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Does this imply that Crostini/ Crouton / Linux developer mode will go away? I'm quite proud of the development I've done on a $200 chromebook and it was one of

Does this imply that Crostini/ Crouton / Linux developer mode will go away? I'm quite proud of the development I've done on a $200 chromebook and it was one of my favorite features.

modeless 2y ago
Why would it imply that?
- tonymet 2y ago
  They don't provide a lot of detail, but moving to a new OS platform would mean migrating functionality, and often that means dropping less popular features. Crouton / Chrostini seem to have a lot of dependencies on the current ChromeOS platform that would be costly to migrate.
  - ajross 2y ago
    > Crouton / Chrostini seem to have a lot of dependencies on the current ChromeOS platform that would be costly to migrate. Being careful not to make any pronouncements here since I do work in the group, but no, not really. Crostini is just a fairly standard VM manager with a handful of custom virtio and IPC mechanisms (some of which are really clever, to be fair). It doesn't require much of anything that hasn't been in the upstream kernel for years. And Crouton is just a community-maintained Linux chroot. People (including me) were doing exactly that kind of hack on rooted android devices more than a decade ago.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      If anything, the work on top of pKVM has very nearly brought the same feature to Android already, though they haven't to my knowledge finished executing on that vision.
      - ignoramous 2y ago
        As it understand it, pKVM is mostly to run privileged vendor bits and not user apps.
        yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        I'm sure that's where it started, but it's perfectly usable from userspace; https://liliputing.com/nestbox-makes-running-linux-virtual-machines-easy-on-googles-pixel-6-or-later-smartphones/ https://liliputing.com/nestbox-makes-running-linux-virtual-m...
        surajrmal 2y ago
        They have something called microdroid which is a special VM which runs special android apps: https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization/writeavfapp https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization/writeavf... Of course, running a custom VM image like crostini would require system level support but that doesn't seem like it would be a problem or outside the scope of the avf architecture.
    - tonymet 2y ago
      thanks for sharing that's good to hear.
    - tonymet 2y ago
      I had assumed the current linux-on-chromeos was complicated due to it taking so many years of dev-mode hackiness to become a turnkey product
      - danans 2y ago
        The ChromeOS team is pretty conservative with major feature releases and generally won't make something available by default until it goes through a ton of testing internally and with external testers. ChromeOS is quite different that other Linux based OSs in that it's supposed to "just work".
    - yencabulator 2y ago
      ChromeOS VMs use Wayland over VirtIO for the GUI. Quick search tells me at least some people think Android has made design choices that are difficult to use Wayland with. Anyone know better? https://www.gfxstrand.net/faith/projects/wayland/wayland-android/ https://www.gfxstrand.net/faith/projects/wayland/wayland-and...
      - ajross 2y ago
        FWIW this part is true, but sort of mixed up. It's not really "wayland" that's at issue (Wayland surfaces are just shared memory like they are with any other compositor). It's that the Android GPU HAL wasn't designed with the sharing of contexts in mind, and so getting accelerated rendering out of the VM isn't a natural thing. And this isn't my area, and I have no expertise to offer except to say that I too am hopeful folks work this out in both a HAL- and open-source friendly way. And also to say that I'm running routine wayland apps on a chromebook every day and they render and composite just great with Mesa/LLVMPipe contexts, even things like e.g. STL slicers you'd expect to want the GPU. The need for acceleration is real, but limited to some special use cases.
  - surajrmal 2y ago
    Android is already using crosvm in the latest release. Launching a crostini VM is probably not a large lift.
odo1242 2y ago
It wouldn’t- it would just be running on the Android (still Linux) terminal instead of actual Linux
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Android exposes very little Linux to userspace, as per official APIs.
  - surajrmal 2y ago
    It's more than you would hope.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      True, but since they aren't official, OEM and Google are free to take them away any time they feel like across Android releases.
- tonymet 2y ago
  is there an android terminal? I'm only familiar with debugging mobile devices over adb and it's restricted. I'm aware of android terminal apps, but they typically connect to a remote terminal via SSH. Does android boot into a terminal like a typical linux device? I thought it booted into fastboot
