Google Just Made It Easier To Run Linux On Your Chromebook 169
TechCurmudgeon writes A story in PCWorld's "World beyond Windows" column outlines coming improvements in Chrome OS that will enable easily running Linux directly from a USB stick: "Have you ever installed a full desktop Linux system on your Chromebook? It isn't all [that] hard, but it is a bit more complex than it should be. New features in the latest version of Chrome OS will make dipping into an alternative operating system easier. For example, you'll be able to easily boot a full Linux system from a USB drive and use it without any additional hassle!"
Pedantic, but... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Pedantic, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Get back in your box, Richard Stallman!
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You summoned him! /. account, but still is a reader.
Apparently he doesn't have a
He probably doesn't like the license for using the anonymous account, and I can't really blame him.
Anyhow, I think you're triggering a /. law here: As the mentioning of RMS in a Slashdot thread grows, the chance of Bruce Perens posting approaches unity.
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I'm pretty sure that it isn't, since Stallman is said never to surf the Net directly, but only to read Web pages via email.
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Re: Pedantic, but... (Score:2, Funny)
Like Godwins law, true linux pedantry will continue until the probability of descending into linguistic analysis of libre vs gratis reaches 1.0. At which point the thread should stop altogether.
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I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of eve
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So, it is probably more correct to say Linux without the GNU unle
What makes GNU/* (Score:2)
So, it is probably more correct to say Linux without the GNU unless we should call Windows "GNU Windows" since one might choose to run a Mingw app.
MinGW is just GCC with the C library of Microsoft Visual C++ 6. If someone were to install Cygwin, on the other hand, that might stand a better chance of being called GNU/Windows. (In fact, Cygwin stands for Cygnus GNU/Windows.) And you're not the only person to present this sort of reduction to absurdity argument [usermode.org]. So I set out to define a "GNU/$kernel" userland for myself [pineight.com] as GNU Coreutils plus two other major GNU components, such as Bash, Emacs, GCC, or shared glibc. GNU/Linux counts, Cygwin counts, and MS
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Richard, the GP did mention 'GNU/Linux', and while referring to the ChromeOS, mentioned just Linux. That is correct - ChromeOS doesn't use your GNU corelib or shell utilities. Google has used others in building both ChromeOS as well as Android. So it's not accurate to describe ChromeOS as 'GNU/Linux'.
Also, if within GNU/Linux (let's take your favorite - gNewSense) - one doesn't go into emacs or bash, but instead, X11 comes up, followed by LXDE, and the user simply kicks up an instance of FireFox or Chr
glibc. probably sysvinit as pid1, etc. Still Linux (Score:2)
I've never in my life uttered "gnu/Linux", until now, but to answer the question, glibc is approximately everywhere. Also, unless you've been infected with systemd, you're probably running gnu sysvinit as pid 1 (or upstart).
You COULD run a minimal Linux system at runlevel 3 without any gnu code, but for a desktop system, running a graphical desktop environment, you're probably going to have some gnu in a few places.
why? (Score:2)
Why? I wouldn't want to adopt Stalman's eating habits, by why such an effort to avoid Gnu software?
I suppose the new GPL version can be problematic, the way the wrote the anti-patent stuff. It REALLY should apply only to patents related to a company's contributions, in my opinion. The fact that it can kill a patent from some other division, based on code that the company has never seen, creates an unnecessary risk for companies, which discourages them contributing.
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Addition commonly uses the symbol '+' . Hence shouldn't that be
"GNU divided by Linux" ?
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It's like I'm really in 2002!
Re:Pedantic, but... (Score:5, Funny)
I believe I speak for everyone when I say
You must be new here.
Whenever I read the word "believe" anywhere, I replace it with "make up" or "confabulate". It helps my reading comprehension.
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In which case the snippet you quoted becomes "I make up I speak for everyone when I say".
If that improves your comprehension it must be pretty poor to begin with.
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The term Linux becomes a problem as soon as there is a different user land bolted on top of it. Once Android became popular, the problem of conflating GNU with Linux finally became more than just an academic exercise.
GNU tools were popular before the rise of Linux. They were popular even on non-Unix operating systems. That's the nature of something you are free to recompile anywhere.
The fact that something is Linux/but-not-GNU matters when you try to do something with it not supported but commonplace with L
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You have Alpine Linux that uses musl instead of glibc, and busybox but it uses GCC. It's a small box/router/embedded kind of thing but with desktop packages too.
I shall try it on some computer garbage with 128MB ram if/when I come across one, with dillo as the browser because hell, you won't be allowed to use the big stuff.
