Tag Archives: chromeos

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Googlebook and Googlebook OS arrive – want one?

Google has released Googlebook OS, a replacement for ChromeOS based on Android and previewed in May this year, with the announcement accompanied by new devices from Acer, Asus, Dell HP and Lenovo.

Unlike the Chromebook, Googlebook is not a budget device, with prices starting at $899. The key features are integration with an Android phone, NPUs (neural processing units) for on-device AI, and a hypervisor which provides an isolated Linux environment so that if your Linux OS is compromised or corrupted it will not impact the parent OS.

Although Google states that “you can safely run any Linux developer tools, pull code repositories, or execute autonomous agents,” the reality is not so simple. For example, if you give an agent write access to a GitHub repository and then suffer from a prompt injection attack which infects that repository, the fact that your local Linux environment is isolated will not help you.

Android integration includes “Continue On” which lets you start something on the phone and continue on the laptop. It is not a new idea; Microsoft has a similar Resume feature in Windows though it is not well supported, and Apple has Continuity which works with iPhone and Mac. I’ve used Continuity and it is somewhat useful but I do not often start something on a phone and then continue it on a Mac or PC. The little things are the most useful; having Apple Messages on the Mac is great, as is linking WhatsApp to the desktop.

The difficulty with ChromeOS and now Googlebook is that most Android apps are not ideal for a laptop. One can live in the web browser of course (the original ChromeOS concept), but for me ChromeOS only became attractive when Linux support was introduced.

Unfortunately Google is mainly focused on Linux as a terminal environment. Questions about GUI Linux apps are not fully answered on this Reddit thread, despite the presence of official Google community engagement manager Mishaal Rahman, though a user comments that “GUI apps are supported via the Weston compositor on the latest Android 17 QPR2 Beta.” It is also noted that on ChromeOS, Google backtracked on GPU acceleration for Linux, introducing it but then making it unsupported.

Rahman states that “our vision is to have an open, thriving platform where your apps, files, and workflows flow seamlessly between your phone, external monitors, and dedicated laptops.” In the context, “apps” means Android apps, not Linux apps. That fits with Google’s priorities but it is not so good for the user.

A Googlebook is more secure than a Windows laptop but also locked down other than in the Linux environment. That, and the priority given to Android apps, makes it of little interest for me, though it could be a good choice for someone who needs the large screen of a laptop with the security of a mobile device.

Another used asked “is the Googlebook OS open source?” No official reply as yet; but the answer is likely to be no or not really; Google has notably retreated from open source on Android and even if some variant of Googlebook OS is published, key Android pieces will remain proprietary.

cloud computing, google, Uncategorized

Chrome OS: will Google keep its vision?

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I spent some time with Chrome OS over the weekend and yesterday, first doing my own build of the open source Chromium OS, and then running it and writing a review.

The build process was interesting: you actually compile Chromium OS from a chroot virtual environment. My first efforts were unsuccessful, for two reasons. First, Chromium OS assumes the presence of a pre-built Chromium (the browser), so you have to either build Chromium first, or download a pre-built version. However, the Chromium build has to be customised for Chromium OS. I did manage to build Chromium, but it failed to run, with what looked like a gtk version error, so I gave up and downloaded a zip.

Chromium OS itself I did build successfully, though I ran into an error that needed this patch, which I applied manually. I was using the latest code from the git repository at the time. I expect that this problem has been fixed now though you may run into different ones; life on the bleeding edge can be painful.

I also had difficulty logging in. You are meant to log in with a Google account, which presumes a live internet connection at least on the first occasion. Although Chromium OS successfully used the ethernet connection on my laptop, getting an IP address and successfully pinging internet sites, the login still failed with a “Network not connected” error. Studying the logs revealed a certificate error. You can also create a backdoor user at build time, so I did that instead.

Once I got Chromium OS up and running, booting from a USB key, I found it mostly worked OK. It is a fascinating project, because of Google’s determination to avoid local application installs, thereby gaining better security as well as driving the user towards web solutions for all their needs.

That’s a bold vision, but also an annoying one. Normally, when reviewing something relevant like an operating system or a word processor, I try to write the review in the product I am testing. In fact, I am writing this post in Chromium OS. However, I could not write my review on Chromium OS, because I needed screenshots; and although there are excellent web-based image editing tools, I could not find a way to take screenshots and paste or upload them into those tools. The solution I adopted was to run Chromium OS in a virtual machine – I used VirtualBox – and take the screenshots from the host operating system.

It is a small point; but makes me wonder whether Google will end up bundling just a few local utilities to make the web-based life a little easier. If it does so, third parties will want to add their own; and Google will be under pressure to abandon its idea of no local application installs.

Another interesting point: the rumour is that Google will unify Chrome OS  with Android, which does allow application installs. Can that happen without providing a way to run Android apps on Chrome?

Chromium OS includes a calculator utility, which opens in a panel. Mine does not work though; I get a blank panel with the URL http://welcome-cros.appspot.com/calculator.html – which seems to be a broken link. Still, is that really a sensible way to provide a calculator? What about offline – will it work from a Gears local web server, or as a static HTML page with a JavaScript calculator, or will it not work at all?

I will be interested to see whether Google ends up compromising a little in order to improve the usability and features of its new OS.