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    > is there an android terminal? I'm only familiar with debugging mobile devices over adb and it's restricted. > I'm aware of android terminal apps, but they typically connect to a remote terminal via SSH. You certainly can run a local terminal (I think I've seen it baked in as part of developer options, but also as an extra app), though if you don't have root it is somewhat restricted in what you can actually do. > Does android boot into a terminal like a typical linux device? I thought it booted into fastboot I think you're slightly misunderstanding how boot works on both Android and Desktop Linux. The kernel is perfectly happy to run whatever you want on such displays as are available. Android tends to boot from firmware (which also implements fastboot) to a bootloader to the kernel and the kernel brings up the system with SurfaceFlinger (the Android display manager) owning the screen. On desktop linux there's more diversity; you can have the kernel initially hand your screen to the old in-kernel virtual terminal, the newer KMS implementation of a terminal ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KMSCON https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KMSCON ), or to Xorg or a Wayland compositor (in that case, optionally using plymouth or the like to replace even the earliest text messages). (Actually, full disclosure: I'm only about 70% sure I've got that sequence right. The point is that even desktop linux is perfectly capable of booting only in graphical mode; booting to a text terminal is available but optional.)
thesuperbigfrog 2y ago
Termux has been a great resource on Android: https://termux.dev/en/ https://termux.dev/en/ If the future ChromeOS-Android hybrid (ChAnroid?) loses Crostini Linux, but is able to run Android applications then Termux might be a good option depending on the task. Aside: this ChromeOS-Android merge brings to mind the Chenjesu-Mmrnmhrm merge to create the Chmmr in SC2. Maybe the ChromeOS-Android merge will similarly yield a wonderful hybrid result?
- gorkish 2y ago
  > Chenjesu-Mmrnmhrm merge to create the Chmmr in SC2 I'm having a Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch moment here
- bitwize 2y ago
  Knowing Google it'll be more like the Zoq-Fot-Pik... all jumbled together till no one knows what's what.
- pquki4 2y ago
  You can run a full VSCode on Crostini -- the "real" Electron app -- but not on Termux. There are ways around it like using code-server on a Linux environment, but far from the same thing.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- resonious 2y ago
  I love Termux but I'm a bit worried about its future. Google has been hardening Android in ways that harm Termux quite a bit (e.g. https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/2366 https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/2366). It does seem that new Android lets you turn off the phantom process killer, so maybe there's hope, but still Termux is forced to target an old API version and can't be published on Google Play.
  - DownrightNifty 2y ago
davidw 2y ago
> I'm quite proud of the development I've done on a $200 chromebook High fives! My main Linux computer died a year ago and I needed something to write emails and browse on, so I ran out to Costco and got a Chromebook, expecting it'd tide me over until I could figure out a replacement computer. I'm still on the $250 Chromebook machine. It does everything I need and I'm pretty amazed at that. I've been doing some side projects with Elixir/Phoenix and it's not the speediest machine for sure, but it's quite serviceable. And for that price... that's amazing.
- PyWoody 2y ago
  Same story here, except my quick and temporary purchase was about five years ago. It's been my daily driver for off-desk work ever since. It's still snappy and the battery life is great, too. I went full Linux on it using MrChromebox[0] a few years back with zero complaints. [0] http://mrchromebox.tech/ http://mrchromebox.tech/
  - tonymet 2y ago
    It's uncanny how many devs have a story like this. There's something about compiling software on a barebones machine, almost like restoring an old VW and taking it to the track. I've ended up gifting the 4 or 5 budget chromebooks to nephews , pre-installed with Crouton / Crostini set up and accounts on leetcode / hackthebox to train on. It's remarkable how capable Chromebooks are. I tried using my $600 iPad Pro to code on and I never found it to be as capable as my $200 chromebook
    - PyWoody 2y ago
      It's great for reducing distractions and getting a better feel when the code you're writing is slower than it ought to be. My desktop is an M1 Mac Mini, which has been phenomenal, but it can certainly hide inefficiencies in code. Once I get my office situation set, I want to start doing everything on an RPi.
theanonymousone 2y ago
I had the same thought reading the title, but then remembered Crostini is a container running in a VM (Goddammit), so they can keep it intact, at least if they want so.
faust201 2y ago
bookmark your comment and comeback a year or two later. Nothing is implied. Wait.

