3 ms·

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.

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.