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chromeos

Troubleshooting and Working With Linux in Project Crostini

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Project Crostini is Google’s ambitious plan to bring a full Linux desktop environment to ChromeOS. While this move will mainly cater to developers, I suspect it will be a pretty compelling feature for the general consumer market in the future (can anyone sat Steam on ChromeOS?). While the Beta of Project Crostini is pretty nice, it lacks a easy way to manage and troubleshoot common issues. This guide was put together to help with some basic maintenance and troubleshooting steps that I have come across over the past few days:

“Linux Apps” Appears in ChromeOS Settings Menu and Several Major Changes

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Heads up to all Pixelbook Owners who have been following my posts about ChromeOS Project Crostini, you will be in for a pleasant surprise if you head into your Settings Menu after updating to ChromeOS 68.0.3416.0 (Currently in the Dev Channel). You will now see a “Linux Apps” section that will enable Termina and automatically drop you into a new virtual machine. There are also several new changes that were made in this release.

Getting A LAMP Stack Running on ChromeOS Containers via Project Crostini

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I posted a tutorial yesterday on how to get Android Studio running on ChromeOS via Project Crostini Containers but I realize that not everyone is a Android Developer. Today’s tutorial will appeal to PHP Developers who would like to do some local development and testing on their Pixelbook via Project Crostini. Of course this is not designed to allow you to host production websites but it will work for those who wish to build and test PHP based web applications.

Mounting Project Crostini Filesystems on ChromeOS

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I have been on a roll with posting several guides over the past 24 hours with how to make use of Project Crostini. One problem I have noticed with Project Crostini filesystems is that there is that they are not shared with ChromeOS, to make matters worse, your ChromeOS Filesystem is also not shared with the Project Crostini VM. Fortunately there is a simple workaround.

Getting Started with ChromeOS Containers via Project Crostini

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ChromeOS has been criticized as a limited operating system in the past by many tech reviewers however things are about to change with the introduction of ChromeOS Containers. This is due to something known as “Project Crostini”. If you are a Pixelbook owner who does not mind getting their hands a bit dirty in the command line, you can try this now and unlock the full potential of your Pixelbook.

The Ultimate Chromebook/Pixelbook Desk Setup

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Some people say that ChromeOS is a limited Operating System but as someone who has been using ChromeOS for a few years now, I have to respectfully disagree. I purchased my Pixelbook to upgrade my previous Chromebook back in February and I have not regretted it yet – the Pixelbook is by far the best laptop I own. It is so good that it has become my primary machine. With that said, I do like to use a multiple display setup when I am at my desk – complete with a full keyboard, mouse, speaker, and 2 additional 23 inch displays. Also, this setup will work with Windows, MacOS, Linux, ChromeOS and even Android! Here is how I did it.

ChromeOS Is Quickly Becoming My Daily Driver and I Think I am OK with that…

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I am a person who normally relies on several computers at a time on a daily basis to get stuff done. I recently decided to try an experiment to see if I can use a Chromebook as my daily driver and I am actually not regretting it. I have been critical of ChromeOS in the past, even to the point that I wrote a scathing blog post a few months ago pointing out that major parts of ChromeOS are simply half-baked and had several short-comings. I still stand by that post however in the months since posting it, ChromeOS has evolved a bit, allow me to explain.

[TIP] Using a VPN from the Google Play Store on ChromeOS

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If you are a Chromebook owner who uses a VPN, you probably noticed that:

  • ChromeOS’s VPN Support Sucks
  • Setting up a OpenVPN Connection on ChromeOS Sucks

There are of course countless VPN Solutions on the Google Play Store however if you ever tried to use one of these, you will notice that the VPN appears to be functioning correctly however only traffic from other play store applications will flow through the VPN while the main ChromeOS traffic bypasses it – Potentially exposing sensitive data. I even wrote a long rant about this a few months ago. Fortunately there is a simple fix.

The Shortcomings of ChromeOS in 2017

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It has been some time since I have taken a serious look at ChromeOS but this changed earlier this month when I purchased the newly released Samsung Chromebook Plus (2017) to allow me to do some research for a future work related project. The Samsung Chromebook Pro is currently one of the highest end Chromebooks – only succeeded by the Samsung Chromebook Pro and Google’s Chromebook Pixel. I spent a few weeks using ChromeOS for as much as I could and can say that it has come a long way since the last time I played with ChromeOS however there are still a fair amount of shortcomings and several features that are best described as “half baked”. Here are my thoughts: