6 ms·

I think the question is, why ChromeOS instead of a Linux?

by duped 4y ago

nrp 4y ago
In practice, full, stable hardware compatibility and battery life. The Linux experience on the Framework Laptop on recent distros (e.g. Ubuntu 22.04.1) is solid, but battery life will still generally be better running Ubuntu on top of ChromeOS.
- r-w 4y ago
  Interesting. Do we have a concrete reason why, e.g., TLP[0] falls short of the power management features offered on other OSes? [0]: https://linrunner.de/tlp/ https://linrunner.de/tlp/
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    One reason is all the binary artifacts are peak-optimized for the platform and this yields significant, often 10-20% lower CPU usage than plain vanilla binaries offered by all other Linux distributions. This includes the kernel, which in ChromeOS is built with LLVM with profile-guided optimization. Faster software translates directly to longer battery life. Every other distribution is years behind Google in terms of tooling.
    - binkHN 4y ago
      > Every other distribution is years behind Google in terms of tooling. Can you expand on this? Perhaps a URL with more detail?
      - jeffbee 4y ago
        I'm not sure if there are any single good URLs I can give you. The best way to learn is to read the chromiumos repo and see how they build the image, how they collect and deploy profiles, etc. You can also look at the mailing list of clang-built-linux to see how their kernel is built with clang and how they integrated that with their profile pipeline. In the end though it is cultural and not technical. Debian will bend over backwards to make sure That One Guy can still install the latest version on his old Centaur CPU, from floppies. ChromeOS is laser-targeted for specific, allow-listed hardware platforms. If you are philosophically committed to the eternal comfort of That One Guy, the Debian way makes more sense. If you just want software that's faster and more secure, ChromeOS has the better way.
        pksebben 4y ago
        I'd just like to put a vote of confidence in for That Guy, I think we should absolutely have an option for them. Which is a roundabout way of saying; it's critically important that we don't over-optimize for the central, happy path (just wanna browse securely on whatever hardware ya got). The most interesting things (and the most valuable) frequently come from the edge cases, which are absolutely supported by keeping an eye on the needs of "That One Guy". Unix interoperability has given us a bounty of awesome shit and I anticipate it will continue to do so.
  - caskstrength 4y ago
    We don't because it doesn't. Battery life of ThinkPad that supports Linux with TLP installed and properly configured will be very similar to Windows. And to address FUD from other reply to your question: AFAIK official Firefox builds for Linux use PGO as well, however PGO has quite less impact on battery life than what another commenter suggests.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  The usual reason for a lot of those boil down to "poor driver support", but this is the same hardware with what I would presume is the same Linux kernel so same drivers, so what's the difference?
  - duped 4y ago
    The usual reason is that you can't enable hibernate with disk encryption
    - cbsmith 4y ago
      It tends to specifically be an issue with encrypted swap, because encrypted swap uses a random ephemeral encryption key. Honestly, I think in a lot of cases it makes sense to simply There are solutions for this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnableHibernateWithEncryptedSwap https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnableHibernateWithEncrypt... I think the real challenge here is for distro vendors to figure out how to provide a better user experience around this. There's no reason that the ephemeral key can't be stored in a sealed state that can be recovered as the machine wakes. There are obviously some security implications to this, but I think it's fair to say that a lot of users would prefer making that trade-off.
      - r2binx 4y ago
        Why use another encrypted partition instead of putting a swap partition/file on the same with LVM/btrfs?
        cbsmith 4y ago
