A viable option to Windows hedgemony...Linux apps on ChromeOS

[loop101]

Apparently Google is working on making native Linux apps run on ChromeOS. Suddenly all those Chromebooks out there might be able to run native apps, just like Windows. This would allow programmers to use more mainstream languages like C/C++, instead of having to write everything in Flutter (assuming Fuscia is still coming).

I have a Chromebook, and I do like it's form-factor, though I dislike its many software limitations. Being able to run high-performance native apps on $200 Chromebooks might open up new opportunities, like video-editing, AI, gaming, etc.

It still seems like the Web/HTML/JS is eating the world, but it is an interesting development.

Linux apps on Chrome OS - an overview of its biggest feature since Android apps

 

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[Late Bloomer]

Being able to run high-performance native apps on $200 Chromebooks might open up new opportunities, like video-editing, AI, gaming, etc.

I think their main push is to use asm.js and NACL to get compiled Javascript performance within about a factor of 3 of C code, making it good enough for lots of uses that can still be hosted in the browser sandbox environment.

 

[LittleWolfie]

TL/DR No way you can do this for $300 to customer without spending more on the hardware than you charge the customer(A lot of Telco companies operate this way, which is why the contracts are so long,they have to make back the cost of the hardware) so with a deep pocketed investor that's not a show stopper,but your economics are like Sprint not IBM. Dell charge over $1000 for the hardware. You could buy one of their laptops and also Ubuntu + wine on it to meet all the requirements.

However the smaller the device the more expensive the ram memory and processing power. Better, Faster or Cheaper pick two. That said their are several possible compromise solutions depending on what exactly you want to do.

Colo is basically where you pay to put your server else where.

Apparently Google is working on making native Linux apps run on ChromeOS. Suddenly all those Chromebooks out there might be able to run native apps, just like Windows. This would allow programmers to use more mainstream languages like C/C++, instead of having to write everything in Flutter (assuming Fuscia is still coming).

I have a Chromebook, and I do like it's form-factor, though I dislike its many software limitations. Being able to run high-performance native apps on $200 Chromebooks might open up new opportunities, like video-editing, AI, gaming, etc.

It still seems like the Web/HTML/JS is eating the world, but it is an interesting development.

Linux apps on Chrome OS - an overview of its biggest feature since Android apps

Okay, what do you like like about Chromebook form factor? Does it have to be Chromebook OS or can another one be used?

A couple of approaches here.

The main problem your going to hit with video editing is lack of GPU abilities in a small form factor,most laptops and tablets use internal graphics chips. You need custom hardware (you could run chromium on an Alienware, essentially getting you a fat client) that doesn't answer the app problem.

(Also pushes it above the $200 level) you could use guac and gpu servers to process just like how blockchain mining works) that lets you push the work away to colo and keep the GPU (you need special servers, but there's a company in Germany that manufacter S risers for adding GPU to 1U servers or you can just use towers at the cost of higher prices.

You get the thinner form factor at the cost of being an infrastructure as a service and higher latency (fine for video editing, not so much for gaming) you can use standard VPS as proxy servers to spread around a bit.

This is making your chromebook dumber, as a terminal however with good bandwidth,prefetching(larger disk) you could overcome most of these problems, as long as you have regular Wi-Fi or 3g connection. (Using a i 3g bridge like phones do using it wheb wifi and ethernet is unavalible mostly is a good approach and the dongles are cheap and the software is low cost to design and implement(I do this with my pc when I tether my mobile to it)

The third option is to simply add server side abilities to the Chromebook much like FirefoxOS did so It can run web apps directly,this is harder to configure though.


If you don't care about video editing, but do want more apps, you would be better moving an existing OS to an ARM along the lines of Ubuntu. Which already has native app store (and the ability to run wine allowing for Windows tablet apps, although you will run into resource issues.

Most tablets actually have more are power than full featured desktop software actually needs, however their terrible at the parallel processing because they don't have 256mb of GPU but only processing power(this makes them rubbish at parralel processing) their are laptops available with GPUs, their heavier but there might be a market for them with video editing software installed. The hardware alone is above $300 though.

You could theoretically attempt to emulate a GPU with your processor bit your going to slow things down a lot, needing more hardware.

You could get a compromise middle form factor with minimal special hardware needed, by running multiple tablets in a beowolf cluster to give you the parallel architecture, now you can emulate your GPU.

 

[GoGetter24]

I thought Mac was the viable option to Windows hegemony...

I'm a windows kid and even I know I should be ditching this piece of crap OS and moving to Mac sooner rather than later.

