ChromeOS

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Chrome OS

Chromium OS

Chrome OS is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Gentoo that is installed on Chromebooks. It is designed for web browsing and light office applications through web applications. Any standard program that can be accessed via the Chrome Browser can be used on Chrome OS, along with a large catalog of other applications available in the Chrome Web Store. Chrome OS includes the terminal emulator "crosh" which is browser based but can be accessed with a window with an extension, and uses Bash.

Compared to the Chrome browser, Chrome OS is surprisingly lightweight, even though it has the browser running in the background 24/7 (as it is integral to the OS) it only uses on average 400-500 MB of RAM with 2-3 tabs open, however, more tabs or things like Flash applications will increase this. With it being as lightweight and efficient as it is, the average user should have no issues with the 2 GB of RAM that many low-end Chromebooks come with.

The Chromium Project

The Chromium Project are the open source versions of the Chrome browser and Chrome OS. Chromium OS and Chrome OS were created via a collaboration of the Google development team and the Chromium Projects developers. The main differences between standard Chrome products and the Chromium counterparts is that Chromium and related projects are free of many non-free addons that Google adds to their blessed Chrome products. The Chromium browser is noted for its lack of tracking features, though not entire gone and still funded by Google, the Chromium browser is a good alternative for those who want the Chrome experience without the tracking. Chromium OS is essentially Chrome OS with the same idea, less tracking, more ability to "dig into it". Chromium comes standard with the Chromebrew package manager, while lacking in packages, is still very useful. It can be installed on Chrome OS but it is not supported.

Issues

Chrome OS is lacking in some features of a regular GNU/Linux distro, namely the lack of a package manager. There is a substitute called Chromebrew but it is severely lacking in packages in its repository; However, it does have the essentials such as htop, vim, and so on, so forth.

Another issue is its inability to be 'riced' or customized in any way non-standard to Chrome OS. It has its own window manager and desktop environment called chromewm and chromeosdesktop respectively, neither of which show up in Screenfetch, and neither can be changed or replaced with others. Chrome OS does have its own Screenfetch ASCII art, as does Chromium OS.

Chromebooks only allow Chrome OS to boot, and nothing else. They ship with coreboot which has verified boot enabled, it only allows signed kernels to be booted. To install any other GNU/Linux distro, you need to re-sign the kernel every time it's changed. To avoid this, it is necessary to update the firmware contained in the SPI flash chip.

Crouton

A GNU/Linux partition can be grafted onto a Chromium OS installation through the use of a program called "crouton". It can be installed with one command and then it is accessed by chrooting into the partition. It works like a hybrid of a virtual machine and a dual boot. It is not windowed but allows you to move between Chrome OS and your choice of Linux, installed via a combination of keys. The standard GNU/Linux choice is Ubuntu, which crouton has all options of, ranging from Breezy to Wily. It also has options for vanilla Debian, Kali Linux, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, and many others. Many come with choices for desktop environments as well, including XFCE, KDE, GNOME and, in Ubuntu's case, Unity. All distro choices are 'partially-minimal', meaning they come with nothing extra than the bare essentials to get you started. There are no Amazon utilities on Ubuntu.

GNU/Linux chroots are fully functional. They have no restrictions like Chrome OS. They are progressively given space from your disk as they need it, with a limit of 50% of your empty space. For example, on a 16 GB SSD a chroot will take about 3 GB of space to make a chroot of Ubuntu, very little of it is for the actual OS; When it runs out of space it will take only up to 6gb of your memory (since Chrome OS takes a portion of your disk to start, leaving you with about 12gb of space). When it runs out of memory after that point, it tells you it can no longer expand its storage, and requires permission to do so via the Crosh terminal in Chrome. It is recommended that if you are a heavy media user, you avoid Chromebooks or get a nice USB stick. Many Chromebooks even come with an SD card reader built in which would also suit this need.

Hardware

Chromebooks are laptops with (usually) low-end hardware, due to the lightweight nature of Chrome OS. They also contain small storage devices to encourage users to use cloud-based services.

Avoid models with an Exynos CPU if you plan to run a GNU/Linux distribution. They won't be able to use most applications provided you decide to use a GNU/Linux distro on a Chromebook, and don't have the power or battery life of the regular Haswell-based models.

Model Name

'

CPU

'

GPU

'

RAM

'

Battery life

'

Screen

'

Storage

'

Price (USD)

Chromebook 11

Exynos 5250

Mali-T604

2GB

6 hours

11.6", 1366x768

16GB SSD

279

Acer C720

Celeron 2955U

Intel HD

2GB

8.5 hours

11.6", 1366x768

16/32GB SSD

199/249

Acer C720P

Celeron 2955U

Intel HD

2GB

7.5 hours

^ but with touch

32GB SSD

299

Chromebook 14

Celeron 2955U

Intel HD

2GB

9.5 hours

14", 1366x768

16GB SSD

299

Samsung Chromebook

Exynos 5250

Mali-T604

2GB

6 hours

11.6", 1366x768

16GB SSD

249

Acer C710

Celeron 847

Intel HD

2GB

3 hours

11.6", 1366x768

16GB SSD

199

Pavillion Chromebook

Celeron 847

Intel HD

2GB

4.25 hr

14", 1366x768

16GB SSD

329

Pixel (2015)

i5-5200U

HD 5500

8GB

12 hours

12.85", 2560x1700

32 SSD

999

Pixel (LS)

Intel Core i7-5500U

HD 5500

16GB

12 hours

12.85", 2560x1700

64 SSD

1,299