        There's a lot of security models that rely on RAM being more difficult for an attacker to access than disk (as you can imagine it is much easier to ensure things stored to disk are resistant to compromise than to ensure that nothing in working memory is usable by an attacker). Swap is that in between case where storage is memory, so that creates a unique challenge. What you want is that if someone steals your hibernated laptop, that absent a way to securely authenticate themselves as you, they can't restore the working memory of your laptop. If you think about it, if they could, much of the point of many security precautions would be lost.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jagrsw 4y ago
Biased opinion here (working for Google). I love Linux and I would consider myself a power user (understanding HW arch, working with kernel sources). Basic Chromebook apps (+ Play Store) are something that "just work" for 80% of time for my use-cases (which is, browser and ssh-ing into a power machine in ze cloud/DC). I also have rather good understanding of threat models here, and the quality of the sandboxes and HW roots-of-trust, hardening and software isolation on a typical Chromebook, so it gives me a relative piece of mind for specific use-cases (personal/family files etc.). Supporting an extended family, if they can get used to Chromebooks (it covers 99% of their needs, esp. that Android apps can be installed here) is a bliss. Customizing Linux is mental fun, but on a road you probably something that just works, and typical Linux is rough at edges - GFX support, hibernation, esp. if you don't want to stick to some LTS distro, b/c you always need this newer package for dev purposes or tinkering. The remaining 15% is covered by a VM, which seems really nicely integrated (X11 proxy etc). The remaining remaining 5% cannot be covered - custom kernels, custom USB drivers, occasional need to use Windows, but that's fine, I can do that on a desktop or on some random, cheap, low-power laptop. In essence, it's just a thin client on steroids, which almost always works in its basic form. But if you want something more interesting, there's always a VM with some Linux distro, or Android apps via the Play Store. But these are optional and don't affect stability of the core system, if you don't use them.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  I'm the poster of the original comment, and I don't work for Google, but your comment pretty much summed up perfectly my thoughts as well, and is a big reason why I'm a ChromeOS fan.
- mkozlows 4y ago
  I agree that there are tons of great use cases for Chromebooks (I've owned like eight of them, including the Chromebook Pixel, and love them), but I also think that once you start getting into Android or Linux-heavy use cases, native devices are better than Chromebooks. An Android tablet is a muuuuuch better experience for running Android apps than the Pixel Slate. A Framework running Fedora is a muuuuuch better experience for doing dev work than a Chromebook. ChromeOS is great when used for what it is, and it's cool that it can flex to handle edge casey things with VMs. But if the VM stuff is most of what you want to do, just go a different way.
LegitShady 4y ago
https://frame.work/ca/en/linux https://frame.work/ca/en/linux don't they already support this on the existing framework?
paxys 4y ago
You can actually recommend ChromeOS to your non technical friends
ufmace 4y ago
Personally, I chose ChromeOS as the bare-metal OS for my laptop because I think it's the best of both worlds: For web browser-based stuff, I have a constantly-updated state of the art browser with full vendor-backed hardware support for everything around graphics, sound, USB, Bluetooth, etc, anything else I might want, plus probably the best sandboxing you can get as far as protecting the core system from any malicious web exploits. It also works rather well in tablet mode with convertible devices. IME, getting all of this on bare-metal Linux and having it stay working for years is very hit-or-miss. For linuxy CLI stuff, I have a built-in Linux container with a nice terminal. Everything I've wanted to do as far as CLI stuff works great, including Vim + Tmux, developing and compiling in any language, systemd services, docker and k8s CLI support. I've opened at least a dozen or so PRs on various open-source projects and maintained server clusters working entirely on a Chromebook. All the driver and display stuff is taken care of by ChromeOS so I never have to mess with config for it.
