Breaking the Boundaries of ChromeOS
Making the most of your chromebook
Chromebooks are not really a competetor in the magical race of “Productivity”, “Is this cool-looking” and “Does this have Steam I want Crab Game”. Many people have just been searching for the answer. If you were…
Well, your search is now finished because you found this!
Chromebooks are good devices to test out things, because they offer the Chromebook recovery utility extension, which all you need for that is a broken chromebook and a USB. You can also use non-write-protect options like Crouton and Crostini. Other options require the write-protect screw or jumper to be taken out, as they need access to the SeaBIOS (Chromebook BIOS) and how they do that? Well, they use custom coreboot firmware (Special stuff to access the BIOS)
Anyway, here’s the contents.
Read these first:
No write protect required:
Here’s a ChromeOS history lesson: Google announced ChromeOS, based on Linux, in July 2009, conceiving it as an operating system in which both applications and user data reside in the cloud: hence Chrome OS primarily runs web applications. Source code and a public demo came that November. The first Chrome OS laptop, known as a Chromebook, arrived in May 2011. Initial Chromebook shipments from Samsung and Acer occurred in July 2011.
Chrome OS has an integrated media player and file manager. It supports Progressive Web Apps and Chrome Apps; these resemble native applications, as well as remote access to the desktop. As more Chrome OS machines have entered the market, the operating system is now seldom evaluated apart from the hardware that runs it.
Android applications started to become available for the operating system in 2014, and in 2016, access to Android apps in Google Play’s entirety was introduced on supported Chrome OS devices. Support for a Linux terminal and applications, known as Project Crostini, was released to the stable channel in 2018 with Chrome OS 69. This was made possible via a lightweight Linux kernel that runs containers inside a virtual machine.
Laptops running Chrome OS are known collectively as “Chromebooks”. The first was the CR-48, a reference hardware design that Google gave to testers and reviewers beginning in December 2010. Retail machines followed in May 2011. A year later, in May 2012, a desktop design marketed as a “Chromebox” was released by Samsung. In March 2015 a partnership with AOPEN was announced and the first commercial Chromebox was developed.
In early 2014, LG Electronics introduced the first device belonging to the new all-in-one form factor called “Chromebase”. Chromebase devices are essentially Chromebox hardware inside a monitor with a built-in camera, microphone and speakers.
The Chromebit is an HDMI dongle running Chrome OS. When placed in an HDMI slot on a television set or computer monitor, the device turns that display into a personal computer. The first device, announced in March 2015 was an Asus unit that shipped that November and which reached end of life in November 2020.
Chromebook tablets were introduced in March 2018 by Acer with their Chromebook Tab 10. Designed to rival the Apple iPad, it had an identical screen size and resolution and other similar specifications, a notable addition was a Wacom-branded stylus that doesn’t require a battery or charging.
Chrome OS supports multi-monitor setups, on devices with a video-out port, USB 3.0 or USB-C, the latter being preferable.
On February 16, 2022, Google announced a development version of Chrome OS Flex—a distribution of Chrome OS that can be installed on conventional PC hardware to replace other operating systems such as Windows and macOS. It is similar to CloudReady, a distribution of Chromium OS whose developers were acquired by Google in 2020.
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