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Google Just Made It Easier To Run Linux On Your Chromebook
TechCurmudgeon writes A story in PCWorld's "World beyond Windows" column outlines coming improvements in Chrome OS that will enable easily running Linux directly from a USB stick: "Have you ever installed a full desktop Linux system on your Chromebook? It isn't all [that] hard, but it is a bit more complex than it should be. New features in the latest version of Chrome OS will make dipping into an alternative operating system easier. For example, you'll be able to easily boot a full Linux system from a USB drive and use it without any additional hassle!"
I think they mean "GNU/Linux," as Chrome OS runs the Linux kernel.
I thought they were wiping the Chromebook's internal drive, then reinstalling with their preferred Linux variant.
#DeleteChrome
I've not bought one yet (who has the finances?) but this would be great...and I could consolidate my porn browsing to just it. That ought to keep the rest of my stuff safe...
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
It's fun actually
"you'll be able to easily boot a full Linux system from a USB drive and use it without any additional hassle!"
As opposed ot the insufferable hassle of hitting control+L and booting direct? If that's too much trouble, plugging a USB stick is too.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Wake me up when they post a useful article on how to run Unix on my Macbook Pro.
What's the problem? Or is it the ati driver still...
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Fuck that, I've been trying to install FreeBSD on my Commodore 64. Crapping Commodore 1541 disk drive keeps mangling my installation CD.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There are non-free pieces of software which can frequently cause problems. It's not just MS Windows systems and with most Chromebooks your screwed because you can't swap wifi cards, etc.
If they are making it easy to run "normal" Linux, why not install the appropriate libs and allow Linux apps to run side-by-side with Chrome apps?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It's pretty easy. First, take it out of the box. You lift the LCD into a proper viewing angle and push the power button. There you go. Unix.
i just got one yesterday and my model cant do it :(
and then littered with Apple bastardization everywhere and undocumented bullshit.
So there is this trend about wanting to run 'foreign' OSs on computers that come w/ one already. The other day, the question was running Linux on a MacBook Air, then one about running standard non-Libre Linux on the Librem, and today, running a normal GNU/Linux distro on a Chromebook.
I can understand why people replace Windows - particularly Windows 8.x, which is what I did (using PC-BSD). What I don't understand is why anyone would replace any POSIX based OS w/ your run of the mill distro. If you have a MacBook, then OS-X already supports whatever the MacBook will be dealing w/. If you have a Librem, you have Purism OS, which is Trisquel, and which has been specifically engineered to that box. If you have a Chromebook, Google has already made ChromeOS support anything that the Chromebook will have to do.
So aside from losing some of the capabilities you have of your laptop, what exactly is the fun in getting a run-of-the-mill Linux on your Chromebook, replacing ChromeOS? Why not take that box, and see what other apps are there - maybe Android apps - that could run on your Chromebook?
Wake me up when they post a useful article on how to run Unix on my Macbook Pro.
Mac OS X *is* UNIX. It's certified. Wake me up when Linux passes conformance testing.
PS: We even put UUCP on the damn thing to pass the tests; it's definitely UNIX, so feel free to spin up your own NetNews node on your MacBook Air.
Actually Mac OS X is actually an honest to god certified UNIX, not merely POSIX compliant.
I'm trying to install Solaris on my Vic 20 but transferring the CDs over to cassettes is taking forever!
If they are making it easy to run "normal" Linux, why not install the appropriate libs and allow Linux apps to run side-by-side with Chrome apps?
Because that opens a big gaping hole in Chrome's security. Part of the security of Chrome OS is to not let users install binaries. They only get web apps.
This model is broadening to a degree with the ability to run some Android apps. However my understanding is that these apps must be pure java, no NDK, no direct usage of the Linux kernel and other related system level libraries. The Android app lives entirely in its Java sandbox.
Are there any projects out there that combine Linux w/ BusyBox, a shell other than bash, LLVM/Clang instead of GCC and so on?
I've never in my life uttered "gnu/Linux", until now, but to answer the question, glibc is approximately everywhere. Also, unless you've been infected with systemd, you're probably running gnu sysvinit as pid 1 (or upstart).
You COULD run a minimal Linux system at runlevel 3 without any gnu code, but for a desktop system, running a graphical desktop environment, you're probably going to have some gnu in a few places.
I set my wife's up to boot Linux from a high-performance SD card. Her previous computer ran Linux, so I figured I'd make the Chromebook run what she's familiar with.
