ChromeOS 68.0.3440.4 was released a few hours ago and it seems like a small update, likely heavy on under the hood bug fixes but very light on changes as far as I can tell after playing with it for a few hours. Here are all of the changes I could find:
ChromeOS 68.0.3437.0 was released for Pixelbook owners on the “dev” channel on Wednesday and it brings several changes and bug fixes. I have spent the past few days playing around with this release and here is what has changed:
The Steam platform is one of the most popular distribution platforms for PC Gamers and it turns out that you can indeed run the Linux version of Steam on your Pixelbook. I cannot say for sure that all games will run on it but you should be able to install any game that supports “Linux” on your Chromebook. I apologize in advanced for lost productivity caused by following the steps in this guide – you have been warned!
If you were like me who found their Terminal application completely broken after upgrading to ChromeOS 68.0.3431.0, you are likely irritated and mashing the update button for a fix to be delivered a few times a day. I got to thinking this afternoon of a workaround, why not replace it with something a bit more reliable – like Gnome Terminal? It turns out that it works flawlessly and is pretty easy to setup. Here are the steps;
Heads up all Pixelbook Owners, ChromeOS 68.0.3431.0 is currently being pushed to those who are in the “dev” channel. It seems like Google has made several changes to the bottom dock (shelf) such as removing the Profile Photo, moving persistent notifications and allowing the ability to pin Linux applications to the shelf.
I wrote instructions last week on how to get Android Studio to run on ChomeOS via Project Crostini and since then, I have received several requests from readers asking if it is possible to get Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code running on ChromeOS. The answer is yes and here are the instructions
When the public got wind that Google was working on bringing Linux Applications to ChromeOS, some got worried that Google was going to create a proprietary and locked down distribution to run applications on. Fortunately this does not appear to be the case but what exactly is custom about the Google build of Debian? It tuns out the answer is not much.
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:
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.
I have been writing a lot about Project Crostini Containers over the past week and overall it is an impressive feature that exposes the true power and potential of ChromeOS. Over the past few days, I have found a few problems with Project Crostini that some readers may find problematic.