staticassertion 4y ago
I have a whole bunch of reasons. ChromeOS has a great separation of concerns and isolation of environments. I have my work profile and my personal profile, which are totally separate. I have my browser environment and my dev VM, which are totally separate. Different activities are cleanly partitioned. This has obvious security benefits but also is just a really nice, simple way to manage the system. I can fuck up a dev VM without impacting anything else, I can click random links on my personal profile without impacting work, etc. It also just does what I want it to do. I browse the internet, I program. It's good for those things. So... why Linux?
- rasengan0 4y ago
  I too enjoy ChromeOS but how do you play a DVD? [1] [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Crostini/comments/b680wa/external_dvd_player/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Crostini/comments/b680wa/external_d...
  - staticassertion 4y ago
    No idea, I haven't been in the presence of a DVD in years
Arainach 4y ago
Biased opinion: I work on ChromeOS at Google Biased but informed opinion: I own a Framework Laptop running Ubuntu 22.04. Linux on a server or a desktop isn't so bad. Linux on a laptop is awful. Hibernation isn't supported. Battery life is mediocre, and battery drain in sleep is significant. If I close the lid on my Framework at 75% and come back the next day, it will be at 25%. If I come back in 3 days, it will be completely dead. Even on a device designed to support Linux (Framework, Thinkpad, whatever) the Bluetooth experience is....err......well, if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything? ChromeOS isn't perfect, but as a laptop I'd much rather run it (with Crostini to get a Linux development environment) any day.
- cbsmith 4y ago
  System76 seems to have finally gotten to the bottom of the battery issues with their Lemur Pro. It's all about the drivers, and getting drivers that do power management right for devices that are miserly is surprisingly difficult.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    Can you confirm this for your own device? I am really waiting for a linux laptop, which is truly mobile. I also rather went with chromebooks so far.
    - cbsmith 4y ago
      Note personally (all my laptops are provided by work, and they don't do System76 :-(), but you don't have to look far to see people talking about the battery life: https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/n235vc/a_lemur_pro_review_months_later/ https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/n235vc/a_lemur_pr...
- binkHN 4y ago
  I concur. While I know all the world is Linux, I run OpenBSD on many of my hobby systems. I love OpenBSD’s simplicity, but, IMHO, it’s missing too many things to be a good laptop OS. With ChromeOS I get the support a laptop environment requires, while still having the Debian VM to take things further.
jrm4 4y ago
I appreciate the folks here being open about their biased opinions, because they are completely out of line with the reality I've seen. I teach IT in a college and I run a non-profit the refurbishes computers. I have not seen a remotely significant difference between ChromeOS and Linux (with Chrome Installed) for the vast majority of users. It is true that Linux on ChromeOS is annoyingly fiddly and my suspicion is that this is the Google mind (perhaps subconsciously) not wanting to reveal how generally unnecessary "ChromeOS" would be in a world that collectively "knew that the Linux Desktop existed." And I do mean this "without modification," i.e. most of your top 20ish Distrowatch distros fare perfectly well here.
- yunohn 4y ago
  > remotely significant difference between ChromeOS and Linux (with Chrome Installed) for the vast majority of users You provide IT support, eg for school kids, and somehow they grok Linux just as well as a browser? That is not my experience.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    No, I mean they turn on computer, there's a Chrome icon, and a start menu etc etc. It's pretty much the same experience. I'm not sure if they literally can much tell the difference.
hollerith 4y ago
ChromeOS (especially when "pre-installed", as is the case here) is much more secure than Linux, IMO.

