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Hackers Dual-Boot Chrome OS With Ubuntu Linux on CR-48
jbrodkin writes "Google's Chrome OS makes Web surfing an incredibly pleasant and secure experience, but most of the knocks against it relate to what it can't do — namely, nearly everything traditional desktop operating systems like Windows, Mac and Linux can. The easiest solution might be dual-booting, allowing users to choose either Chrome OS or a Linux distro at startup. Google's Chromium project site is now hosting instructions for booting Ubuntu Linux alongside Chrome OS. The process is cumbersome but indicates that dual-booting Chrome OS should be possible — and hopefully a bit simpler — once Google releases commercially available netbooks in mid-2011."
Following fairly simple instructions posted on the official chromium site is now hacking?
Year of the mainstream Linux derivatives.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
The assumption being made here is that any commercially available hardware running ChromeOS will be in any way as open as the Cr-48 is. I suspect it will be far more like the G1/Nexus* hardware vs. every other Android based handset, in that Google provides you an easy out while all of the 3rd parties put extra effort into keeping you inside the box.
People are being given free ChromeOS laptops for the purpose of testing ChromeOS, and theyre going to throw Ubuntu on there (and thus presumably stop testing ChromeOS)?
Seems kind of cheap, why dont you just buy your own laptop, or actually TEST the one youve been given?
>"The easiest solution might be dual-booting"
How is "dual booting" a solution? If I load Linux on a machine, then I already have access to web surfing under Chrome/Chromium, Firefox, or whatever.... in addition to anything else I want to do. I think if one finds they want to load Linux "dual boot" on a machine running Chrome OS, that makes Chrome OS a "FAIL" because the user really doesn't want to just run a web browser.
I agree with the other articles- there is no need or demand for "Chrome OS". If you want open, fast, free, flexible, use Linux on the machine. If you want to run lots of commercial software, games, etc, run MS-Windows on the machine. If you want both, run Linux and load MS-Windows in Virtualbox, or dual boot the two. Otherwise, Android seems like the best "solution".
The easiest solution for people who need the power of a full traditional OS but want to be able to have the Chrome experience would be to just boot Ubuntu with the Chrome browser. If you take one desktop and maximize Chrome on it, you can easily toggle back and forth between the regular Ubuntu experience and Chrome.
Since Chrome OS is essentially Linux stripped down to what is necessary to support the Chrome browser + the Chrome browser, dual-booting Chrome OS and a full Linux distro, while it might be useful in a very small set of circumstances, seems to mostly be the hard way to achieve, well, almost anything you might want to achieve by doing that.
I imagine that by the time the final hardware is ready, it's going to be a lot more locked down. There's always been some speculation that Google may subsidize the cost of these devices and make it up on ad revenue. If that's the case, they're not going to want people to supplant ChromeOS in favor of something else.
If they're unsubsidized, why bother buying a ChromeOS device? Just install ChromeOS on a netbook/notebook that you already have.
I read it backwards at first. I thought they were making ChromeOS work on machines that already had Ubuntu on them.
Ah well.
It's probably not that hard... There are instructions on how to compile it for USB booting and virtual machines. (I got VM to work, but not USB for some reason.) But the VM is horribly slow on my Linux machine.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The problem with this is that people will then dual boot Windows (XP, 7) and ChromeOS and will then end up just defaulting to Windows all the time... That is what happens when you give people the option in my experience. Google (or the folks who can hack ChromeOS) should perhaps enable different desktop environments, i.e., log out of ChromeOS and log into gnome. That should be possible right?
like phosphorescent desert buttons singing one familiar song
Of course Google wants you to figure out how to get the dual boot working as well as you can. Then you can post it on the Internet, then they can read how you do it, then they'll figure out how to better lock the system.
From the instructions, it looks like they think that you can only put Ubuntu over their kernel because they don't support initrd. They want to find out if that is the case before releasing the commerical models. I'm going to guess if you need to use their kernel, from there they can make you use their OS.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
I think Chrome OS needs to be focused on something that would make it unique and useful... not trying to replace the desktop.
Chrome OS would make an awesome instant-on boot loader replacing GRUB, LILO, or Windows Boot Loader.
Surf the web while your OS of choice boots in the background.
I can see Chrome OS as a field solution where the hardware is cheap enough to be throw away. The fact that in a pinch, a techie could bump it up on Ubuntu to have the extra features at a cost of speed would make it a nice plus. I know people that break a laptop a year because of how they handle it when off the desktop. They can't switch down to netbook or other device because they need the visual real estate of a good sized screen.
