After the recent news about Linux applications coming to Chrome OS, we now also know what they will look like.
The Chrome OS developers have been working out the stylistic elements of what you’ll see once you open your first native Linux apps in Chrome OS, and they’ve opted for Adapta, a popular Material Design-inspired Gtk theme that can be used on many of your favorite GNU/Linux distributions.
This project may finally make Linux on the desktop happen.
If switching to Adapta theme is what it takes to get Linux on the desktop– I pass.
Besides– I’ve been running Linux on a desktop since 1997.
Far more likely is that Linux shows up via the Windows Subsystem for Linux, even with the terrible IO performance.
Edited 2018-04-26 23:35 UTC
So, what happens if you want to use a non-GTK app? Is that even possible?
Not sure what you can actually do with this implementation, but there is an unofficial Adapta theme and color scheme for Plasma/KDE 5. So if there’s any way to set it, then most, if not all, of your apps will be themed.
I’m actually excited by this, I currently have 2 chromebooks for my kids. Never had to do any kind of support, they just work.
But having linux apps on them would also be nice.
Why would anyone actually want to buy a chromebook?
Be better off with one of the cheap 10-inch or larger tablets that come with a detachable keyboard like the RCA models Walmart sells in the US for around $100,or actually put the money towards a cheap laptop both of which are not dependent on a internet connection for anything,
Edited 2018-04-27 13:36 UTC
I guess it’s all about your preference. I just sold my nVidia Shield tablet (along with the bluetooth keyboard) earlier this month because it saw significantly less use since I bought the Chromebook on black Friday.
My first “tiny” form factor was an Asus Eee PC back in 2007. Since then, I’ve owned a lot of tablets and netbooks. Tablets are nice, but I have to often write/reply to emails and review documents when I’m traveling. To do that on a tablet, I have to carry yet another gadget (the keyboard). And now that most Chromebooks support the Play Store, I see no reason to prefer a tablet.
I purchased the Samsung Chromebook 3 for $120 on Black Friday so that I could test it’s capabilities. I did not want to invest $200+ on something I didn’t know I was going to like. By January the only reason I was picking up the tablet was to attach it to the charger.
Its perfect for parents who just want a box that doesn’t get viruses, but always gets software updates. Its perfect for schools for the same reason. I think I kind of like the idea of a cheap fast reliable box, that I don’t have to think about. Using it as a connection to a more powerful system (AWS, desktop, what ever).
Yuck, have you used one of those? They’re awful. No updates, no security. Might as well post your data to postbin.
I own one. Like the 32 gigs of onboard storage, plus the fact that I can use a 64 gig (or maybe a 128 gig) mem card in it’s external sd card slot.
Also like the fact that it has a *REAL* USB 2.0 port built in. Just plug in a USB hard drive or any other supported USB device into the tablet.
As for No updates and security,feh. If I was that worried about about something like my bank info, I wouldn’t put it on a tablet or phone that might get lost or stolen to begin with.
And I pretty much use my phone *AS* a phone, so wifi/cell data on it is turned off 95% percent of the time to help prolong battery life.
Also negates security concerns since something can’t be hacked via the internet that can’t reached via the internet.
Updates? Android updates for the past couple of years have been nothing but screw-ups and fixes to the screw-ups, starting with they did to android mass storage for instance. Excuse me for not particularly caring about this subject anymore.
Edited 2018-04-28 06:13 UTC
Ok, fine, you have your preferences for how to handle security based on your requirements. I can not, however recommend those same precautions to my friends, family, and school districts that are buying chromebooks.
Why would I actually want to buy something else knowing it does the things I need.
Other devices would make me spend a lot more time to have it up-to-date and secured.
Only 2 things I do miss from time to time: an install of libreoffice (might be possible in the future) and the option to sideload android apps (c:geo) without going to developer mode (which I don’t want to do).
If you don’t mind a somewhat slow interface, Libreoffice is available on Chromebooks via rollapp. See https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/libreoffice-writer-on-rol/…
I have one of those RCA tablets and an R11 chromebok. The RCA is lacking in a whole lot of ways. The biggest is that they can’t be rooted. That wouldn’t be such a huge deal if not for a couple other things. Namely 32 bit arm and only coming with 1 GB ram.
Lack of rooting means you can’t fix some issues that google forces on you. In particular having to click “desktop site” over, and over and over again with android’s chrome. Firefox gets around that, but chokes on too many things at the moment.