I think the question is, why ChromeOS instead of a Linux?

by duped 4y ago

I think the question is, why ChromeOS instead of a Linux?

nrp 4y ago

In practice, full, stable hardware compatibility and battery life. The Linux experience on the Framework Laptop on recent distros (e.g. Ubuntu 22.04.1) is solid, but battery life will still generally be better running Ubuntu on top of ChromeOS.

r-w 4y ago
Interesting. Do we have a concrete reason why, e.g., TLP[0] falls short of the power management features offered on other OSes? [0]: https://linrunner.de/tlp/ https://linrunner.de/tlp/
- jeffbee 4y ago
  One reason is all the binary artifacts are peak-optimized for the platform and this yields significant, often 10-20% lower CPU usage than plain vanilla binaries offered by all other Linux distributions. This includes the kernel, which in ChromeOS is built with LLVM with profile-guided optimization. Faster software translates directly to longer battery life. Every other distribution is years behind Google in terms of tooling.
  - binkHN 4y ago
    > Every other distribution is years behind Google in terms of tooling. Can you expand on this? Perhaps a URL with more detail?
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      I'm not sure if there are any single good URLs I can give you. The best way to learn is to read the chromiumos repo and see how they build the image, how they collect and deploy profiles, etc. You can also look at the mailing list of clang-built-linux to see how their kernel is built with clang and how they integrated that with their profile pipeline. In the end though it is cultural and not technical. Debian will bend over backwards to make sure That One Guy can still install the latest version on his old Centaur CPU, from floppies. ChromeOS is laser-targeted for specific, allow-listed hardware platforms. If you are philosophically committed to the eternal comfort of That One Guy, the Debian way makes more sense. If you just want software that's faster and more secure, ChromeOS has the better way.
      - pksebben 4y ago
        I'd just like to put a vote of confidence in for That Guy, I think we should absolutely have an option for them. Which is a roundabout way of saying; it's critically important that we don't over-optimize for the central, happy path (just wanna browse securely on whatever hardware ya got). The most interesting things (and the most valuable) frequently come from the edge cases, which are absolutely supported by keeping an eye on the needs of "That One Guy". Unix interoperability has given us a bounty of awesome shit and I anticipate it will continue to do so.
- caskstrength 4y ago
  We don't because it doesn't. Battery life of ThinkPad that supports Linux with TLP installed and properly configured will be very similar to Windows. And to address FUD from other reply to your question: AFAIK official Firefox builds for Linux use PGO as well, however PGO has quite less impact on battery life than what another commenter suggests.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
The usual reason for a lot of those boil down to "poor driver support", but this is the same hardware with what I would presume is the same Linux kernel so same drivers, so what's the difference?
- duped 4y ago
  The usual reason is that you can't enable hibernate with disk encryption
  - cbsmith 4y ago
    It tends to specifically be an issue with encrypted swap, because encrypted swap uses a random ephemeral encryption key. Honestly, I think in a lot of cases it makes sense to simply There are solutions for this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnableHibernateWithEncryptedSwap https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnableHibernateWithEncrypt... I think the real challenge here is for distro vendors to figure out how to provide a better user experience around this. There's no reason that the ephemeral key can't be stored in a sealed state that can be recovered as the machine wakes. There are obviously some security implications to this, but I think it's fair to say that a lot of users would prefer making that trade-off.
    - r2binx 4y ago
      Why use another encrypted partition instead of putting a swap partition/file on the same with LVM/btrfs?
      - cbsmith 4y ago
        There's a lot of security models that rely on RAM being more difficult for an attacker to access than disk (as you can imagine it is much easier to ensure things stored to disk are resistant to compromise than to ensure that nothing in working memory is usable by an attacker). Swap is that in between case where storage is memory, so that creates a unique challenge. What you want is that if someone steals your hibernated laptop, that absent a way to securely authenticate themselves as you, they can't restore the working memory of your laptop. If you think about it, if they could, much of the point of many security precautions would be lost.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jagrsw 4y ago

Biased opinion here (working for Google). I love Linux and I would consider myself a power user (understanding HW arch, working with kernel sources). Basic Chromebook apps (+ Play Store) are something that "just work" for 80% of time for my use-cases (which is, browser and ssh-ing into a power machine in ze cloud/DC). I also have rather good understanding of threat models here, and the quality of the sandboxes and HW roots-of-trust, hardening and software isolation on a typical Chromebook, so it gives me a relative piece of mind for specific use-cases (personal/family files etc.). Supporting an extended family, if they can get used to Chromebooks (it covers 99% of their needs, esp. that Android apps can be installed here) is a bliss. Customizing Linux is mental fun, but on a road you probably something that just works, and typical Linux is rough at edges - GFX support, hibernation, esp. if you don't want to stick to some LTS distro, b/c you always need this newer package for dev purposes or tinkering. The remaining 15% is covered by a VM, which seems really nicely integrated (X11 proxy etc). The remaining remaining 5% cannot be covered - custom kernels, custom USB drivers, occasional need to use Windows, but that's fine, I can do that on a desktop or on some random, cheap, low-power laptop. In essence, it's just a thin client on steroids, which almost always works in its basic form. But if you want something more interesting, there's always a VM with some Linux distro, or Android apps via the Play Store. But these are optional and don't affect stability of the core system, if you don't use them.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
I'm the poster of the original comment, and I don't work for Google, but your comment pretty much summed up perfectly my thoughts as well, and is a big reason why I'm a ChromeOS fan.
mkozlows 4y ago
I agree that there are tons of great use cases for Chromebooks (I've owned like eight of them, including the Chromebook Pixel, and love them), but I also think that once you start getting into Android or Linux-heavy use cases, native devices are better than Chromebooks. An Android tablet is a muuuuuch better experience for running Android apps than the Pixel Slate. A Framework running Fedora is a muuuuuch better experience for doing dev work than a Chromebook. ChromeOS is great when used for what it is, and it's cool that it can flex to handle edge casey things with VMs. But if the VM stuff is most of what you want to do, just go a different way.

