[jeffbee]

The number of people who have "installed linux" other than ChromeOS on a Chromebook is probably in the low single digits, while the ChromeOS installed user base is in the hundreds of millions. For any given thing someone is going to try to put linux on that thing, but it is not a common use case for Chromebooks that we need to discuss.

[stasomatic]

I was genuinely asking. In “my circles” a Chromebook is a cheap laptop that one can install Linux on. As in, “oh, I just picked up this used Lenovo Chromebook and installed Ubuntu on it”.

[jeffbee]

You'll get a more informative answer from them. I couldn't speak to their motivations. But I certainly wouldn't advise doing it. ChromeOS has better security and performance than Ubuntu, and it automatically updates things like peripheral firmware that Ubuntu isn't even aware of.

It feels like the wrong tool for the job in both directions. If you wanted a host platform for Ubuntu you'd choose something else, and if you wanted platform software for a Chromebook ChromeOS is the right choice.

[somebehemoth]

In the real world, Chromebooks are excellent candidates to install Linux. They are highly compatible, low power, excellent size/weight, and run great. You don't sound like a person who has any real world experience with this topic despite the authoritative tone in your responses.

[toraway]

Battery management tends to be best-in-class on Chromebooks, it's far from certain that you'll get anything nearly as good after installing 3rd party Linux on it. That's my #1 reason for not even considering it (despite having installed Linux on many different Chromebooks years ago when they were new and ChromeOS was still literally just a browser).

My <$200 ARM Chromebook got around 12-14 hours battery life new (though as with my M1 Macbook has degraded to probably 70% capacity after 2-3 years). It draws essentially no power in standby (ChromeOS will enter an ultra low-power hibernate-like state seamlessly after a while). I've opened it up a month after last using it and it turns on in <10 seconds having lost a couple percent.

Updates are seamless and add like 5 seconds to boot time when they apply during a restart (thanks to ChromeOS A/B update model there's no loading spinner or anything, you reboot and it's done. Update countdown extortion a la Windows isn't a thing either, you can stay on an non-updated Chromebook for months without a reboot and the most you'll see is the same passive "Click Restart to Update" button in the notification area.

I use the built-in Linux VM all the time, it runs GUI apps like VS Code without any issues, and my ARM Chromebook runs all sorts of regular Arm64 Debian builds for GUI or terminal out of the box. I turned off the Play Store for Android Support, in the past when Linux support was weaker and web APIs in general weren't as capable I needed it for some specific apps but don't really have a need at this point.

The security model on ChromeOS means that untrusted scripts/installers running in the Linux VM are completely isolated from anything on the browser so you (or your proverbial Grandma) don't have to worry about credential stealers/ransomware/malware. You can copy files between the ChromeOS filesystem and the LinuxVM filesystem but a process running in Linux can't cross that boundary and are confined to the sandbox.

Plus, very much unlike my Macbook, I can actually install an app from Github or compile myself without 7 clicks and three different dialogs each time (as is the case with Apple's aggravating security hassleware on MacOS Sequoia). Proving you can have a heavily locked down, secure model without actively making the user experience as miserable as possible (to "encourage" use of the built-in app store).

It's easily the least intrusive OS experience of all the major OSes, and completely gets out of the way without drawing attention to itself. And sure, Google is an advertising company, I get it, but my Macbook advertises iCloud products and Apple TV shows to me more than anything on my Chromebook.

With the 10 year Chromebook support policy, I've got a crazy amount of life out of all of my Chromebooks. It really is liberating having an OS that de-emphasizes its own existence in a world where I have to fight ever changing MacOS deprecation and security restrictions and Windows bloatware being thrown over the fence in every other update.

[whodidntante]

Just use Chromebook via Crostini to remote access a headless Linux box. For me, the Chromebook is the right tool in both directions.

[satvikpendem]

I'm not going to buy a machine just to remote into another machine when I could've just bought a proper machine in the first place.

[whodidntante]

Not sure I understand why you would not want to separate your personal machine from your dev machine. Even more importantly, I do not know what you want to tie yourself to a piece of hardware.

I like having multiple personal machines that are always in sync with each other. I also like have multiple dev machines that I don't care if I (or my AI) messes them up.

[whyagaindavid]

That does not make sense. Many people don't want 1TB RAM machines to carry around.

[Topfi]

> ChromeOS has better security and performance than Ubuntu [...]

I'm going to need a citation on that, especially performance. Doubly so if Crostini is put into the mix.

> [...] updates things like peripheral firmware that Ubuntu isn't even aware of.

Like what? WiFi cards, etc.? Isn't that generally in kernel already? What kind of updates do you think are not done by Ubuntu or another Linux distro?

Last I tried ChromeOS was on the Pixel Slate way back when. A buggy, unstable, clearly not properly tested, unperformed mess that I would not wish upon my enemies. Glad to see it has improved to usable now, but that it is better than any other Linux distros, I can't say how considering even being on par with e.g. Fedora would have been a miracle not to long ago.

Happy to admit that purely on the UI/UX, ChromeOS is very solid in my opinion, arguably and subjectively the most consistent and user friendly designed desktop environment I know. Far more consistent than anything MSFT or Apple have provided in quite some time, everything looks like it should, placement is easy to grasp and reliable with a clear identity. Consistency wise, only Gnome can hold a candle to the strictness with which the ChromeOS team execute their vision, though there is the clear divergence in the Gnome team pushing new UX innovations and concepts even if they are controversial and may need to time to learn, whilst the ChromeOS team seems purely focused on the most clearly easy to master approach one can take.

