. No matter how much you want them to support the things you (or me) want.

We linux users are not the target group, target group are ordinary newbs who like that everything just runs and don't like that their exe files somehow don't run anymore. But the ones who handle exe files per hand are rapidly declining I guess.

[pjmlp]

It was already declining in the late 90's.

Had Linux not appeared on the scene, BSD kept busy with their ongoing trial and UNIX like OSes would be surely much less relevant today.

[dfaigonio]

>Makes perfect sense.

Maybe so. And as I said, that makes me sad. People who work hard to develop full-featured and high-quality software fail to make headway, but people who cynically manipulate others to lock them in to one company while providing nothing of value make millions. It's perfectly rational and perfectly disgusting.

Chrome OS is worthless for its users. I don't much care how good it is for Google.

[redial]

> Linux desktops could catch on in the mainstream market just fine if they had the marketing budget, brand recognition, and vendor support of Google

The problem with Linux on the mainstream is Linux, it has nothing to do with not having a huge brand like Google's nor with marketing, just ask Dell. Linux offers exactly what the enterprise market needs and it is a huge success, far bigger than anyone in the 90s ever imagined. Linux does not offer what the mainstream market demands and no amount of marketing or brand recognition can change that.

[rileyphone]

Linux isn't the problem: with enough money and time, you could build an OS around Linux that a user can use just like MacOS or Windows. Sony built an operating system around FreeBSD for the PS4 that noone recognises as such. The problem is that open source software (which Linux necessarily attracts due to licensing and reputaion) is designed by people with a fundamentally different view of ergonomics, and the number of disparate HW components (audio, graphics, etc) create a similar number of software components that make integrating them cumbersome and frustrating.

[pjmlp]

The PS4 has very little from FreeBSD beyond the kernel.

[nkristoffersen]

Obviously time and money aren’t the problem. Look at windows phone. Microsoft wasn’t being frugal in marketing

[dfaigonio]

Linux can do whatever it damn well pleases. You can take Linux and turn it into the most feature-poor "easy-to-use" toy on the planet, as Google has demonstrated. The UI has little to do with the underlying technology.

The problems with the Linux desktop that I can see are poor driver support and a limited software selection. OEM support solves the driver support problem and Chrome OS demonstrates that people are willing to use a system with no software at all. What else makes it unsuitable for most users?

[jacksmith21006]

Could not disagree more. How ChromeOS works makes it so much more secure and easier to manage.