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Every device has its own kernel and drivers, which is signed and verified. See: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/verified-boot http

by fattire 10y ago

Every device has its own kernel and drivers, which is signed and verified. See: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/verified-boot https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/... If you can unlock your bootloader, you can build your own version of chromeos and the kernel, but trust me, it's not as good. You'll have a chromium-based OS, not chrome based-- it's a lot like the difference between Chromium vs. Chrome in Linux, only affecting the whole OS. I haven't done it in a few years, but I imagine that with the Android integration, even if it builds, you'll have more of a stock AOSP experience sans any Google cloud features. Good for freedom and privacy, but if you're bothering to replace the OS like that actual Linux may be a better call. But if you go for standard Linux, you may run into issues with hardware support, especially graphics acceleration... just sayin'. The closed-source graphics drivers written for ChromeOS may not play friendly with Xorg or whatever. Aside from potential issues w such blobs, I don't see any reason you couldn't unlock the bootloader and try updating your own kernel...

djsumdog 10y ago
Yea I know a few people who attempted open-source (mostly; drivers are still usually closed) phones sans Google/Amazon stores and services. They'd use F-droid/K9-mail/OpenStreepMaps/OwnCloud, etc. They mostly work, but you do lose a lot of the android ecosystem. One of my friends gave up after a year and went back to the Play Store/Gapps because she started writing her own Android apps to make up for what she was missing and just didn't have the time for it. I didn't realize ChromOS was in the same boat. That's really shit. In traditional Linux, a lot of drivers get merged right into the tree. Even for proprietary drivers/blobs, we have linux-firmware. For the most part, the initrd files on Arch/Debian/Ubuntu can load a lot of modern hardware. I wish Google Android/Chrome devs would get their shit together and stop this individual build madness. An initrd full of drivers and linux-firmware do not take up that much space, and many phones now have the footprint of tiny laptops vs the old <8GB tiny flash roms. Google wields a heavy hand with their (no-so-)open handset alliance (OHA). They can get manufactures to at least commit their blobs to a standard google-firmware package and keep a fork of their Kernel that builds all major drivers into a standard initrd package. Manufactures could always strip out all the crap for their custom ROMS, but this would allow AOSP to just run, out of the box, like Windows 10 or Ubuntu, on a large chunk of hardware. Google's decisions in Android structure feel asinine.
- fattire 10y ago
  I think it's not so much as the vendors of the graphics card and such that only released closed blobs to go with the open drivers in the kernel. And while they may work with say, ChromeOS, getting them to work on Linux isn't as straightforward. Android has a similar issue, though most of the time people aren't jumping from Android to another OS..

by fattire 10y ago

djsumdog 10y ago

Yea I know a few people who attempted open-source (mostly; drivers are still usually closed) phones sans Google/Amazon stores and services. They'd use F-droid/K9-mail/OpenStreepMaps/OwnCloud, etc. They mostly work, but you do lose a lot of the android ecosystem. One of my friends gave up after a year and went back to the Play Store/Gapps because she started writing her own Android apps to make up for what she was missing and just didn't have the time for it. I didn't realize ChromOS was in the same boat. That's really shit. In traditional Linux, a lot of drivers get merged right into the tree. Even for proprietary drivers/blobs, we have linux-firmware. For the most part, the initrd files on Arch/Debian/Ubuntu can load a lot of modern hardware. I wish Google Android/Chrome devs would get their shit together and stop this individual build madness. An initrd full of drivers and linux-firmware do not take up that much space, and many phones now have the footprint of tiny laptops vs the old <8GB tiny flash roms. Google wields a heavy hand with their (no-so-)open handset alliance (OHA). They can get manufactures to at least commit their blobs to a standard google-firmware package and keep a fork of their Kernel that builds all major drivers into a standard initrd package. Manufactures could always strip out all the crap for their custom ROMS, but this would allow AOSP to just run, out of the box, like Windows 10 or Ubuntu, on a large chunk of hardware. Google's decisions in Android structure feel asinine.

fattire 10y ago
I think it's not so much as the vendors of the graphics card and such that only released closed blobs to go with the open drivers in the kernel. And while they may work with say, ChromeOS, getting them to work on Linux isn't as straightforward. Android has a similar issue, though most of the time people aren't jumping from Android to another OS..