Next easy solution would simply be linux. But lack of root, again, limits things a bit. But it’s not too terrible working within that limitation. Even with the 1gb ram. But then you’re stuck with the fact that it’s 32 bit arm. So no chromium under it. Though probably not an issue because I can’t expect it’d do very well in those conditions anyway. Midori’s fast enough, but it struggles with a lot of things. And firefox. Well, it’s 1 gb ram. It runs better than I’d expect. But it’s still pretty rough.
Normal laptop? Not really an option if you want android apps as well. abox is still very far from being usable for most things. Sure, you could dual boot. But that’s a pretty big pain.
To top it off, the battery life is horrible. The smaller models only get about four hours. And the larger something like 2 or 3.
Meanwhile the R11 runs with a pretty small footprint by default and has a good battery life. Then as needed it can scale up to android apps, linux distros running alongside it and wine under either the android or linux systems depending on need.
I have one of those RCA tablets and an R11 chromebok. The RCA is lacking in a whole lot of ways. The biggest is that they can’t be rooted. That wouldn’t be such a huge deal if not for a couple other things. Namely 32 bit arm and only coming with 1 GB ram.
Lack of rooting means you can’t fix some issues that google forces on you. In particular having to click “desktop site” over, and over and over again with android’s chrome. Firefox gets around that, but chokes on too many things at the moment.
I can root my Viking Pro, so maybe you don’t know as much about these tablets as you are claiming.
Next easy solution would simply be linux. But lack of root, again, limits things a bit. But it’s not too terrible working within that limitation. Even with the 1gb ram. But then you’re stuck with the fact that it’s 32 bit arm. So no chromium under it. Though probably not an issue because I can’t expect it’d do very well in those conditions anyway. Midori’s fast enough, but it struggles with a lot of things. And firefox. Well, it’s 1 gb ram. It runs better than I’d expect. But it’s still pretty rough.
chromium is a piece of crap, as is chrome and firefox is a total mess under android no matter what you are running it on.
Use Opera or Opera mini instead.
To top it off, the battery life is horrible. The smaller models only get about four hours. And the larger something like 2 or 3.
Odd. I’m getting 4 to 5 hours on my 10 inch Viking Pro.
Chromebooks are super stress free when you just want to do browser based stuff, except when you don’t. Allowing Android apps was a great step in one direction and now with Linux apps officially packaged in another you have a really great continuum of computing modes on a single cheap rugged long battery life machine.All we are missing is iTunes,for those who got trapped in that eco-system in their youth.
Title is clickbait. “Using Material Design” is an almost completely different thing from “Using a GTK theme vaguely inspired by Material Design”.
So i can get a modern linux dist without systemd? (other than devuan) Who would have thunk it.
You certainly can, no Chromebook required. Slackware (4.14 LTS kernel), Void Linux (4.16 kernel), Alpine Linux (musl/busybox/OpenRC). Those are my goto non-systemd distros, there are quite a few more:
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Linux_distributions_witho…
Thank you kindly.
As far as I know, ChromeOS is already based on Linux, which makes all applications that have been running on it for years Linux applications.
Maybe they mean that GNU applications can be supported as well?
That depends. Is ChromeOS any less hostile to running a binary that’s been statically linked against musl-libc so that its only dependency is the Linux kernel ABI?
(I do that for the release builds of my Rust “scripts” to ensure that they’ll Just Workâ„¢ on any distro I throw them at. It’s trivially easy if your dependencies are all pure Rust and libc is only used as an abstraction layer for the platform ABI.)
Also, they’re not “GNU applications” unless they’re part of GNU. By Stallman’s own logic, they’re either “glibc/Linux” applications or “X11/glibc/Linux” applications. (reading “/” as “on”)
Unless an application is built using shell scripts which use bash-specific features, glibc is the only GNU-provided part of the platform ABI that actually matters for application compatibility.
(And, for that reason, it’s convention for GUI applications to describe their platforms as “X11; Linux” or “X11/Linux” with the assumption that using glibc without the Linux kernel or vice-versa is such an uncommon thing that specifying them both is wasteful in the common case.)
Stallman’s logic for “GNU/Linux” is that the OS is a GNU userland on top of a Linux kernel… but, even back before systemd, I once read an article which I forgot to bookmark (to my recurring irritation) which actually did the math. Unless you’ve got GCC installed and X11 absent, X11 is a bulkier portion of the userland than all the GNU components combined… and Stallman cheats by defining the OS as “what you need to self-host the OS’s development using console emacs”, so GCC is part of it but X11 is not.)
Edited 2018-05-01 09:28 UTC