Linux has always suffered from one key problem: nerds. Linux is anti user friendly, because it's designed to cater to computer nerds who wish to show off and indulge in how clever they are, and protect their weak egos with a deliberately high-technical-barrier closed shop.

Go to any Linux forum and ask "how do you do simple change X". You get 2 types of responses:

1. Execute this bizarre page of word vomit in the terminal, in perfect order. But if you actually try to do that, it won't work. They'll then use words like "just" or "should" to pretend the solution is simple or the problem is your fault. "Oh in that case just do [second page of vomit]". Or "you shouldn't be using that" or "you should have already installed this".

2. Why would you want to do that? You shouldn't want to do that. Don't do that. These guys don't watch internet porn. They wack off to arbitrary dogmatic posts about things that aren't important.

Until someone comes along who can reign in these little wierdos and aspergers sufferers into being generally useful to society beyond keeping servers running, and find ways to better and more broadly monetize open source so it gets pressured into being reliable and user friendly, we're not going to see Linux challenge the big guys in the consumer space.

 

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[LittleWolfie]

Actually Mac is a flavour of Linux (it grew out of freeBSD,basically being a simplified less easily customisable version (Ubuntu being the closet approach)

OS X leopard is unix-compliant so Unix developers and engineers are essential to making your mac book run nicely

Linux is monetized really well as servers, server support (just about every cloud offering, vps runs it behind the scene) those servers run really well. Plus Apple basically monetized Linux by making it simple and easy to use at the cost of reducing the ability to modify it.

Compare old car engines to modern sealed ones. The old engines have all the same kind of petrolheads obsessed with fixing in convoluted steps while modern ones have autorepajr from on board diagnostics, and almost plug and play replacement.

On the desktop front SteamOS is a Linux distribution for gamers, that is concentrating on the simplicity, along with simple versions with easy to see buttons for the elderly.

 

[lowtek]

I thought Mac was the viable option to Windows hegemony...

I'm a windows kid and even I know I should be ditching this piece of crap OS and moving to Mac sooner rather than later.

Linux has always suffered from one key problem: nerds. Linux is anti user friendly, because it's designed to cater to computer nerds who wish to show off and indulge in how clever they are, and protect their weak egos with a deliberately high-technical-barrier closed shop.

Go to any Linux forum and ask "how do you do simple change X". You get 2 types of responses:

1. Execute this bizarre page of word vomit in the terminal, in perfect order. But if you actually try to do that, it won't work. They'll then use words like "just" or "should" to pretend the solution is simple or the problem is your fault. "Oh in that case just do [second page of vomit]". Or "you shouldn't be using that" or "you should have already installed this".

2. Why would you want to do that? You shouldn't want to do that. Don't do that. These guys don't watch internet porn. They wack off to arbitrary dogmatic posts about things that aren't important.

Until someone comes along who can reign in these little wierdos and aspergers sufferers into being generally useful to society beyond keeping servers running, and find ways to better and more broadly monetize open source so it gets pressured into being reliable and user friendly, we're not going to see Linux challenge the big guys in the consumer space.

What you're saying simply isn't so, for most distributions. Whenever I've googled any question for an issue in Ubuntu, which is rare, the replies are always helpful. I have yet to see anyone chastising the person asking the question.

Linux Mint is a strong alternative for Windows, and an easy place to jump off. Very little command line interaction required, and if it is, you simply cut and paste.

I've had just as many issues on Windows as I have had on Linux, all things considered. Anybody that thinks Windows is user friendly is suffering from normalcy bias.

If you're trying to install Arch Linux as a noob, yeah you're gonna have a bad time. Any of the flavors of Ubuntu are going to be a cake walk and well within the realm of feasibility for anybody that has installed Windows.

 

[GoGetter24]

I've had just as many issues on Windows as I have had on Linux, all things considered. Anybody that thinks Windows is user friendly is suffering from normalcy bias.

Windows is crap for user-friendliness, but it's at least designed and funded with attaining it in mind. If I hit the windows button and type words in the ball park of the setting I want to change, I'll probably eventually find where to change that setting. In linux I've got to get on Q/A and copy and paste word vomit and hope it doesn't screw up (which it absolutely will and always does).

Linux Mint is a strong alternative for Windows, and an easy place to jump off. Very little command line interaction required, and if it is, you simply cut and paste.

That's what I used. It's not a strong alternative, and not an easy place to jump off. Again, this is only the concept of tech people who's egos are attached to their tech ability, not laymen.

