So Long Dual-Booting Windows on a Chromebook: Project Campfire is deprecated (aboutchromebooks.com) 51
An anonymous reader shares a report: Project Campfire turned up in the Chromium world this past August. The intent was to let a Chromebook boot not just into Chrome OS but directly into another operating system such as Linux or Windows. I thought the latter was a positive outcome since it would allow Chromebooks to natively run Windows desktop apps on a Chromebook, and add value to devices. Unfortunately, the project is shutting down. Spotted in code, there are comments and code removals that make it clear Project Campfire is being deprecated.
Re:Never thought I'd see the day... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well the fact that it's Chrome OS pre-installed and the hoodwinking makes it so that Linux can't be installed/booted means that you should lose your damn mind like everyone who was railing against Secure Boot, unless of course, it had nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with hating on Microsoft only. Because,after all, Google is smaller (not) and less of a dominating force (also not, at least in search, video, mobile phone OS, and a half dozen other areas).
Deprecated means Obsolete (Score:3)
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Not necessarily. Look at all of the software that systemd supposedly "deprecated". It may have been older software, but it was in no way obsolete. In my experience, it actually worked a lot better than the systemd replacements ever have.
"Deprecated" is nothing more than a marketing label meant to scare users into using something new that they otherwise wouldn't voluntarily bother to use, probably because it doesn't meet their needs as well as the existing offering does.
They've added native KVM, that's most likely the future path for support here: custom KVM images.
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I interpret it to mean that it might go away in a future release, so don't rely on it and//or start looking for a workaround.
Re:Deprecated means Obsolete (Score:5, Interesting)
ChromeOS has done an amazing job of offering a reliable consistent user experience across a broad number of rather divergent hardware. On top of it, this is the only consumer operating system designed for security. The only way this has been possible was by using the Linux kernel as a hardware-abstraction-layer. The downside is that it is almost impossible to upgrade the kernel unless the OEM manufacturer does a lot of work.
This is not going to happen for any AltOS scenario. So, Chromebooks would now be subject to the usual driver hell that Windows machines have to deal with. Google almost certainly doesn't want to deal with the customer service pain, nor do they want to sully the good reputation of ChromeOS with the poor experience of installing buggy third-party Windows drivers.
On the other hand, Google has successfully demonstrated how a virtualized Linux kernel can seamlessly be integrated in a way that most users couldn't even tell they aren't running natively. Crostini support is slowly getting rolled out to all new Chromebooks and several older ones. There are still a few limitations, but it has been quite functional for about a year now. In fact, Crostini on a Pixelbook has fully replaced all of my other computing devices.
Given the success of this effort, I'd expect Google to put more resources into virtualization. It's the best way to leverage the hardware abstraction that is already key to Chromebooks' success. There currently is no way to run nested virtual machines nor is it possible to virtualize anything other than Linux. But it would seem an obvious evolution path for this to change.
Even Microsoft realized that this is where the future has to be, and they recently copied ChromeOS by putting their Linux subsystem into a virtual machine.
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That got me interested, but I haven't verified it.
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That is talking about the Linux container environment on ChromeOS. It works pretty well, and is nice, but it's not a real "Native" Linux desktop.
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Google almost certainly doesn't want to deal with the customer service pain, nor do they want to sully the good reputation of ChromeOS with the poor experience of installing buggy third-party Windows drivers.
Bullshit. This is a sorry excuse. No consumer who has the pain of installing Windows on a Chromebook would ever deem it the OEM's responsibility to support drivers on that machine. This has always been Apple's excuse for avoiding a lot of tinkering on their machines, or even car manufacturers saying they don't allow third-party spares on their vehicles.
That is, and always has been, a means for cash grab through keeping the ecosystems closed. You don't see Thinkpad users complaining of no Linux support on th
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Google deprecates without a replacement in mind with annoyingly consistent regularity. Sometimes they say they know what the replacement will be, but it is years to get there and won't be what they promised at all.
Case in point, deprecating Chrome Apps from the web app store. They did that in 2016, promising that Progressive Web Apps would be able to replace them...but their full PWA support was 3 years away. MacOS only just now got full support without a Chrome://flag. Plus you can't put them back in th
Re: Deprecated means Obsolete (Score:1)
Yo dawg (Score:3)
As opposed to allowing Chromebooks to natively run windows apps on a toaster?
Ugh (Score:4, Insightful)
I am in no way anti-Windows ... sure there's stuff that sucks about Windows/Microsoft, but it's really my desktop operating system of choice.
That said, I have no idea why you'd want to install Windows on a Chromebook. Putting up with everything that comes along with Windows would seem to almost completely negate the value proposition of a Chromebook.
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Using a Google product is horrible for freedom.
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I can see wanting to boot into Linux - but basically, I'd only want to do that in order to get a cheap Linux laptop without paying the Microsoft tax. But it's turning out that a Chromebook with enough storage to be a decent Linux laptop is getting to be as expensive as a cheap laptop where you just blow away the Windows installation. That high-end Chromebook might still be nicer than that cheap Windows laptop, though.
In any case, neither of those solutions really solves the problem - which is how to get a
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I have no idea why you'd want to install Windows on a Chromebook.
Because you paid for the hardware, you should be able to use it however you damn well please. The ironic thing is, most of us imagined it would be Microsoft using trusted computing to lock out competitors.
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The value proposition of Chromebooks is that they are the only pieces of hardware priced and made like netbooks of old. A lot of people are buying these expecting to run Windows. ...And that's exactly where Google's problem lies - they sell these at cost just like they offer Android to OEM's for free so they can datamine and fuckvertise the consumer to eternity, getting their investment's worth back tenfold. This is why they're restricting the OS to ChromeOS. It's also why they are now blocking Android cert
"Linux" is not an operating system (Score:1)
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Dual booting Microsoft Windows on a Chromebook? Lunatics
LoB
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Duel booting
That would probably be interesting to watch.
Who would have guessed (Score:2, Funny)
That google would drop off a project months after they started it. Literally, i cannot believe it. [/sarcasm]
Wait, what? (Score:2)
How to Install Linux on an Acer C720 Chromebook (Score:2)
All your hours (Score:2)
Welcome back to their ads and only the ads.
All that freedom and free code was a pathway to their own ad services.