There's nothing official yet, but it might launch sometime this month.

The project is called “Lacros” which Google says stands for “Linux And ChRome OS.” This will split ChromeOS’s Linux OS from the Chrome browser, allowing Google to update each one independently.

Previously ChromeOS was using a homemade graphics stack called “Freon,” but now with Wayland, it’ll be on the new and normal desktop Linux graphic stack. Google’s 2016 move to Freon was at a time when it could have moved from X11 (the old, normal desktop Linux graphics stock) directly to Wayland, but it decided to take this custom detour instead. Google says this represents “more Wayland support” because Wayland was previously used for Android and Linux apps, but now it’ll be used for the native Chrome OS graphics, too.

  • drwankingstein@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    it’s worth noting that chromebooks are seeing a good chunk of consumer adoption as it is already as a lot of people who are leaving schools are sticking with them now.

    chromebooks are actually fairly sustainable, a large amount of them more or less run fine on mainline linux, and flashing linux to the newer models typically is not that hard. also we have already reached a point in computing where even cheap computers have a really strong staying power. I currently have a Lenovo N22 (winbook but exact same as the chromebook specs wise) running arch + kde, and daily use, it’s perfectly fine, it can do youtube, email facebook etc.

    it’s not the fastest PC but it manages to chug along and work fine, it was one of, if not the cheapest laptop you could actually get in 2016/2017 era, and it’s still usable, as long as the hardware itself doesn’t physically die, even arm chromebooks to this date remain usable machines, and when you can flash mainline linux kernels on them then I can really see 3rd party forks like thoriumOS being a strong choice.

    as it stands from an ex-computer salesman perspective (and someone who actually supports the products they sell being a key point), chrome(ium)OS is so close to being a really good choice for a linux distro. the only other one im actually waiting for is popOS, waiting to see how cosmic-epoch turns out