In a place beyond time and space, in a land far better than this, look for me there...
Crippleware has its place, and I hope Google sells (other people) a metric shitload of these things so I can get a (used) one for almost nothing after (inevitably) enough people buy them expecting them to be a "regular compyooter".
Here's an archive of sorts for some niche products of yore and a reminder of the business models they served:
http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/UltraBoard/UltraBoard.pl
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Here's an idea: strip out all of Google's big-brother code and make the OS a back-end for a virtual machine that can be started and destructed at will, with a browser window as the front-end. If the OS encapsulates everything that can be used for the purposes of surfing the web, why can't it be instantiated and then started from the same point every time? It could be used as a way to ensure complete privacy.
Uhmmm .... that is almost enough to blow my mind. They wouldn't . They would boot into Linux when they wanted to do more than just browse the web and email.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
usb just need drivers / software for both
Just what the hell does it do....haha JokeOS
Goes by expressgate on Asus products boots in like 5 seconds and it dual boot linux and windows.
1. Get ChromeOS laptop
2. Dual Boot Ubuntu
3. Realize Ubuntu does everything ChromeOS does and more
4. Never boot into Chrome again
5. Profit???
If a virtualization host can be installed first on the HW, why dual boot? Why not just run both Ubuntu and Chrome OS simultaneously? If you can share the clipboard, "Chrome OS" could be just what's for browsing, and Ubuntu is really your OS for doing more serious (interactive) work on what you find while browsing. Indeed, if the two could share a desktop, it might not even look like two OSes, but rather just one with two personalities.
--
make install -not war
From the installation instructions:
ubuntu-10.10-desktop-i386.iso
So this CR-48 is just a x86 notebook with a custom firmware. I was expecting something based on ARM instead.
Meh.
OK, I know it would be a very unlikely scenario, but if ChromeOS becomes popular (HA), how would they not be considered unfair business practices? Not only does it only allow you to run Chrome web browser, almost all of the apps are Google apps.
if i can do what chrome does with windows and linux ..why the hell would i want chrome?
ya see it dont work the way you think cause as soon as you go i wanted to do something more but cant it just became/becomes useless.
niche well fine if speed is what you want doing exactly what it wants, then just code the whole OS in binary .....make it hardware and have flash roms for some patchability
I installed Chrome OS Linux (0.9.576 RC) on my old 7-inch EEE 701.
Not so impressed. I had expected Google to make something really slim and easy, almost only for webbrowsing. Instead, everything just seems to be OpenSuse rebranded as Chrome OS. Even the bootloader says it boots OpenSuse, not Chrome. Audio didn't work out of the box. It forgot my wireless password on reboot.
Back to Ubuntu 10.10 I think.
Then we could run Ubuntu in a VM under Chrome.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
I think it's rather telling about a product when it's not even out yet and people are already trying to circumvent it's OS because it doesn't do what's desired...
Im impressed when they get it to run on a CR2032
To carry the explanation farther... consider boot to full usability speeds. If ChromeOS is ready to use in 8 seconds or less, but Linux takes twice that long, I'll go ChromeOS if my only intention is to browse a few sites.
I run Chromium OS on an old Thinkpad X41 running of a tiny micro-SD USB memory stick. Want Chromium OS? Boot with the USB stick in, ready to rock in about 10 seconds. Want Ubuntu? Pull the USB stick, boot normally.
This neatly demonstrates what's wrong with Chrome OS: Google forgot the hardware, as usual.
The fact that you can run Ubuntu on it without any hassle is exactly what's wrong. Chrome OS only makes sense if it: makes the hardware cheaper, makes the battery last longer, and lets you optimize the form factor (as in, more compact).
It makes sense it's tested on a machine which is way overspec for what they need, but it makes absolutely no sense to demonstrate the platform on it. It should have been something more like: an ARM, a tiny amount of storage (less than they have now), half thickness, half the battery (lower power consumption), and much more compact. This is just a netbook dressed up with a different OS. It should have been a new OS enabling more precisely targeted hardware. That seems to have been lost.
So I can't see why anyone would buy a device with Chrome OS on it, or convert one to it. If this was on hardware that was significantly cheaper than a netbook/laptop, people would buy into it. But this - an Atom and the associated mess of components with it - is going to be the same as everything else. So nobody will understand why they should buy a netbook that only browses.
And that's the theme from every reviewer, blogger and journalist: they don't get it. In it's current form, it just doesn't make any sense.