LegitShady 4y ago

https://frame.work/ca/en/linux https://frame.work/ca/en/linux don't they already support this on the existing framework?

paxys 4y ago

You can actually recommend ChromeOS to your non technical friends

ufmace 4y ago

Personally, I chose ChromeOS as the bare-metal OS for my laptop because I think it's the best of both worlds: For web browser-based stuff, I have a constantly-updated state of the art browser with full vendor-backed hardware support for everything around graphics, sound, USB, Bluetooth, etc, anything else I might want, plus probably the best sandboxing you can get as far as protecting the core system from any malicious web exploits. It also works rather well in tablet mode with convertible devices. IME, getting all of this on bare-metal Linux and having it stay working for years is very hit-or-miss. For linuxy CLI stuff, I have a built-in Linux container with a nice terminal. Everything I've wanted to do as far as CLI stuff works great, including Vim + Tmux, developing and compiling in any language, systemd services, docker and k8s CLI support. I've opened at least a dozen or so PRs on various open-source projects and maintained server clusters working entirely on a Chromebook. All the driver and display stuff is taken care of by ChromeOS so I never have to mess with config for it.

staticassertion 4y ago

I have a whole bunch of reasons. ChromeOS has a great separation of concerns and isolation of environments. I have my work profile and my personal profile, which are totally separate. I have my browser environment and my dev VM, which are totally separate. Different activities are cleanly partitioned. This has obvious security benefits but also is just a really nice, simple way to manage the system. I can fuck up a dev VM without impacting anything else, I can click random links on my personal profile without impacting work, etc. It also just does what I want it to do. I browse the internet, I program. It's good for those things. So... why Linux?

rasengan0 4y ago
I too enjoy ChromeOS but how do you play a DVD? [1] [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Crostini/comments/b680wa/external_dvd_player/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Crostini/comments/b680wa/external_d...
- staticassertion 4y ago
  No idea, I haven't been in the presence of a DVD in years

Arainach 4y ago

Biased opinion: I work on ChromeOS at Google Biased but informed opinion: I own a Framework Laptop running Ubuntu 22.04. Linux on a server or a desktop isn't so bad. Linux on a laptop is awful. Hibernation isn't supported. Battery life is mediocre, and battery drain in sleep is significant. If I close the lid on my Framework at 75% and come back the next day, it will be at 25%. If I come back in 3 days, it will be completely dead. Even on a device designed to support Linux (Framework, Thinkpad, whatever) the Bluetooth experience is....err......well, if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything? ChromeOS isn't perfect, but as a laptop I'd much rather run it (with Crostini to get a Linux development environment) any day.

cbsmith 4y ago
System76 seems to have finally gotten to the bottom of the battery issues with their Lemur Pro. It's all about the drivers, and getting drivers that do power management right for devices that are miserly is surprisingly difficult.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  Can you confirm this for your own device? I am really waiting for a linux laptop, which is truly mobile. I also rather went with chromebooks so far.
  - cbsmith 4y ago
    Note personally (all my laptops are provided by work, and they don't do System76 :-(), but you don't have to look far to see people talking about the battery life: https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/n235vc/a_lemur_pro_review_months_later/ https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/n235vc/a_lemur_pr...
binkHN 4y ago
I concur. While I know all the world is Linux, I run OpenBSD on many of my hobby systems. I love OpenBSD’s simplicity, but, IMHO, it’s missing too many things to be a good laptop OS. With ChromeOS I get the support a laptop environment requires, while still having the Debian VM to take things further.

jrm4 4y ago

I appreciate the folks here being open about their biased opinions, because they are completely out of line with the reality I've seen. I teach IT in a college and I run a non-profit the refurbishes computers. I have not seen a remotely significant difference between ChromeOS and Linux (with Chrome Installed) for the vast majority of users. It is true that Linux on ChromeOS is annoyingly fiddly and my suspicion is that this is the Google mind (perhaps subconsciously) not wanting to reveal how generally unnecessary "ChromeOS" would be in a world that collectively "knew that the Linux Desktop existed." And I do mean this "without modification," i.e. most of your top 20ish Distrowatch distros fare perfectly well here.

yunohn 4y ago
> remotely significant difference between ChromeOS and Linux (with Chrome Installed) for the vast majority of users You provide IT support, eg for school kids, and somehow they grok Linux just as well as a browser? That is not my experience.
- jrm4 4y ago
  No, I mean they turn on computer, there's a Chrome icon, and a start menu etc etc. It's pretty much the same experience. I'm not sure if they literally can much tell the difference.

hollerith 4y ago

ChromeOS (especially when "pre-installed", as is the case here) is much more secure than Linux, IMO.