Does this imply that Crostini/ Crouton / Linux developer mode will go away? I'm quite proud of the development I've done on a $200 chromebook and it was one of my favorite features.

modeless 2y ago

Why would it imply that?

tonymet 2y ago
They don't provide a lot of detail, but moving to a new OS platform would mean migrating functionality, and often that means dropping less popular features. Crouton / Chrostini seem to have a lot of dependencies on the current ChromeOS platform that would be costly to migrate.
- ajross 2y ago
  > Crouton / Chrostini seem to have a lot of dependencies on the current ChromeOS platform that would be costly to migrate. Being careful not to make any pronouncements here since I do work in the group, but no, not really. Crostini is just a fairly standard VM manager with a handful of custom virtio and IPC mechanisms (some of which are really clever, to be fair). It doesn't require much of anything that hasn't been in the upstream kernel for years. And Crouton is just a community-maintained Linux chroot. People (including me) were doing exactly that kind of hack on rooted android devices more than a decade ago.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    If anything, the work on top of pKVM has very nearly brought the same feature to Android already, though they haven't to my knowledge finished executing on that vision.
    - ignoramous 2y ago
      As it understand it, pKVM is mostly to run privileged vendor bits and not user apps.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        I'm sure that's where it started, but it's perfectly usable from userspace; https://liliputing.com/nestbox-makes-running-linux-virtual-machines-easy-on-googles-pixel-6-or-later-smartphones/ https://liliputing.com/nestbox-makes-running-linux-virtual-m...
      - surajrmal 2y ago
        They have something called microdroid which is a special VM which runs special android apps: https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization/writeavfapp https://source.android.com/docs/core/virtualization/writeavf... Of course, running a custom VM image like crostini would require system level support but that doesn't seem like it would be a problem or outside the scope of the avf architecture.
  - tonymet 2y ago
    thanks for sharing that's good to hear.
  - tonymet 2y ago
    I had assumed the current linux-on-chromeos was complicated due to it taking so many years of dev-mode hackiness to become a turnkey product
    - danans 2y ago
      The ChromeOS team is pretty conservative with major feature releases and generally won't make something available by default until it goes through a ton of testing internally and with external testers. ChromeOS is quite different that other Linux based OSs in that it's supposed to "just work".
  - yencabulator 2y ago
    ChromeOS VMs use Wayland over VirtIO for the GUI. Quick search tells me at least some people think Android has made design choices that are difficult to use Wayland with. Anyone know better? https://www.gfxstrand.net/faith/projects/wayland/wayland-android/ https://www.gfxstrand.net/faith/projects/wayland/wayland-and...
    - ajross 2y ago
      FWIW this part is true, but sort of mixed up. It's not really "wayland" that's at issue (Wayland surfaces are just shared memory like they are with any other compositor). It's that the Android GPU HAL wasn't designed with the sharing of contexts in mind, and so getting accelerated rendering out of the VM isn't a natural thing. And this isn't my area, and I have no expertise to offer except to say that I too am hopeful folks work this out in both a HAL- and open-source friendly way. And also to say that I'm running routine wayland apps on a chromebook every day and they render and composite just great with Mesa/LLVMPipe contexts, even things like e.g. STL slicers you'd expect to want the GPU. The need for acceleration is real, but limited to some special use cases.
- surajrmal 2y ago
  Android is already using crosvm in the latest release. Launching a crostini VM is probably not a large lift.

odo1242 2y ago

It wouldn’t- it would just be running on the Android (still Linux) terminal instead of actual Linux

