After basically bringing Android to Chrome OS devices over the past year, it’s now time to go further. There’s been proof of dual boot coming to Chromebooks recently and now Linux apps are here via a Google Crostini initiative.
People have playing with GNU/Linux distributions on Chromebooks for some time now, so I’m not exactly shocked by this development. Some people replace Chrome OS, others go with dual boot systems, but Crouton seems to be a favourite. This one lets you install a Linux distribution in a chroot environment. From there you can run Ubuntu or other OS alongside Chrome OS and switch between them at will, without rebooting.
An even easier way is available, dubbed Crostini (what’s with the food names?!) and it makes it possible to run Linux apps on Chromebooks. People who own Pixelbooks are able to test the feature as of right now. Expect a rollout to additional devices in the near future. Crostini works like this: you open a crosh terminal by typing CTRL + alt_t on a Chromebook and then you enter a few lines of text into the terminal.
What Crostini does is it creates a Linux virtual machine that lets you install and run desktop Linux apps. People have even been writing code on the Chromebook recently. GIMP was made to run on the Pixelbook and so much more. Crostini is still in development, so give it time. It could be buggy, it’s definitely not stable, so wait a bit, if you don’t know what you’re doing.