This is why strong managers are absolutely critical in gaining value from engineers. Engineer types are just so decoupled from the reality of humans and buried in wires and esoteric abstractions that they just can't see or understand how little tech bullshit the layman is willing to tolerate. Engineers are absolutely useless to society without very strong managers reigning them in.

 

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[GoGetter24]

Actually Mac is a flavour of Linux (it grew out of freeBSD,basically being a simplified less easily customisable version (Ubuntu being the closet approach)

OS X leopard is unix-compliant so Unix developers and engineers are essential to making your mac book run nicely

Linux is monetized really well as servers, server support (just about every cloud offering, vps runs it behind the scene) those servers run really well. Plus Apple basically monetized Linux by making it simple and easy to use at the cost of reducing the ability to modify it.

Why are you here? Why do you just keep spraying complete nonsense irrelevant word vomit everywhere? Why do you keep noising up this forum?

Note the difference in ratio between your messages and your likes, versus everyone else's. If you're just lonely I think you need to find some real life friends, or go on 4chan or something. Why are you so incapable of adjusting yourself or reigning yourself in? You need to vigorously hammer yourself into shape and completely transform yourself as a person. You need to find a real-world, local, strong and accomplished mentor, to whom you submit yourself as a mentee or apprentice, and who's every command and piece of advice on every aspect of work and life you follow to the letter without question.

The reason you get so few responses is you're probably on the ignore lists of half the people here. And every time I click "show ignored posts" I regret it. I wish there was a hard ignore so this noise wouldn't even bump threads. You should probably ditch your account and start again.

You seriously need to stop this blurting and damaging the signal-to-noise ratio of this community. Follow a simple rule: don't open your mouth unless you've got something valuable & relevant to contribute, don't interact just for the sake of it, and don't type any sentence without a purpose. Take control of yourself, man. You could be 10 times what you are now if you'd do so.

 

[LittleWolfie]

What you're saying simply isn't so, for most distributions. Whenever I've googled any question for an issue in Ubuntu, which is rare, the replies are always helpful. I have yet to see anyone chastising the person asking the question.

Linux Mint is a strong alternative for Windows, and an easy place to jump off. Very little command line interaction required, and if it is, you simply cut and paste.

Any of the flavors of Ubuntu are going to be a cake walk and well within the realm of feasibility for anybody that has installed Windows.

For most distributions, yes. I was focusing on two in particular. (Mint is actually a customised version of Ubuntu (they are 100% binary compatible ) which in turn is a customised version of Debian. Mint is basically the Debian version of MacOS(which is built on FreeBSD) (You can still code for Mac on FreeBSD without needing a dedicated MacBook. So a mint based Laptop/Desktop is taking the same approach as Apple(except for a free open software approach)

Most noobs, don't install windows or OS x though. They go and buy a laptop or computer.

 

[kanunay]

I've been working with Linux since the early 1990s. The biggest problem with it, for consumer use, is that there are many different 'flavors' or 'distributions' of Linux. All with different installers, different programs to change/manage settings, etc. It suffers from what the tech world in general suffers from - a kind of ADD, with nobody sticking to any one thing or design for any length of time.

Windows (and Mac) are successful in the consumer area because of consistency. Even though they do change, it happens slowly, and with a focus on usability. Not just because someone decided to rewrite parts of it in the newest programming language for the heck of it, or changed the entire desktop design because they thought it would look cool.

 

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[jon.M]

I switched over from Windows 10 to Mint several months ago. I don't regret it at all. The interface feels more clean and simple. I can customize stuff to my own liking, more so than in Windows. Productivity has increased.

 

[lowtek]

I switched over from Windows 10 to Mint several months ago. I don't regret it at all. The interface feels more clean and simple. I can customize stuff to my own liking, more so than in Windows. Productivity has increased.

Plus it doesn't spy on you... or force updates on you... or feed you advertisements for its own products...

I switched to Linux full time a year and a half ago, and outside of some periodic gaming, I didn't boot into windows. Haven't booted up my windows partition in about 7 months now.

 

[jon.M]

Plus it doesn't spy on you... or force updates on you... or feed you advertisements for its own products...

I switched to Linux full time a year and a half ago, and outside of some periodic gaming, I didn't boot into windows. Haven't booted up my windows partition in about 7 months now.

That was actually the primary reason I switched over. Had an experience walking into the room, only to notice the LED of my webcam being on. And I never use it. Freaked me out like hell, lol.

No matter why that happened, it led me down the rabbit hole and soon I discovered how shitty Windows is in terms of privacy.

 

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