Chromebooks launched 10 years ago with a vision to rethink computing by designing a secure, easy-to-use laptop that becomes faster and more intelligent over time. As more and more people began using devices running Chrome OS, we evolved and expanded the platform to meet their diverse needs.
Today, Chrome OS devices do everything from helping people get things done to entertaining them while they unwind. But we want to do more to provide a powerfully simple computing experience to the millions of people who use Chromebooks. We’re celebrating 10 years of Chromebooks with plenty of new features to bring our vision to life.
It’s hard to imagine it’s already been ten years. Chromebooks are definitely a big success, and I’d love to finally sit down and properly review a Chromebook. I’ve barely even used one, and I want to know what it’s really like to live in a always-online world.
I use one everyday, using the chrome and linux container (almost) everyday and some android apps multiple times a week. It is without a doubt the machine I use the most and have the least amount of work to keep up to date. I would certainly recommend to try one out.
When I bought mine I had a minimum of 3,5 years of updates if I remember correctly. Now, after more than 4 years of ownership I still am sure I get updates until June 24, so still more than 3 years from now! Updates are so easy, only a reboot from time to time, which takes less than a minute on my machine, that is including starting the linux container back up..
For me it is a versatile machine that can be used for most tasks, certainly since you can use the linux container to install all kinds of applications.
Updates are fast, because it is not actually overwriting the current system files.
ChromeOS has two copies of the system partition. If there is an update, the secondary is overriden, and then the next boot is done from there. If it fails, system automatically rolls back to the original partition, and continues as before.
There was a Linux distribution called Core OS using the libraries from Chrome OS for containerized server deployments. It would use “etcd” to automatically bring up the infrastructure. However it was later acquired by RedHat and is no longer available as a standalone product: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_Linux, https://www.openshift.com/
Yet, there is the “FlatCar” fork: https://kinvolk.io/flatcar-container-linux/. They seem to offer the same security and ease of updates, while still being open source.
It’s still around as Fedora CoreOS.
Fedora CoreOS: https://getfedora.org/coreos?stream=stable
CoreOS or FlatCar are container platforms, and they aren’t meant for desktop use.
Fedora Silverblue closer since it is built to be an immutable desktop distro.
Fedora Silverblue: https://silverblue.fedoraproject.org/
CoreOS was already being phased out in favor of K8s when RH bought them, by the way.
The more sophisticated way to do this is by using FS snapshots. ZFS has this ability with boot environments, and btrfs can supposedly do something similar.
Silverblue uses btrfs.
Interesting thanks for the Fedora links, I will check them out.
CoreOS used the be Gentoo based, though. It means there was a major change somewhere along the line.
ChromeOS is a custom Gentoo version. 🙂
I haven’t kept up with CoreOS, but there was a merger with RH’s Project Atomic, which was RH’s container OS project, after the acquisition. I’m not sure if CoreOS was merged in, rebased, or if there was just a rebranding of Project Atomic.
You say that, but you don’t really.
More secure… says the company who profits off of tracking every single thing you do online. Is this some doublespeak definition of secure?
@darknexus
More secure from other companies filching your data and very likely more secure for *US companies* and *US government* filching your data. That’s what it’s all about. If for arguments sake the Russians or Chinese or another enemy of the week produced a guaranteed secure platform watch the trade war and law enforcement comments about “going dark” rise several orders of magnitude. The immediate benefit for “more secure” is the data Google collect becomes more valuable.
I don’t want to use a platform I cannot use exclusively offline or at a minimum attached to a server I own and is on my premises. It’s not just Google peddling always online. Microsoft do this too when they could very easily make their cloud server software available as a consumer offering. They don’t want to because it makes their hardware on their premises more valuable.
Anything with the word “secure” or “online” is usually code for “we want more of your money and want to keep it for ourselves”.
Privacy and security aren’t necessarily the same thing. They do overlap, but not 100%.
More secure because the OS is very locked down. Less private because it’s Chrome.
I would really like one however it alwasy comes down to they cost to much for what you get.
I looked at an article sopmeone wrote taking down misconceptions about chrome os. However they seems to be in the USA and the “misconceptions” still hold true in Europe. The machines are either very expensive or really underpowered.
I would like to play with one but when I can get a windows machine with 3* the power for cheaper then why would I? And this is coming from someone that uses google stuff a lot!
Those really underpowered machines actually function quite well under chromeos. You really don’t need that much processing power when you only use chromeos and android apps. But I agree with you on the expensive chromebooks with more grunt. I also always wonder why people would then not go for a true windows/linux laptop.
Yeah but we are still talking 4gb/32gb (lower refubs that are probably having no updates if you shop cheaper). Sorry 8gb/128gb seems to be the minimum in windows laptop land (again yes you can try to do worse and can but usually for £100 or some weird use case where you want something odd (like a 17inch screen but still cheap).
Hey even just stop your “mac” crap style non upgaradable nonsense and give me a m.2 slot and changable ram, I have many spares so it would be nothing to me to upgrade it. (give me a model with no ram or drive out of the bag, I’m fine!)
I would really like a 8-10 inch portable fold over (convertable or whatever they want to call it), but again we are talkign double the windows market cost as these are premium with 128gb drives wheras the windows ones at the same price come with 1tb.
Just not for me I guess. Maybe I’ll try find a linux that works good on touchscreen for a fold over. Windows certainly does not. (maybe it does I base that on my years old windows tablet which came win win 8! these days it runs like syrup, mostly duies to the 1gb ram i guess, though it has managed to update to current windows (though some early win 10’s were a hard upgrade with 32gb space, though eventually convinced it to use the sd card for the upgrade (would not do it without even after removing the now unneeded win 8 recovery partition and giving the space back to the drive and uninstalling everything possible! but it got better after a few painful versions!)).
You got lucky with the update situation. I ordered my chromebook 2 years ago and in 15 months updates will end. By that time I will probably reflash it to a real linux machine. I am a bit disappointed in chromeos updates. Just like most android phones the kernel stays frozen and only what is on top get’s updated,
Every time I hear about how successful Chrome OS is I ruminate over how potentially successful FirefoxOS, formerly Boot to Gecko, would have been for a feature that was first introduced to the world as a Mozillian’s side project that was captured by Google because Mozilla didn’t see the benefit of having Firefox be the thing that a laptop interface is. Ironically web apps and web apps running like native apps and progressive web apps where also introduced by Firefox and then discarded. It really pains me to see a Firefox opportunity be snatched by another entity that directly competes with it and then takes away the thing Firefox introduced.