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A comment on What Dropbox dropping Linux support says. Parent comment

Re:What Dropbox dropping Linux support says by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @11:27AM (#17859526)
Year of the Chromebook maybe, but having the entire userland replaced with a proprietary web browser on top of the Linux kernel is probably not the victory the Linux Desktop community was hoping for.
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Re:What Dropbox dropping Linux support says by DannyB2 on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @11:39AM (#17859647)
A userland Chrome browser is what Chromebook WAS. What it is becoming is a desktop. With Linux and Android apps integrated.

There are a lot of good Android apps that would be useful on a laptop. There are a lot of Linux apps that are useful on a laptop.

Good security. With secure verified boot. Yet Linux apps that run in a strong sandbox allowing untrusted code. Android apps run in a different sandbox. All this is transparent to the user who sees a desktop.

The Chrome OS and Android are self updating. I don't know about Linux apps yet.

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Re:What Dropbox dropping Linux support says by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @11:42AM (#17859668)
Android, again, was a complete replacement of the userland tooling developed by the community. For all intents and purposes it is a completely different system.

Even Windows can run Linux apps these days. It still doesn't seem to me that that qualifies as "year of the Linux Desktop" as it is intended.

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Re:What Dropbox dropping Linux support says by DannyB2 on Tuesday August 28, 2018 @11:49AM (#17859731)
Definitely not Linux Desktop as intended.

Android is indeed quite different.

Chrome OS is somewhat different. Today I use Crouton to run one or more Linux desktops (currently Ubuntu Unity and Xfce) on my Pixelbook. I've blown away an older Ubuntu 16.04 I had. Thinking about blowing away the Ubuntu Unity and keeping only the Xfce. Each Linux desktop takes about 5 GB with a few additional apps installed including LibreOffice, GIMP, Inksacpe, wxMaxima and Eclipse / Java. Using Crouton means my Pixelbook is in "developer mode" (which means rooted).

I look forward to the integrated Linux apps and expect one day I will switch out of developer (rooted) mode back to normal. This is called a "power wash" on the Settings and resets everything for security and verified boot so no unauthorized code can ever execute.

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