Don't forget to use OSSv4 for the sound if you want to got all reactionary punk and stick it to the gnu.
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I use Buzybox/Linux, you insensitive clod.
Re:Pedantic, but... (Score:5, Funny)
How long before that's SystemD/GNU/Linux?
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April the 1st, east of the Atlantic.
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Anyone who reads to the end should realize this a joke even without noting the date: "We can add a kernel later on, following the GNU/Hurd’s successful
approach".
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for now perhaps. In time it will be:
What OS do you run?
SystemD.
Favourite browser?
SystemD.
Text editor?
Oh they never got that working but everything else has been removed so I just cat > file.txt I mean sure it's a usability regression for regular users, but apparently the distribution builders love it because they don't have to worry about packing editors.
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VP8 is BSD licensed (Score:2)
Technology-wise: In rate-distortion terms, Theora is comparable to H.263-family codecs such as DivX (a popular implementation of MPEG-4 ASP). VP8 is comparable to the baseline profile of H.264. This means the picture can be more detailed at the same bitrate.
License-wise: WebM is distributed under the revised BSD license [webmproject.org]. As a free alternative to a patented format, it's in a similar position to Ogg Vorbis, for which RMS approved of use of the revised BSD license [lwn.net].
Pedantic busybody with busybox (Score:4, Interesting)
Not necessarily. Some distros, especially for lean systems, have nothing from GNU. There is more than one libc and busybox is not a GNU project.
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I think they mean "GNU/Linux," as Chrome OS runs the Linux kernel.
actually no, any Linux will boot fine.
Re:Pedantic, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now don't get me wrong, I really really appreciate all the hard work the GNU project and the FSF have contributed, but to imply that _only_ the GNU project and the Linux kernel deserve credit seems quite unfair to me.
If we call in GNU/Linux because GNU deserves credit then we should name it GNU/Apache/Xorg/KDE/SystemD/Samba/LibreOffice/Mozilla/Linux, because all those other projects are just as critical to creating the modern, functional operating system that we have today.
Or we could grow up and just call it Linux because its just a name after all.
My theory is RMS and all his buddies over at the GNU project are still butt hurt about Linux stealing the thunder from GNU Hurd (25 years after the fact!) If they really want to have their GNU OS, then just finish Hurd already build your GNU package.
It's amazing how childish RMS can be sometimes, look at how he reacted to the fact that Clang and LLVM are now technically superior to GCC. Wrote a whiny blog post about how he admits it hurts on a personal level and then in the same paragraph attacks Clang as not being open source enough because it is BSD licensed instead of GPL! Honestly I think deep down inside RMS would have preferred that Apple kept Clang closed source even though he would never say that publicly. Apple gives us something for free that they totally didn't have to give us so obviously we should bite their hand off because they licensed it in a way that would allow them to continue using it in Xcode.
There is a lot of things I really like about the open source movement, but self righteous crap and the cliquey project leaders definitely leave a bad taste in my month.
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Chrome OS probably also runs glibc and other GNU stuff. Not much different from a regular Linux system.
But is that what people are actually doing? (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought they were wiping the Chromebook's internal drive, then reinstalling with their preferred Linux variant.
Re:But is that what people are actually doing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought they were wiping the Chromebook's internal drive, then reinstalling with their preferred Linux variant.
I don't know about most, but I keep the ChromeOS also. I use the Chromebook as my take out to breakfast and go on vacation computer. It's a breeze to use in a restaraunt on wifi, and if I need anything more serious, I boot into Linux. It's also nice to keep my stuff separate from my home computers, except for the gmail account I use that syncs on all my computers.
Re:But is that what people are actually doing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Protip: Most people are doing neither.
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Crouton is still my favorite approach, unless you need more disk space.
Re:But is that what people are actually doing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I replaced my nine-year-old ThinkPad a few months ago (it's slowly running the latest Ubuntu). I went round and round for about a year and finally decided to get a used Chromebook Pixel. It's awesome! I thought I'd play around with crouton for a while, but eventually wipe the whole thing and install Linux on it.
I haven't done that. I do run crouton and can flip between ChromeOS and Ubuntu 14 in a keystroke. The thing is, ChromeOS is a really nice broswing experience and 75% of what I do is browser based. I could spend all day in Ubuntu, but it's just too nice using ChromeOS.
I'm really happy with my Chromebook.
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I thought they were wiping the Chromebook's internal drive, then reinstalling with their preferred Linux variant.
Why do that? Chromebook is already running Linux, and you can easily install a full Ubuntu (or whatever) environment under ChromeOS, running them side-by-side, using Crouton scripts.
No need to reboot. A bit like a using a virtual machine, but its all native.
