Crouton, a script that fixes up a chroot of Ubuntu or Debian Linux on top of Chrome OS. While this seems to allow many people to use Chrome OS who unless couldn’t, it’s a hacky answer and requires enabling Developer Mode which switches off most of Chrome OS’ safety features.
A new commit on the Chromium Gerrit has grown to light, with the name “New device system to allow Linux VMs on Chrome OS.” The specific system adds a ‘Better Together’ menu in the Chrome OS settings and allows IT managers to turn the feature on or off.
Of course, the big news is that Chrome OS will essentially certainly support running Linux applications at some point. That opens up a large range of software, from open-source favorites like GIMP and LibreOffice to Linux-compatible Steam games like Civilization V and Rocket League. Potentially, users could even install Wine to work some Windows programs.
One line of code in the commit’s JSON file reveals Google is targeting the highlight for Chrome OS 66, expected to be published on April 24. Chrome Unboxed thinks Linux containers might be announced at Google I/O 2018, which is listed on May 8-10. Considering this would be a huge deal to developers, and I/O is a developer event, that seems very plausible.
While this could clearly help Chrome OS become even more effective in real-world usage, it does continue to erode the plainness that Chromebooks had for so long. The addition of Android app support was a huge plus, but app data and files are now scattered across two file systems, and Linux container support would only add to that.
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