It's still a Linux distro. Ext4 partitions, glibc, upstart as the init. The GUI is weird but it's just another desktop.
I don't use it myself but my wife's laptop does. So, example: it has no video player. Solution: Ctrl+Alt+T, just like Ubuntu. In the terminal, `apt install vlc`. Done. File associations and things just happened automatically. Once VLC was there, double-click a movie file on the local drive and it opened and played.
It's based on Gentoo but the bundled container-VM thingie is Debian.
ChromeOS is a lot more like any other distro than Android, which is different from the libc and entire userland on upwards.
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It's still a Linux distro. Ext4 partitions, glibc, upstart as the init. The GUI is weird but it's just another desktop.
I don't use it myself but my wife's laptop does. So, example: it has no video player. Solution: Ctrl+Alt+T, just like Ubuntu. In the terminal, `apt install vlc`. Done. File associations and things just happened automatically. Once VLC was there, double-click a movie file on the local drive and it opened and played.
It's based on Gentoo but the bundled container-VM thingie is Debian.
ChromeOS is a lot more like any other distro than Android, which is different from the libc and entire userland on upwards.
Yeah, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory for desktop Linux if it conquers the desktop. You can't even use it normally without Google account.
Very true and an excellent point.
There is a fork that doesn't need Google accounts. It's called Fyde OS. I tried it:
https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2025/08/21/fydeos-offers...