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> Many schools took advantage of deep discounts offered to educators for Chromebooks. This has less to do with Chromebook’s popularity and more with schools bu

> Many schools took advantage of deep discounts offered to educators for Chromebooks. This has less to do with Chromebook’s popularity and more with schools buying cheap laptops. It’s still a win for Linux, I guess. I wonder if the next generation of desktop users will grow up thinking our way of saving files and compiling software locally is crazy.

hulitu 5y ago
There is no win for linux. AFAIK the only linux thing is the kernel.
- jmillikin 5y ago
  Linux is the kernel, nothing more. It's notable that the two most popular consumer-oriented distributions of Linux (ChromeOS and Android) are distinguished by not shipping GNU tools or Gnome/KDE UIs.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    The name "Linux" carries more than one semantic payload. Linux in the technical sense is only the kernel, true. But in the social sense, it's also all the trappings of an underlying open source system that can be freely moulded by a user if desired. Android and Chrome OS fight against those things.
    - jmillikin 5y ago
      Nothing about using Linux implies the rest of the system is open-source, or even particularly customizable. Look at all the pseudo-embedded systems (routers, NAS appliances, TVs) that run Linux beneath a completely closed-source userland. There's a small population of hobbyists who build open-source platforms that use Linux as a component, but those have their own names (Debian, Gentoo) and there's no reason to go around intentionally confusing the layers.
- rektide 5y ago
  sommnelier is a wayland compositor built into chromeos which is quite capable & decent. there's been work in flight to make lacros, a chrome browser for chromeos that runs via wayland & is not part of the core os: this would allow the browser to be upgraded even after end of life for the device. but it also demonstrates that wayland support is quite good. there is indeed a lot a lot a lot of freedesktop style userland that's missing in chromeos. but it is still a remarkably capable linux userland. turns out most programs just dont depend on a lot of other services to be running, usually?

hulitu 5y ago

There is no win for linux. AFAIK the only linux thing is the kernel.

jmillikin 5y ago
Linux is the kernel, nothing more. It's notable that the two most popular consumer-oriented distributions of Linux (ChromeOS and Android) are distinguished by not shipping GNU tools or Gnome/KDE UIs.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  The name "Linux" carries more than one semantic payload. Linux in the technical sense is only the kernel, true. But in the social sense, it's also all the trappings of an underlying open source system that can be freely moulded by a user if desired. Android and Chrome OS fight against those things.
  - jmillikin 5y ago
    Nothing about using Linux implies the rest of the system is open-source, or even particularly customizable. Look at all the pseudo-embedded systems (routers, NAS appliances, TVs) that run Linux beneath a completely closed-source userland. There's a small population of hobbyists who build open-source platforms that use Linux as a component, but those have their own names (Debian, Gentoo) and there's no reason to go around intentionally confusing the layers.
rektide 5y ago
sommnelier is a wayland compositor built into chromeos which is quite capable & decent. there's been work in flight to make lacros, a chrome browser for chromeos that runs via wayland & is not part of the core os: this would allow the browser to be upgraded even after end of life for the device. but it also demonstrates that wayland support is quite good. there is indeed a lot a lot a lot of freedesktop style userland that's missing in chromeos. but it is still a remarkably capable linux userland. turns out most programs just dont depend on a lot of other services to be running, usually?