Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
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No apps at all ???
So it really is like a dumb terminal. Now I know why I never used a Chromebook😀
@kristoff You really should read my stuff on @theregister, you know. ;-)
ChromeOS is Linux cut down to be a web browser and basically nothing else. It authenticates against Gmail, syncs files with Google Drive, and about the only local app is a file manager.
That is its selling point. Simplicity means reliability and a low resource footprint: it fits in a 16GB SSD and 2GB of RAM, so a £200 Chromebook can be sold profitably.
Commercial ChromeBooks can install and run Android apps in a VM. I haven't tried this: I don't own a ChromeBook. But I have 2 old laptops running ChromeOS Flex, which works fine. I use the built-in Debian container to run some Linux apps such as Firefox, Skype and VLC. It works very well.
But the whole point of ChromeOS is that there are no "native" ChromeOS apps. It doesn't need any.