It turns out, everything she does on the computer she does through a web browser, so she's never had any reason to boot to Linux. ChromeOS suits her use case perfectly. I find that surprising, but ChromeOS is apparently very good at what it's designed for - email, general web browsing, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, etc.
Not necessarily. Some distros, especially for lean systems, have nothing from GNU. There is more than one libc and busybox is not a GNU project.
I can't work out if you're joking. I would never want a computer where I couldn't replace the OS with 3 minutes and a screwdriver.
but I put a linux live USB stick in. When he was startled as boot messages scrolled by, I asked him to relax, it's just getting your credit card info and your shoe size. No, you don't have to take them out of your wallet.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
See now this is why Google is so successful.
I agree.
Google has had no problem in the past with people rooting (jail breaking) their product, once sending dev developers a soon to be released Android phone so they could have a head start.
It's a good bet to say if you own an Android tablet/cell phone and enter "about device" clicking 7 times on say the "Kernel Number" listing or one of the info blocks you will enter Developer mode, for the Samsung S5 it's the “build number” info block.
Once your in dev mode you can run ADB:
"ADB, Android Debug Bridge, is a command-line utility included with Google’s Android SDK. ADB can control your device over USB from a computer, copy files back and forth, install and uninstall apps, run shell commands, and more."
http://www.howtogeek.com/12576...
A requirement and first step to rooting (jail breaking (owning)) a device.
Motorola said it wasn't possible for the Google Xoom tablet to use KitKat 4.4.2, a developer showed it was http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/... making the old new again.
April the 1st, east of the Atlantic.
reposting from my comment in Google+ post linked in the article:
A lot of people are really jumping to some incorrect conclusions here. The features listed above mostly are not new, just now you don't have to enable them via the command line. They have NOTHING to do with booting an OS that isn't ChromeOS/ChromiumOS.
They won't magically enable you boot Linux from a USB stick, which you can only do if your ChromeOS device already has a working Legacy BIOS payload (ie, SeaBIOS -- which the Pixel and Haswell-based devices have).
If you have a newer BayTrail based ChromeBook, you still can't boot an off-the-shelf Linux USB installer because your device doesn't have a legacy BIOS payload.
This may enable potentially important solutions like: http://www.spi.dod.mil/lipose....
Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) creates a secure end node from trusted media on
almost any Intel-based computer (PC or Mac). LPS boots a thin Linux operating system
from a CD or USB flash stick without mounting a local hard drive.
The LPS may be less than ideal but it is a good step forward and makes it clear
that a like solution has a valid place in government and corporate America.
Some think this is a baby step. I think it is a step in the correct direction.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Better yet, Minix 3.2
the friggin 7 year old netbook I have playing music can boot from USB.
so really - are they seriously saying that this was not available before? like what the fuck?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Depends how you have your login and shell profile scripts set up.
In fact, you can plug in a USB->Serial adapter and set up a real VT220 as a secondary console, or if you have a hackintosh with a real serial port, you can just use that.
Or if the machine is set up to ask for a username and password instead of clicking a picture, you can even type '>console' as the user name and drop directly to shell without using terminal.app.
That's only true in iOS-land. ;-)
Getting it to run is probably more appropriate description.
I've made several attempts to install Ubuntu. Following Canonical's instructions didn't work.
I've also enlisted the help of an open source installation tool. I did get to a couple of screens for making basic installation selections and then I believe the installer was supposed to do its magic but the screen turned fully black and remained that until I forced a restart.
Bert
PS: We even put UUCP on the damn thing to pass the tests; it's definitely UNIX, so feel free to spin up your own NetNews node on your MacBook Air.
But please, don't use UUCP. Because some of us have suffered enough with it that you shouldn't have to.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Motorola said it wasn't possible for the Google Xoom tablet to use KitKat 4.4.2, a developer showed it was http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/... making the old new again.
Handset manufacturers are just liars. Sony claimed they couldn't put ICS on the Xperia Play after they promised all Xperia devices would get ICS, but the community has done it since, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can't work out if you're joking. I would never want a computer where I couldn't replace the OS with 3 minutes and a screwdriver.
But do you want a computer where someone else can replace your OS with three minutes and a screwdriver without you being able to tell that they did so?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You have Alpine Linux that uses musl instead of glibc, and busybox but it uses GCC. It's a small box/router/embedded kind of thing but with desktop packages too.