pjmlp 2y ago
Android exposes very little Linux to userspace, as per official APIs.
- surajrmal 2y ago
  It's more than you would hope.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    True, but since they aren't official, OEM and Google are free to take them away any time they feel like across Android releases.
tonymet 2y ago
is there an android terminal? I'm only familiar with debugging mobile devices over adb and it's restricted. I'm aware of android terminal apps, but they typically connect to a remote terminal via SSH. Does android boot into a terminal like a typical linux device? I thought it booted into fastboot
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  > is there an android terminal? I'm only familiar with debugging mobile devices over adb and it's restricted. > I'm aware of android terminal apps, but they typically connect to a remote terminal via SSH. You certainly can run a local terminal (I think I've seen it baked in as part of developer options, but also as an extra app), though if you don't have root it is somewhat restricted in what you can actually do. > Does android boot into a terminal like a typical linux device? I thought it booted into fastboot I think you're slightly misunderstanding how boot works on both Android and Desktop Linux. The kernel is perfectly happy to run whatever you want on such displays as are available. Android tends to boot from firmware (which also implements fastboot) to a bootloader to the kernel and the kernel brings up the system with SurfaceFlinger (the Android display manager) owning the screen. On desktop linux there's more diversity; you can have the kernel initially hand your screen to the old in-kernel virtual terminal, the newer KMS implementation of a terminal ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KMSCON https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KMSCON ), or to Xorg or a Wayland compositor (in that case, optionally using plymouth or the like to replace even the earliest text messages). (Actually, full disclosure: I'm only about 70% sure I've got that sequence right. The point is that even desktop linux is perfectly capable of booting only in graphical mode; booting to a text terminal is available but optional.)

thesuperbigfrog 2y ago

Termux has been a great resource on Android: https://termux.dev/en/ https://termux.dev/en/ If the future ChromeOS-Android hybrid (ChAnroid?) loses Crostini Linux, but is able to run Android applications then Termux might be a good option depending on the task. Aside: this ChromeOS-Android merge brings to mind the Chenjesu-Mmrnmhrm merge to create the Chmmr in SC2. Maybe the ChromeOS-Android merge will similarly yield a wonderful hybrid result?

gorkish 2y ago
> Chenjesu-Mmrnmhrm merge to create the Chmmr in SC2 I'm having a Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch moment here
bitwize 2y ago
Knowing Google it'll be more like the Zoq-Fot-Pik... all jumbled together till no one knows what's what.
pquki4 2y ago
You can run a full VSCode on Crostini -- the "real" Electron app -- but not on Termux. There are ways around it like using code-server on a Linux environment, but far from the same thing.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
resonious 2y ago
I love Termux but I'm a bit worried about its future. Google has been hardening Android in ways that harm Termux quite a bit (e.g. https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/2366 https://github.com/termux/termux-app/issues/2366). It does seem that new Android lets you turn off the phantom process killer, so maybe there's hope, but still Termux is forced to target an old API version and can't be published on Google Play.
- DownrightNifty 2y ago

davidw 2y ago

> I'm quite proud of the development I've done on a $200 chromebook High fives! My main Linux computer died a year ago and I needed something to write emails and browse on, so I ran out to Costco and got a Chromebook, expecting it'd tide me over until I could figure out a replacement computer. I'm still on the $250 Chromebook machine. It does everything I need and I'm pretty amazed at that. I've been doing some side projects with Elixir/Phoenix and it's not the speediest machine for sure, but it's quite serviceable. And for that price... that's amazing.

PyWoody 2y ago
Same story here, except my quick and temporary purchase was about five years ago. It's been my daily driver for off-desk work ever since. It's still snappy and the battery life is great, too. I went full Linux on it using MrChromebox[0] a few years back with zero complaints. [0] http://mrchromebox.tech/ http://mrchromebox.tech/
- tonymet 2y ago
  It's uncanny how many devs have a story like this. There's something about compiling software on a barebones machine, almost like restoring an old VW and taking it to the track. I've ended up gifting the 4 or 5 budget chromebooks to nephews , pre-installed with Crouton / Crostini set up and accounts on leetcode / hackthebox to train on. It's remarkable how capable Chromebooks are. I tried using my $600 iPad Pro to code on and I never found it to be as capable as my $200 chromebook
  - PyWoody 2y ago
    It's great for reducing distractions and getting a better feel when the code you're writing is slower than it ought to be. My desktop is an M1 Mac Mini, which has been phenomenal, but it can certainly hide inefficiencies in code. Once I get my office situation set, I want to start doing everything on an RPi.

theanonymousone 2y ago

I had the same thought reading the title, but then remembered Crostini is a container running in a VM (Goddammit), so they can keep it intact, at least if they want so.

faust201 2y ago

bookmark your comment and comeback a year or two later. Nothing is implied. Wait.