At Google I/O, Google quietly announced that “all [Chromebook] devices launched this year will be Linux-ready right out of the box.” A ZDNet article has more details.
Earlier, you could run Debian, Ubuntu and Kali Linux on Chrome OS using the open-source Crouton program in a chroot container. Or, you could run Gallium OS, a third-party, Xubuntu Chromebook-specific Linux variant. But it wasn’t easy.
Now? It’s as simple as simple can be. Just open the Chrome OS app switcher by pressing the Search/Launcher key and then type “Terminal”. This launches the Termina VM, which will start running a Debian 9.0 Stretch Linux container.
At the moment, this isn’t quite what it sounds like. I have a Samsung Chromebook Plus V2 which supports this. It’s a Linux VM all right, but at the moment, it’s a bit limited. Linux doesn’t have direct access to much of the hardware, and none to external devices. Even some internal devices don’t work (e.g. access to audio).
I’m happy to see they’re serious about improving and expanding this functionality. I’ll be happy indeed when I can run Wireshark and other IT tools from my Chromebook.
Just reading the summary, I figured that’s what this was. It’s no more bare metal Linux than WSL on Windows 10.
Besides, Chromebooks already are “Linux” under the hood, though it’s a highly customized Gentoo-based OS and not a typical GNU/Linux distro. Like Android, it’s a bastardization designed to lock the user into Google’s data-hungry walled garden.
That said, some Chromebooks are great candidates for a low cost pure Linux machine once you replace the BIOS with SeaBIOS. Google’s own first and second generation Pixel devices can be had on eBay and similar sites for as low as $200 and they are beautiful, solidly built machines.
Though, if you’re going that route, why not just get a ThinkPad or Dell XPS for the same price?
Morgan,
This is little more than hypothetical conjecture at this point, and I hope it never comes to it, but part of me worries that some day in the future microsoft could stop signing linux bootloaders under microsoft’s secureboot key by saying “Look, you guys have have linux right here. We’re not taking anything away, the secure boot signature is redudnant. What we’re offering with WSL is better integration with your platform of choice, you’re welcome.”
The other approach would be to make Chrome OS a widely deployable OS vs machine specific. I would pay for that.