- Verified boot backed by TPM.
- System services are heavily sandboxed: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/san...
- New userspace is written in Rust: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/dev...
- Web pages loaded on Chrome have no access to the device's filesystem, nor to user files.
- Android apps run inside a restricted container.
- Linux apps run inside a VM, which leverages KVM and a custom Rust VM monitor.
I think it'd be great if someone made a de-Googled fork of ChromeOS without all the Google telemetry and bloatware, because it'd be the perfect Linux distro for security-conscious individuals.
The hard problem of security is giving the user the power of a general-purpose machine without exposing them to the risks. "Don't run your favorite software lol" is not a valid approach to security. ChromeOS remains totally unsuitable for even casual usage, let alone anything serious.
Someone will, I'm sure, claim that the use of virtual machines is a solution. It isn't. The layers of virtualization in ChromeOS lead to atrocious performance, reliability, and functionality. I am not willing to tolerate half my programs living in a different universe from the other half, nor am I willing to tolerate uptime measured in hours.
One could argue that anything you can't do on a ChromeOS machine (or an equivalent Firefox one if that project were more complete) without running a VM is proprietary garbage. The other Apps you will run will work on some percentage of machines, the device you use have incomplete drivers, the window environments they developed for were not worth standardizing such that a browser has to provide the standards layer.
The only people I know who've had any sort of malware infection at all in the last 15 years are the ones who download and install random .exe files from spam emails and pirated TV streaming sites.
Since such a thing is currently unavailable, I'm inclined to try running ChromeOS, then having a headless Linux box next to it in the hopes that my customizing the headless Linux box will satisfy my need to customize my software environment.
For example, I'm inclined to try to keep most of my personal files on the headless Linux box.
https://chromeos.dev/en/posts/making-android-more-secure-wit...
It's been a while since I've given it a try, but I dislike ChomeOS for the same reason that I dislike MacOS. They make me feel like I'm wearing a straightjacket and get in my way.
And, of course, any OS that requires me to have an account on any other server is not fit for purpose (to me).
I don't understand this headline, was it written by a bot?
There's a reasonable argument that Chrome OS is Linux--or at least more so than Android is. But it's not so much that it's "the wrong kind of Linux" according to purists as the article says but that it mostly addresses a different use case than installing Fedora or Ubuntu and therefore, IMO, it generally makes sense to treat them separately unless your point is that some form of Linux (and *nix generally) has a pretty large market share on both desktop and mobile.
> We feel that a more accurate reckoning would be that Linux has now reached 7.23 per cent of Statcounter's usage figures, with ChromeOS at just over half: 57.4 per cent of the total.
Sorry but this is rewarding bad behavior by giving the article a click instead of pointing out how this is a bad headline.
We should not be excusing headlines like this by simple saying that the article has the answer.
It's nonsense to argue that Ubuntu and Fedora are "Linux" and Android is not. It is not nonsense to want to put Ubuntu and Fedora in the same bucket, which does not contain Android or Alpine. That bucket is GNU.
When we use the words to mean what they are (not using Linux to mean software other than Linux) the point that the author is trying to make becomes obvious.
Linux is just one piece, and also quite old; by your logic we should really just call it a GNU system. In fact, from a user perspective, a GNU/HURD or Debian GNU/kFreeBSD system far more closely resembles what you're calling Linux than, say, Android which literally uses the Linux kernel.
Ironic that this article would ignore Mac OS, a somewhat notable commercial Unix.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/united-st...
Have an Android phone? Technically yes. It runs the Linux kernel but not GNU (probably, unless you've installed a layer with gnu).
Have a Chrome OS device? It runs GNU/Linux and most have a user layer that can run Debian.
Have a Windows device? wsl exists and is quite nice. Lots of developers use it.
Is Windows Linux too now?
I don't think this is principled really beyond the fact that Google chose to use different branding whereas FOSS distro vendors actually called what they distributed "Linux." Sort of how Hyenas are phylogenetically feliform but most people consider them dogs.
Do you have some reference for this? I just did a quick survey of the people in the horse barn I'm typing this from and none of them consider hyenas to be dogs. I imagine some people do consider them to be dogs since in some cases they can have a passing resemblance, but I'm dubious that most people consider them dogs.
Now, I think most people mean "Is that running something that markets itself as Linux, at it's core?"
Even that disambiguation isn't great, though.
How? Last time I looked at this, I needed to install a dedicated Linux-Environment, which came with its own hiccups. That's not really what I would call out-of-the-box. The Android-Integration made a better impression.
Of course, they could base ChromeOS on Debian directly and be done with it, but then they'd lose the incredible ease of custom tailoring to the hardware that Gentoo offers.
In the same way one should ask, are ChromeOS-Installations also counted for the android-marketshare? Do WSL-Installations on windows count to the desktop-linux-share too? Does wine-usage count for windows-installations? They all are important, but also a bit special on their own. How do statistics handle them?
This is why android and chrome os don’t count. Those operating systems are different enough from my fedora workstation installation that proprietary drivers and software won’t be useful to me.
On the other hand someone using another distro like Debian or Arch does help.
Because when you write about about hardware manufacturers, and software vendors, “supporting” Linux - it is seemingly apparent, that “Linux”, consists of only computers of the “Intel” variety - from my experience.
three years+ daily solid operation, no tech support problems except very rare microphone problems.
If you do not change the peripherals, and the client uses a browser mostly, then "long way away" is just false in 2020s.
Like, click Firefox to browse the web. Click the folder to see your files. Click OpenOffice to write a document. Click yes to run updates. He even somehow installed Zoom himself and set it all up to make calls to his doctor.
Getting him to learn how to swipe, click the hamburger menu, and do basic shit on a smartphone was a pain in the dick.
NB: I dislike Linux.
This is a "ship of thessius" problem. At what point does the ship become a new ship? When it is no longer recognizable as the old ship.
