
Chromium OS Universal Chroot Environment - js2
https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
======
77ko
It would be nice if Google adopted crouton as a official dev environment and
offered a way to backup a crouton environment to Google Drive - just settings
and installed packages and user files, making it easy to sign into a
chromebook and get started on a complete dev environment (after downloading
some files).

Of course it defeats the purpose of chromebooks - simple cloud managed
machines - but hey, why not?

~~~
satysin
Yeah it would be nice if they officially supported Linux on their Chromebooks
for Android Studio if nothing else. With the Play Store coming to Chrome OS I
hope it is only a matter of time before we see some kind of official developer
setup. The Pixel would make a really nice machine IMHO.

~~~
StevePerkins
I have an Acer C720 Chromebook on which I tinkered with crouton, before re-
purposing the device as a YouTube player for my toddler. It was a cheap little
novelty that I enjoyed playing with for awhile, but I just don't fully
understand the impulse to turn these things into Linux development
workstations.

You have to more or less root the device... press a Ctrl key combo during
_every_ boot in order to keep it rooted... and then open a shell and type a
sequence of commands to enter a crouton Linux session.

Look, I have fond memories of using Slackwhare back in the 90's, and feeling
like a wizard every time I figured out how to make my PC do something it
wasn't "supposed to do". So I assume that hacker ethos is much of the appeal.

However, today Acer sells the Aspire One Cloudbook for the same price as the
Acer Chromebook I bought two years ago. It's 14" instead of 11", has the same
battery life, and is a full unlocked Windows PC (easily replaceable with
Linux). So if you just want a cheap Linux PC with good battery life, why in
the world wouldn't you go that route rather than buying a locked Chromebook
and jumping through all the hoops? Using a Pixel would be even more bizarre,
because at that point you're in the Macbook Pro price range.

Chromebooks are well-suited for school students, and non-technical business
people at companies that revolve around Google Apps. You CAN squeeze those
square pegs into round holes as a programmer, but it really doesn't make any
practical sense to do so today.

~~~
enoch_r
Coming from the other side: I run Linux on a Chromebook Pixel 2015, but I
don't use Crouton, I just replaced ChromeOS entirely. Except for "ctrl-L" on
every boot (which, really, I don't reboot my machine enough for it to be
anything but an _extremely_ minor annoyance) it works perfectly. It's vastly
higher-quality (i7 processor, 16GB RAM, fantastic screen, great battery life,
fast-charging with USB-C, the build quality of a MBP) and more linux-
compatible than anything else I could have purchased for a similar price
($1300).

The only real downside is the 64GB SSD, but I can augment that with an SD
card. I'm pretty deeply in love with this laptop as a development machine.

------
ISL
I tried Crouton as a gamble, and it's paid off extremely well. It's the nicest
linux laptop I've ever had, as the hardware support worked out of the box.

Being able to swap back and forth between Chrome OS and crouton at runtime has
been great.

Difficulty resolving display settings for a cranky old projector under linux?
No problem under Chrome OS.

Linux temporarily horked by an update, but I _really_ need to check email? No
problem.

I haven't needed to configure _any_ linux wireless settings on the laptop
either, as it operates through a crouton interface.

Want to let someone borrow your computer? Chrome OS is an instantly-understood
interface.

Want to hit <delete> instead of <backspace>? Use the windows key as an
unmapped personal <meta> key? Well, you can't have everything in life.

Battery life has been great, and the in-flight wireless deal that came with
the Chromebook has pretty much offset the laptop's cost.

Thank you, Crouton devs. You've made my life better.

------
bsimpson
crouton has been around for years - any reason you're posting today?

~~~
calebegg
What causes this phenomenon on HN? I find this happens a lot, where some
longstanding project or old article or something gets posted and makes it to
the front page without any context as to why it was posted. I'm left to hunt
down what made this relevant or what is new on the page that made someone post
this and made others upvote it, and often I can't figure it out at all. It's a
bit weird.

~~~
lgas
Obviously it could happen for any number of reasons but my guess is that the
most common reason is that someone encounters something for the first time and
thinks "this is really cool" and wants to share it with someone, and then they
think "I know, HN will love this!" and then they post it, and then they either
get distracted and wander off, or they see everyone posting "why are you
posting this, it's been around forever" type of stuff and they decide they
have better stuff to do.

------
anonbanker
small reminder that GalliumOS (Real Linux for Chromebooks) has a new beta[0].

[https://www.reddit.com/r/GalliumOS/comments/4l27qw/20beta1_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/GalliumOS/comments/4l27qw/20beta1_is_ready_testers_needed/)