I shall try it on some computer garbage with 128MB ram if/when I come across one, with dillo as the browser because hell, you won't be allowed to use the big stuff.
Don't forget to use OSSv4 for the sound if you want to got all reactionary punk and stick it to the gnu.
Funnily enough some Chromebooks require you to turn a screw to enter dev mode.
It already does unless you've forcibly removed OSX.
Why doesn't RedHat, or Oracle, or SUSE, or someone else run Linux through the compliance tests?
Technology-wise: In rate-distortion terms, Theora is comparable to H.263-family codecs such as DivX (a popular implementation of MPEG-4 ASP). VP8 is comparable to the baseline profile of H.264. This means the picture can be more detailed at the same bitrate.
License-wise: WebM is distributed under the revised BSD license. As a free alternative to a patented format, it's in a similar position to Ogg Vorbis, for which RMS approved of use of the revised BSD license.
So, it is probably more correct to say Linux without the GNU unless we should call Windows "GNU Windows" since one might choose to run a Mingw app.
MinGW is just GCC with the C library of Microsoft Visual C++ 6. If someone were to install Cygwin, on the other hand, that might stand a better chance of being called GNU/Windows. (In fact, Cygwin stands for Cygnus GNU/Windows.) And you're not the only person to present this sort of reduction to absurdity argument. So I set out to define a "GNU/$kernel" userland for myself as GNU Coreutils plus two other major GNU components, such as Bash, Emacs, GCC, or shared glibc. GNU/Linux counts, Cygwin counts, and MSYS counts.
Would "X11/Linux" be a better term to distinguish Fedora, Debian, and the like from Android and uses of Linux on router appliances?
Perhaps you should try installing LUnix on your Commodore computer instead of *BSD.
What's wrong with UUCP?
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
Anyone who reads to the end should realize this a joke even without noting the date: "We can add a kernel later on, following the GNU/Hurd’s successful
approach".
Absolutely Google is targeting ads to her based on many database entries associated with her userid. She gets ads for $8 off a $27 pack of baby formula, exactly the brand she uses, because Google's database indicates she has a baby. That's absolutely the price she pays for heavily using YouTube, gmail, Google search, Maps, etc.
That would also be true if she was using Google maps, YouTube, etc on Linux. We've decided that we like YouTube, we even like Google Now, and in exchange for all of these services we're willing to let ONE company have us in their database. The other option would be to have an email provider who has access to our emails, someone else have our search history, maybe Microsoft maps and navigation would know where we go. We've chosen Google - on our Linux machines, our Android phones, my OSX Mac Pros.
I understand other people might make a different choice. YouTube on Linux isn't really any different, though.
You might want to contribute to http://linux-not-gnu.org/ . I have already been able to replace glibc with uClibc and now clang is able to fully replace gcc so it's only matter of replacing a couple more libs to get a 100% non-GNU operating system with a Linux kernel.
--
Why? I wouldn't want to adopt Stalman's eating habits, by why such an effort to avoid Gnu software?
I suppose the new GPL version can be problematic, the way the wrote the anti-patent stuff. It REALLY should apply only to patents related to a company's contributions, in my opinion. The fact that it can kill a patent from some other division, based on code that the company has never seen, creates an unnecessary risk for companies, which discourages them contributing.
Why doesn't RedHat, or Oracle, or SUSE, or someone else run Linux through the compliance tests?
Primarily? Because it won't pass the testing without a lot of work. In particular, there are negative assertion tests on header files (some things are not allowed to be dragged into the namespace, and the header are promiscuous). There's also a whole bunch of testing having to do with full and almost-full devices. There are also signal issues and process group membership issues. For example, you can "escape" an exclusion group on Linux by setting your default group to one of your other groups; Linux overwrites the membership in cr_groups[0] as a synonym for cr_gid, and doesn't handle POSIX saved IDs quite right, either (Neither do the BSDs, so this isn't a Linux-only problem).
Last time I attempted to run the test suit on Linux as a lark, there were about 20K failures (mostly tests not compiling because of it bailing out over the header file issues. There are also some parts of the system that have been subsumed by systemd; this isn't intrinsically a problem on its own, so long as the system *also* supports flat config files as an addendum, at least for some aspects of logging.
Also, getting the UUCP to work over USB serial dongles is likely to be something of a bear, unless you make the HDB modifications for handling the "rung indicate" as a notification to take the shared file lock on the callout device so the getty's don't start trying to chat with each other.
Finally, there some considerable legal/licensing issues for the trademark.