After covering Google’s effort to separate the Chrome browser from ChromeOS for over two years, it appears more of you will get to experience it. The project is called Lacros, and it uses the Linux browser for ChromeOS instead of the integrated browser. The idea is that browser updates can be pushed quicker to Chromebooks instead of waiting for a full ChromeOS update. Based on recent code changes I spotted, ChromeOS 116 may bring the Lacros browser to more Chromebooks with a wider release.
This seems like a no-brainer move, and may help improve the version of Chrome running on Linux.
I thought the entire point of ChromeOS to begin with was to have the system interface be the browser and be updated and maintained and treated as just another web app – the vision seemed to be that the browser was the Desktop.
Now it seems to be coming back around to a traditional Desktop environment + Applications architecture. The return to traditional architectures is especially interesting given how much Google has publicly struggled with updating Android, which has always had the OS/system UI vs applications divide.
Not saying either is right or wrong, it’s just interesting how the entire point of ChromeOS’s existence seems to be being backed away from to make yet another desktop OS.
It don`t have to be like you think. Interface won`t change I guess, it still will be the same. They do this to make separete updates for Chrome without upgrading a whole OS. So when this thing happen probably you`ll be able to get new Chrome browser updates after the Chromebook will become unsupported.
Oh I’m sure it’ll be the same, but being able to update the OS (or rather, the desktop environment) along with the browser was supposed to be one of the advantages of making it all one thing.
For a while there Chrome was even shipping a version of the ChromeOS desktop inside Chrome as it’s immersive mode, along with its native app support after all, to try and supplant the unpopular win8 UI.
Just the cycle of IT solutions, coming around again
Well, the desktop still runs in a browser and that browser is still Chrome. It is just that there will be two browsers now with the desktop running in one of them. It is not clear to me exactly what the advantage is. I mean, I guess it is so that the user-facing browser and the base desktop system can be upgraded / versioned independently. But why is that an advantage? As you say, if you are going to provide a browser update, why not use that browser for both the end-user application and the desktop?
I guess there may be a security advantage as user-facing browser is more isolated from the base system. Overall though, it is not really clear to me what the motivation is here.
tanishaj.
Over time main advantage of ChromeOS has shifted, at least it seems that way. It is a simple desktop with very good security and central management.
Having the browser as the main UI has become secondary. In fact, if we consider the recent support for both Android and native Linux apps, (including IDEs or even Steam games) it has been long gone.
Basically, Chrome OS now is more or less a “cloud native” (as they call) Linux distribution with secure management facilities.
I wonder how this will affect performance on low end Chromebooks, currently running a browser in the Linux Debian subsystem is very slow. Presumably the new browser will run on Chrome OS?
ChromeOS runs on Linux and, as the article states, it provides a Wayland server as well ( exo ). Lacros ( this new web browser ) will run directly on top of the Linux host Linux kernel ( ChromeOS ) with the GUI being served by exo ( Wayland ). The article notes “some performance/resource costs” but does not expand on that. Basically, you will be running two instances of Chrome ( one for the desktop and one as the browser ). So, double the base load CPU and RAM?
The issue is with the Chrome OS update system, which is actually quite good.
Similar to forks like Core OS, or Silverblue, it uses a read only root partition, along with a secondary that is used to install the next version. In a boot failure, the new version is discarded to go back to the previous stable one. This more or less ensures the main OS is never broken.
However it also means none of the packages can be updated without updating all of them. So your firmware, kernel, and browser updates must always be kept in sync.