[jeffbee]

> I'm going to need a citation on that, especially performance

Multiple reasons. ChromeOS ships an optimized, platform-specific kernel, built using LLVM with LTO and AutoFDO. No other distro even attempts this. The only one that has even considered it is CachyOS that offers optional LTO, or Gentoo, where you can DIY LTO, but neither supports FDO.

Another reason is that Chrome GPU acceleration actually works on ChromeOS. IPU webcams work, too. On Fedora, Arch, and others you'll be patching and rebuilding kernels to get IPU.

> Like what? WiFi cards, etc.? Isn't that generally in kernel already?

This is another aspect where the ecosystem is the advantage, not the technical details. Chromebook makers are required to furnish firmware updates. ChromeOS will update (silently, without user intervention or notice) everything in a Chromebook: SSD controllers, battery management, radios, touchpad, USB PD controllers, the Titan security chip, the CPU, whatever. This is very different from the situation on random Linux+hardware combinations where the only source for many of these updates, if they are available at all, would be to reboot to Windows.

[Topfi]

> ChromeOS ships an optimized, platform-specific kernel, built using LLVM with LTO and AutoFDO.

Ok. How significant is the difference they gain from that? If this yields such major gains, there must be benchmarks showcasing it. At the same time, there must be reasons why something isn't widely adopted if it can provided tangible upsides. Would be very surprised if Clear Linux (rip) and similar in spirit distros didn't go far beyond those optimisations, if they can yield measurable benefits. Even then though, there are measurable performance tradeoffs for anything running via Crostini which I know for a fact any compile time optimisations won't make up.

> [...] where the ecosystem is the advantage, not the technical details. [...] SSD controllers, battery management, radios, touchpad, USB PD controllers, the Titan security chip, the CPU, whatever.

I just checked and I think you are confused. ChromeOS uses fwupd [0] for those things, literally the same toolset and even sources (LVFS) to e.g. Ubuntu [1]. There is no difference in ecosystem, there is no advantage for ChromeOS here. I have to also point out that these are not "silently, without user intervention or notice", Google says so themselves [2] (except for UEFI/firmware but that was the only one you excluded in that list). Fortunately too, you wouldn't want ChromeOS (or any OS really) to do such major changes silently for many good reasons.

The "technical details" are important here. They are the same, they are not automatic, they can't be superior one way or the other. It is really neat that these solutions are so robust and reliable users of ChromeOS can start to think they must be some special secret sauce, when in fact they are just FOSS solutions we have had for a while. Heck, even the verification/testing isn't unique to ChromeOS.

> [...] random Linux+hardware combinations where the only source for many of these updates, if they are available at all, would be to reboot to Windows.

This does both Chrome OS and the FOSS projects it is built around a disservice and is not true. And not just because I can tell more than one instance where using Windows on a newly released laptop during the early Renoir days yielded driver issues which were unresolvable because Windows Update found it necessary to force a faulty AMD driver onto my system every time I provided a network connection, even after I manually tried to suppress that specific update and had already installed the proper driver, all while Renoir support in the then current Linux kernel was flawless out of the box along with Wifi, touch screen, etc.

It is great if everything feels polished and I feel the UX is great on ChromeOS, which may lead someone to think it is better than alternatives even where it can't be. But in regard to updates, how could they be, they are literally using the same solution with the ChromeOS team being happy to give credit and admit such.

[0] https://developers.google.com/chromeos/peripherals/fwupd-gui...

[1] https://documentation.ubuntu.com/project/SRU/reference/excep...

[2] https://developers.google.com/chromeos/peripherals/fwupd-gui...

[coffe2mug]

> when in fact they are just FOSS solutions we have had for a while. Heck, even the verification/testing isn't unique to ChromeOS.

You answered it yourself (last paragraph). The main point is everything is in FOSS but not packaged like chromeos.

I strongly want bluefin/silverblue/bazzite etc to succeed but even installation is PITA. UI is not really that polished. Whether or not great one like proper integration (a.k.a like Apple) like passkey in Google Chrome/Android etc.

- Installer of bluefin etc takes super long - issue with btrfs - no idea. Dev says upstream issue - not us. - flatpak is still pain for normies - we wanted to deploy it to a large compter pool - ecosystem is controlled by Google. So fewer failures with hardware.

- And polish (like you say). Why can't <distro> make it so that uefi etc is hidden?

- Normies expect sleep to work. This is still not perfect with distro (not their fault).

Many including me - want OS to be like an appliance. Just works.

[omnifischer]

Have you tried configuring secure boot - with - every single protection on Ubuntu /any distro?

Just google: Mathew Garrett On The State Of Boot Security implement everything and comeback.

Maybe slate with android? If you disable android in ChromeOS it a dream to use. Everything just works.

And remember normal people (i.e outside USA) already have Android phone. They just login and use. All passkeys etc. synced and running. All these are a pain in fedora etc.

[tom_alexander]

FWIW I'm one of those people. I have an old rotting pixelbook that I installed Linux on back-in-the-day thanks to Mr. Chromebox. It was a huge improvement over chromeos but I'd never buy a chromebook to install Linux on it again because there was too many small annoyances like needing to fix the keymap every time I did a clean install (the caps lock key was bound to super and I vaguely recall some craziness around the higher function keys), and sound didn't work.