ChromeOS

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ChromeOS is a Linux distribution based on Gentoo that is found native on Chromebooks. It is designed for web browsing and light office applications through Google Docs. Any standard program that can be accessed via the Chrome Browser can be used on ChromeOS, along with a large catalog of other applications available in the Chrome Web Store. ChromeOS uses the "crosh" terminal which is browser based but can be accessed with a window with an extension, and uses Bash version 4.2.48 Compared to the Chrome browser, ChromeOS 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 400-500mb of ram with 2-3 tabs open, more tabs or things like flash applications will increase this. With it being lightweight and very efficient like this, the average user should have no issues with the 2gb of ram that many low end chromebooks come with.

Information

The first Chromebook was called the CR-48, and sports a beautiful minimalist black design. Chromebooks and ChromeOS were announced in mid 2009. Chromebooks were first Shipped in 2011. ChromeOS is currently in Version 46.0.2490.82, with the beta preview available showing version 47.0.2526.69, it is a Rolling Release distribution. ChromeOS is built upon the Chromium Project, which is an open source alternative to Google's products. "Fresh" Chromebooks have an average boot time of 4 seconds from black screen to login. ChromeOS originally started as essentially a Chrome browser in a netbook, until 2012 ChromeOS did not have a taskbar, shell, applications or even a clock, it was just the browser. Using ARC you can install many Android applications, including games like Terraria and Minecraft

Issues

ChromeOS is lacking in some features of a regular 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, etc. It can be found here: https://skycocker.github.io/chromebrew/

Another issue is its inability to be "riced" or customized in any way non-standard to ChromeOS. 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. ChromeOS does have its own Screenfetch ASCII art, ChromiumOS does aswell.

Crouton

The major saving grace of ChromeOS is its easily installation of a linux partition via a program called Crouton. It can be installed with one command and can create a "chroot" in another command. It works like a hybrid of a Virtual Machine and a dual boot, it is not windowed but allows you to move between ChromeOS and your choice of linux installed via a combination of keys. The standard 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 DE options aswell, including XFCE, KDE, CDE, Gnome and in the case of Ubuntu, Unity. All distro choices are "partially-minimal", meaning they come with nothing extra than the bare essentials to get you started, some include the NetSurf browser. There are no Amazon utilities on Ubuntu. Linux Chroots are fully functional, no restrictions like ChromeOS, they are progressively given space from your SSD as they need it, with a limit of 50% of your empty space. For example, on a 16gb SSD a chroot will take about 3gb of space to make a chroot of Ubuntu 12.04, 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 ChromeOS takes a portion of your SSD 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 reccomended 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.