The biggest problem is having to wipe all your data when switching to developer mode, and Google considers this a feature. Couldn't they just encrypt the private data instead? I cannot see the point. If a bad buy gets hold of your Chrome-book and switche
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> Why do that? Chromebook is already running Linux,
CUPS.
I don't have any interest in every little thing I do on my home network being tied to the Google collective. The same arguments for leaving ChromeOS can be applied equally to removing it and replacing it with Linux.
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With physical access, you can reflash the bootloader. There is a write-protect screw in some models.
And why would a user reboot? By the time he does, its too late - the google password has been changed, and his data sucked out of his google-drive.
we dual boot to an sdhc, except don't (Score:5, Interesting)
I set my wife's up to boot Linux from a high-performance SD card. Her previous computer ran Linux, so I figured I'd make the Chromebook run what she's familiar with.
It turns out, everything she does on the computer she does through a web browser, so she's never had any reason to boot to Linux. ChromeOS suits her use case perfectly. I find that surprising, but ChromeOS is apparently very good at what it's designed for - email, general web browsing, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, etc.
it does if you use Youtube, Gmail, Google on Linux (Score:2)
Absolutely Google is targeting ads to her based on many database entries associated with her userid. She gets ads for $8 off a $27 pack of baby formula, exactly the brand she uses, because Google's database indicates she has a baby. That's absolutely the price she pays for heavily using YouTube, gmail, Google search, Maps, etc.
That would also be true if she was using Google maps, YouTube, etc on Linux. We've decided that we like YouTube, we even like Google Now, and in exchange for all of these services
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Actually, no. Most people use Crouton in developer mode. That means they run Chrome OS side-by-side with their preferred Linux variant.
It's less risky that way. Because if you replace Chrome OS completely with your own Linux distribution, you'll probably lose the small amount of free Verizon data that comes with it for three years, or the 10-fingers touch support, or the very high resolution support, that may come on some of those newer Chromebooks. Because don't believe what the Ubuntu guys say, they may c
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I call bullshit, since the objective of both are mutually exclusive. Chromebook is great if you live on the internet, have few to no local files, and just use your laptop for browsing & email.
Surface Pros are full laptop replacements. There are some niche uses for it, other than just as laptops. Say I have a peripheral that only Windows can recognize, it makes sense to have something like a Surface Pro, or if one is on a budget, HP Stream or a WinBook. Like I have a Brother label maker, which my P
I'm sold! (Score:2, Interesting)
I've not bought one yet (who has the finances?) but this would be great...and I could consolidate my porn browsing to just it. That ought to keep the rest of my stuff safe...
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For porn, get yourself an Android tablet. The user experience of the Chromebook is not optimized to keep and navigate your porn locally. So unless, you want to re-download the same porn videos again and again, consider using an Android tablet instead.
The app support for porn on Android is awesome (personally, I prefer Opera the best for that, especially for the animated gif previews, plus an app for hiding the porn, plus a video app for looping the small parts of the videos I prefer). Also, consider a 7 in
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Which Android?
A Persocom (Chobits) or a Hubot (Real Humans/Äkta människor)?
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;)
Gee (Score:5, Interesting)
It's fun actually
"you'll be able to easily boot a full Linux system from a USB drive and use it without any additional hassle!"
As opposed ot the insufferable hassle of hitting control+L and booting direct? If that's too much trouble, plugging a USB stick is too.
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Re:Gee (Score:4, Interesting)
True, but you can run the USB stick on multiple computers, keeping your work environment and files all in one place wherever you go. With 64 gig USB 3.0 flash keys going for $25, and 128 gig USB 3.0 going for $40, why not?
Well, a thumb drive is a lot easier to lose than a whole laptop for one thing. I've found quite a few over the last several years. Also, I have to guess that the thumb drive is going to be slower than the SSD in the Chromebook. Because that's the biggest thing going for them. They move. Chrome boots in something like 7 seconds, depending on how fat you can type your password, and Linux about the same.
Regardless, I don't think its necessarily a bad idea, just that the presumed inconvenience of doing a dual bootsetup, then install of a distro is way overplayed.
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depending on how fat you can type your password
Yo password's so fat... oh, wait, that is actually a good thing.
yes but was it missing usb boot before?wtf? (Score:2)
the friggin 7 year old netbook I have playing music can boot from USB.
so really - are they seriously saying that this was not available before? like what the fuck?
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No they weren't. This was all in the context of Chromebooks.
Chromebook Shmomebook (Score:4, Funny)
Wake me up when they post a useful article on how to run Unix on my Macbook Pro.
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What's the problem? Or is it the ati driver still...
