Quote:
Originally Posted by Pajamaman
Its been a while since my foray and lightning exit from chromebook. I figured I would install Linux on it, even though its already "Linux" (but without the functionality of full Linux), but promptly discovered it lacked the resources to make it practical (fast onboard storage).
I found ChromeOS horribly limited for my needs. Browsing, email, wordprocessing, yes. Anything else, not really. For example, a recent visitor to these boards discovered installing Calibre on a chromebook is hard to impossible, at least for a "dumb" end user. So no, a Chromebook is only Linux in a very limited sense. It lacks the functionality of a full Linux install.
I am unfamiliar with running Linux apps in a container on one. Maybe that would have worked for the user wanting to run calibre. If so, no one advised him. IME chromebooks are only good for what they're designed for, and are most certainly no replacement for a windows/linux/mac PC. Even with Android apps, which, IMO are again no replacement for a real PC and not much good for serious heavy duty work.
But if you want argue chromeos and android are "Linux" let's just say everything including Windows is C with a bit of assembler. Ah, to heck with it. It's all binary. So they're all the same? Clearly not.
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A "dumb" end user might struggle to figure out how to install Calibre on Windows 10S. But you wouldn't say that Windows 10S isn't Windows. ChromeOS does some weird things from a normal Linux distro perspective like running the entire GUI in essentially 1 X11 window and its locked down but it's still very Linuxy in how it operates. Android is a little different and does its own thing for drawing interfaces and running programs. But they both use the Linux kernel under the hood. I can "do real work" on an Android tablet quite easily. Termux + a proot-distro and I can do all the same things I do on my Linux desktop.
Someone did explain to that guy that it was possible to run Linux apps on Chromebooks via. Crostini. I suppose Crouton would have been worth a mention too since it's more compatible.