What do you think Joe Sixpack runs on his computer these days? There are tons of people out there who do nothing but browse websites and use the "apps" as provided on those sites. They have no use for native Windows apps nor all the extra baggage that comes with it.

That's a stupid over-generalization. There's always one shitty app you need for some weird use case which is not in the official stores. And to rule that out 100% by purchasing a chromebook is a hassle people don't want to worry about.

Yeah, most people shouldn't need more, but you're right. For example, to update the maps in our minivan's navigation system, I need to install some (crappy) Windows-only desktop application, "Garmin Express."

ChromeOS runs mobile apps from the Play Store, and Linux in a container.

I wonder if it's more the fear of needing a desktop app one day again that you haven't started in years than the actual need for desktop apps.

Joe Sixpack needs his PokerStars to work. That means Windows or Mac, maybe the iOS or Android version if they play on the go.

Besides gaming people, I know very few people who need more. And gaming with webgl goes pretty far too. I think it works quite well; I don’t like it, or rather, actually hate it; I like optimal software against the hardware, but that is such a niche now. So just running everything in a browser is simply realistic and enough for most of the population. I think it sells quite well as well. I have a Chromebook which was cheap but it works very well. With GitHub spaces I am not sure if I will go back for many of the stuff I do; if I drop a pot of tea on it, it’s a short trip to the shop to get a new one and I will be back to work 30 min later.

Android and iOS work like that too of course. So maybe they should just switch to something like Dex instead as now you can run android apps in chromeos, so what’s the difference?

Windows is hopelessly overkill for most people.

Even gen-z still build their own PCs. It isn't as niche as often said. They would laugh in your face with the worst insults a 16 year old teenager can come up with if you offer them a chromebook. They would sell it to their wine-aunt (who happens to not run non-emulator windows emulators on Linux).

Sure, they also play Pokemon Go... although partially because they are not sitting in front of their PCs. Large market by volume, but more so for alternative situations.

Based. The kids are all right.

This is interesting insight. So Chromebooks aren't cool? I guess I can see that when every school is issuing Chromebooks to the kids these days. I remember Mac computers being uncool when I was a kid because that's what we had in the school computer lab in the 1990s, and they were locked down enough that it wasn't easy to do fun things on them.

"Wine-aunt" is new to me too, and funny (after looking up what it means).

I wouldn't say they aren't cool for them, but they too want to have powerful devices that do not lock them in too much.

Tell that to the scores of kids that have come up not understanding a filesystem because they just…haven’t needed to, in large part because they grew up using Chromebooks, happily.

Stop conflating yourself with a “normal person”. It’s quite clear from your comment that you’re anything but.

That might have been true years ago. It's currently leagues ahead of any other OS outside of Windows and Mac. It's still limited and quirky, but pretty much covers the basic needs of "normal" people.

> It's currently leagues ahead of any other OS outside of Windows and Mac.

Is ChromeOS really leagues ahead of Linux on the desktop? And other than Linux, how many other desktop OSes are there?

It heavily depends on what you do on linux, if you completely customized it to perfecfly fit your needs and only work with a stable set of programs, ChromeOS doesn't stand a chance.

For more "standard" users though, ChromeOS is very simple, has excelent touch support, battery management, a half baked but functional tablet mode, covers a lot of its ecosystem issues with the android subsytem, is fast to learn yet gives access to more power user features (including linux VMs). And it's of course very forgiving, as every regular apps are sandboxed. In that respect I see it succeeding where linux has been struggling for so long. TBH I was hoping Google made a decent iPad pro competitor based on ChromeOS, but I'm not holding my breath.

It's of course not perfect, far from it, but it's a pretty good computer experience IMHO. Linux has progressed a lot, but I still don't see the simplicity, versatility and forgiveness trio in a linux machine anytime soon.

On the other OSes, I didn't see it as desktop only, and iOS could have been a nice alternative, if Apple could have bothered (same for android and DEX). I actually think ChromeOS is a better choice than windows for light computer users, assuming Google doesn't throw the towel..

ChromeOS has for years supported a full linux shell in a chroot, with full X support. And even before that, it supported quite a bit through android apps. Your information is about ten years out of date.