Re:Chromebook Shmomebook (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck that, I've been trying to install FreeBSD on my Commodore 64. Crapping Commodore 1541 disk drive keeps mangling my installation CD.
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I'm trying to install Solaris on my Vic 20 but transferring the CDs over to cassettes is taking forever!
Hide teh LUnix (Score:2)
Perhaps you should try installing LUnix [wikipedia.org] on your Commodore computer instead of *BSD.
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Re:Chromebook Shmomebook (Score:5, Informative)
It's pretty easy. First, take it out of the box. You lift the LCD into a proper viewing angle and push the power button. There you go. Unix.
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And this is different from every single commercial UNIX workstation vendor, how?
Solaris was littered with AT&T and badly documented Sun bullshit everywhere.
A/IX is littered with IBM bastardization everywhere.
HP-UX is littered with indescribable horrors.
Digital UNIX/Tru64? Now THAT was bastardization done right.
A/UX was littered with Apple bastardization and undocumented bullshit too, that didn't make it any less interesting.
So yeah, your argument is stupid.
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No it isn't. As a Unix MacOS is pretty unrecognizable once you scratch the surface. It's not really a Unix. It's just that the "certification" is so low level that it allows for a level of inconsistency that no Apple fanboy would tolerate (unless it's an Apple product).
Really MacOS is only a Unix for marketing purposes. It's not something that Apple (or the cult) actually wants exposed to the masses. It's just something to tick off the checklist and to point to when Windows and Linux users snicker.
"No. We'r
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A lot of us actually use multiple Unixen and view the notion that MacOS is one too to be laughable.
It's more UNIX-like under the surface of the UI than any modern Linux distro I can think of personally. A lot of us actively manage REAL UNIX boxes as well and think you're full of crap.
The major difference is the fact that it doesn't use a dated clusterf**k of a GUI environment and has actually evolved since the 80's instead of piling kludge on top of kludge to mimic functionality found in other more high-performance GUI environments.
Would OSX be my SERVER environment of choice? Probably not. But as far
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Oh, forgot to mention. OSX is directly derived from NeXTStep. Which also wasn't X11 based and was around since 1988. So no, it wasn't for "marketing" purposes.
I'm pretty sure EVERY UNIX vendor used UNIX for "marketing purposes".... it couldn't have been because it was the quickest path to a full pre-emptive multitasking environment with full multiuser capabilities that had been rigorously tested for over a decade.
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and then littered with Apple bastardization everywhere and undocumented bullshit.
Before I got a MacBook, I used a laptop running FreeBSD. I was able to move over 99% of my stuff with just a recompile. I have run into very, very, few Apple bastardizations.
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Depends how you have your login and shell profile scripts set up.
In fact, you can plug in a USB->Serial adapter and set up a real VT220 as a secondary console, or if you have a hackintosh with a real serial port, you can just use that.
Or if the machine is set up to ask for a username and password instead of clicking a picture, you can even type '>console' as the user name and drop directly to shell without using terminal.app.
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That's only true in iOS-land. ;-)
Re:Chromebook Shmomebook (Score:5, Informative)
Wake me up when they post a useful article on how to run Unix on my Macbook Pro.
Mac OS X *is* UNIX. It's certified. Wake me up when Linux passes conformance testing.
PS: We even put UUCP on the damn thing to pass the tests; it's definitely UNIX, so feel free to spin up your own NetNews node on your MacBook Air.
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PS: We even put UUCP on the damn thing to pass the tests; it's definitely UNIX, so feel free to spin up your own NetNews node on your MacBook Air.
But please, don't use UUCP. Because some of us have suffered enough with it that you shouldn't have to.
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What's wrong with UUCP?
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Why doesn't RedHat, or Oracle, or SUSE, or someone else run Linux through the compliance tests?
Primarily? Because it won't pass the testing without a lot of work. In particular, there are negative assertion tests on header files (some things are not allowed to be dragged into the namespace, and the header are promiscuous). There's also a whole bunch of testing having to do with full and almost-full devices. There are also signal issues and process group membership issues. For example, you can "escape" an exclusion group on Linux by setting your default group to one of your other groups; Linux ov
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It already does [opengroup.org] unless you've forcibly removed OSX.
Why not a full-on Linux environment? (Score:2)
If they are making it easy to run "normal" Linux, why not install the appropriate libs and allow Linux apps to run side-by-side with Chrome apps?
Chrome OS doesn't want user installed binaries (Score:2)
If they are making it easy to run "normal" Linux, why not install the appropriate libs and allow Linux apps to run side-by-side with Chrome apps?
