I'm really enjoying ChromeOS for software dev. The Linux container is tightly integrated with the rest of the OS. On top of that I can run all my favorite Android apps as well, making it an excellent OS for personal use.

One interesting example is that if I have a file I want to open, it doesn't matter if it's Chrome, Android, or Linux that has the executable to open it. I just click the file and it opens in the right app. I can also open it in any other apps via a dialogue that lists things I can open it with. The list shows all relevant Android and Linux apps.

The app launcher is similar -- all apps, regardless of how they are run, show up together.

I'm still not sure I could give up my Mac for my day job, but for personal use, I love it.

So you don't need to turn on dev mode and use crouton to install a chroot for Linux anymore?

As others have mentioned, it's an officially supported feature and it's well integrated into ChromeOS itself. It's still "Beta", but it's now in a really solid state.

No, it's as simple as "Turn On Linux" in your Settings menu

Let me guess, the user cannot "Turn on Linux" in developer mode, the user must "sign in" with Google.

? You don't know what dev mode is. Yes you can of course turn it on in dev mode lol. I liked how you've been rebutted on every post in this thread.

Perhaps you would like to share a screenshot or a pointer to some documentation. Chrome OS forces users to sign in to run apps and use extensions. Sounds like this is no better than crouton or crostini.

This feature is Crostini. I now know you have either half knowledge or are intentionally posting in bad faith.

You don't need to turn developer mode on for this feature. That means you get verified boot , updates (including your Linux distro) as well as the security guarantees of Chrome OS. Crouton requires you to give up all of that. You can't get sync without signing in. Cloud sync is the foundation of the OS. It's what makes it stateless. If you don't like that it's not for you but stop spreading half truths about the product in bad faith.

I figured it was just Crostini.

Nope, it's just a toggle now.

Ok, but the Linux container is completely at odds with Google's ChromeOS pitch.

Google says that ChromeOS has "simple setup" - but not the Linux parts. They say you can "search anything on your Chromebook" - but not Linux. They talk about "Chrome sync" - doesn't apply to Linux. Etc.

I think that ChromeOS has value as a web-browser host, and also as a development machine for vim-jockeys. What's missing is the middle part: a real desktop OS.

What part of the Linux setup is not simple ? Turning "on" is as simple as it gets.

You can search linux files and apps as usual.

As for sync, feel free to look at open bugs and features and see the work being done.

They don't say that, because that's not their goal. Google makes money from consumers being online, searching, browsing the internet, and using Google apps. It doesn't matter if that person is using Windows, Mac, Linux, or some imaginative Google OS to connect to the internet. They profit either way.

… which is kind of his point, yeah?

Developers , PMs already use Chrome OS at Google. Designers can / will also happen.

So Chrome OS team's explicit ambition is to provide a full-fledged alternative to Windows and Linux distributions?

I don't know what the ambition is. But it sure looks like it's a perfectly fine machine for developers and PMs.

It's already the case that ChromeOS can run a Linux environment in a VM. The question is whether this is enough for most developers?

Actually many engineers use chrome OS at google. Perhaps even a majority.

What makes it work is that everything you could possibly want to run either runs in the browser or in a remote machine.

Another data point: I was an intern at Google last year and they gave most of the interns Pixelbooks. It worked fine for development (granted, development consisted of SSHing into a dev box and using a web-based IDE).

ChromeOS is not compiled on those Pixelbooks.

While true, it's equally true that chrome os usually isn't compiled on Google employees Linux workstations either.

You don't think _Google_ has the resources for a proper build server? They're not doing builds on a dev machine anyway.

The whole point is that you can't fight the old "full-fledged" OS with a new one. The aim of the Google's web is to reduce the role of the OS to the "BIOS".

why 5 years? They can already if they want to.