[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.