Because that opens a big gaping hole in Chrome's security. Part of the security of Chrome OS is to not let users install binaries. They only get web apps.
This model is broadening to a degree with the ability to run some Android apps. However my understanding is that these apps must be pure java, no NDK, no direct usage of the Linux kernel and other related system level libraries. The Android app lives entirely in its Java sandbox.
Again, why? (Score:3)
So there is this trend about wanting to run 'foreign' OSs on computers that come w/ one already. The other day, the question was running Linux on a MacBook Air, then one about running standard non-Libre Linux on the Librem, and today, running a normal GNU/Linux distro on a Chromebook.
I can understand why people replace Windows - particularly Windows 8.x, which is what I did (using PC-BSD). What I don't understand is why anyone would replace any POSIX based OS w/ your run of the mill distro. If you have a MacBook, then OS-X already supports whatever the MacBook will be dealing w/. If you have a Librem, you have Purism OS, which is Trisquel, and which has been specifically engineered to that box. If you have a Chromebook, Google has already made ChromeOS support anything that the Chromebook will have to do.
So aside from losing some of the capabilities you have of your laptop, what exactly is the fun in getting a run-of-the-mill Linux on your Chromebook, replacing ChromeOS? Why not take that box, and see what other apps are there - maybe Android apps - that could run on your Chromebook?
Re:Again, why? (Score:5, Informative)
If you have a Chromebook, Google has already made ChromeOS support anything that the Chromebook will have to do.
Oh, no they have not.
A macbook can install 3rd party apps out of the box. It is not locked down.
But if you want Skype, Minecraft, or Steam for example, on a Chromebook, you need to unlock it (developer mode, unsupported) and install a full Linux environment first.
But yes, no need to replace ChromeOS, just supplement it.
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It's typically all about running one or two applications that are not on the main OS or about getting rid of a whole lot of shit to just run one or two applications. If there was more cross platform stuff and less weird UIs like Win8 it wouldn't be so common. I've got a touchscreen tablet running Win7 because Win8 is shit even in that situation if you just have one main application you want to run.
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Typical Chromebooks aren't powerful enough to run VMs nicely. The limitation is quite hard in the RAM department, one may not want to spend money in upgrading it when performance will be bad even after RAM upgrade - why not run proper Linux distribution on bare metal and save the expense and performance hit?
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So there is this trend about wanting to run 'foreign' OSs on computers that come w/ one already. ...
"Trend"? I've been doing this for at least 10 years. And I know lots of folks who've been doing it for much longer.
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Correct. I have an early 2011 macbookpro with all features supported. Since the battery life, performance and screen size is still sufficient today (after a $100 ssd upgrade), I will not be buying a new laptop soon.
The only thing going down hill is OSX. Either on subjective issues (cloud, playdoh) or objective ones (hardware requirements), so I better prep for alternatives.
So this Wndows tech guy was selling me his PC (Score:2)
but I put a linux live USB stick in. When he was startled as boot messages scrolled by, I asked him to relax, it's just getting your credit card info and your shoe size. No, you don't have to take them out of your wallet.
This enables.... (Score:2)
This may enable potentially important solutions like: http://www.spi.dod.mil/lipose.... [dod.mil]
Lightweight Portable Security (LPS) creates a secure end node from trusted media on
almost any Intel-based computer (PC or Mac). LPS boots a thin Linux operating system
from a CD or USB flash stick without mounting a local hard drive.
The LPS may be less than ideal but it is a good step forward and makes it clear
that a like solution has a valid place in government and corporate America.
Some think this is a baby step. I thin
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See now this is why Google is so successful.
I agree.
Google has had no problem in the past with people rooting (jail breaking) their product, once sending dev developers a soon to be released Android phone so they could have a head start.
It's a good bet to say if you own an Android tablet/cell phone and enter "about device" clicking 7 times on say the "Kernel Number" listing or one of the info blocks you will enter Developer mode, for the Samsung S5 it's the “build number” info block.
Once your in dev mode you can run ADB:
"ADB, Android Debu
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Motorola said it wasn't possible for the Google Xoom tablet to use KitKat 4.4.2, a developer showed it was http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/ [ubergizmo.com]... making the old new again.
Handset manufacturers are just liars. Sony claimed they couldn't put ICS on the Xperia Play after they promised all Xperia devices would get ICS, but the community has done it since, too.
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Funnily enough some Chromebooks require you to turn a screw to enter dev mode.
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I can't work out if you're joking. I would never want a computer where I couldn't replace the OS with 3 minutes and a screwdriver.
But do you want a computer where someone else can replace your OS with three minutes and a screwdriver without you being able to tell that they did so?