The end of ChromeOS is a new dawn for cheap Android laptops
23 points by thunderbong 8 hours ago | 22 comments
  • rob74 7 hours ago |
    To the reports about "sunsetting" ChromeOS and/or merging it with Android I can only say: good riddance! I bought a Lenovo Ideapad Duet Chromebook back in 2020, but the performance (with the dreaded interminable Linux out-of-memory hangs when having too many tabs open in the browser) and battery life were consistently worse than comparable Android tablets, so by now it's mostly gathering dust...
    • hmlwilliams 6 hours ago |
      I'm with you on the sunsetting of ChromeOS, but I'd like to offer a counterpoint to your experience of the Duet. I've been using the newer Lenovo Duet 5 with PostmarketOS[0] (linux for ARM) as a daily driver for more than a year and it is almost always great (minus no functioning webcam, which is abysmal anyways)!

      [0] https://postmarketos.org/

    • jillesvangurp 6 hours ago |
      Some of these devices probably make nice Linux laptops if you can get them unlocked.
      • fwip 3 hours ago |
        Iirc, it's very easy to run regular Linux on pretty much every Chromebook. Some of them have some driver issues, though.
    • moondev 6 hours ago |
      What makes you think it's a software bottleneck instead of the 4GB RAM
    • daghamm 6 hours ago |
      I have owned multiple chromebooks and they have all been fantastic.

      Maybe limited in some regards, but still the best computing devices I have used.

  • karel-3d 6 hours ago |
    Poor Fuchsia is never gonna make it, right.
    • wiseowise 2 hours ago |
      It’s a kernel. They can migrate Android to it overnight and you won’t see a difference.

      If you’re about user space written in Flutter, then forget about it - this ship has sailed.

  • sumuyuda 6 hours ago |
    Does anyone want to run Android mobile apps on a laptop?

    I never once ran an iOS app on macOS as the UI/UX makes no sense even though it is possible.

    • aucisson_masque 6 hours ago |
      Makes no sense to me too but there is a vocal minority, as demonstrated when Microsoft removed android app support from windows 11, that use them. It's hard to estimate how many dozens of them there are but I guess it got to be in single digit.
    • freefaler 5 hours ago |
      - some apps don't have website/desktop versions

      - some app testing is better done on the desktop where you can share/mark screenshots

      but it's not a huge market for sure...

  • lawgimenez 6 hours ago |
    This is news? Android apps have been running on ChromeOS for almost 4 years now if I'm not mistaken.
  • aucisson_masque 6 hours ago |
    > Google's custom silicon: the long road ahead

    Oh yes, a very looonnnggg road ahead. Where apple has an history of hardware manufacturer and software development, Google is an advertisement company with software development.

    They are absolutely not fit to the task, you don't make a new processor just like that or then you borrow one from Samsung and make little modifications but it's not the same thing. We've seen the result with pixel phones missing calls a lot, having bad thermals, and lack of signal.

    It took them 3 phone (pixel 6 to pixel 9) to finally somewhat fix the antenna issue, but even then it's still not as good as less expensive phone.

    When apple had the antenna gate, they fixed it in the next generation because they know how to work on these things. I believe if Google wasn't able to fix it for 3 generations, it's not the lack of time or resource but they just don't know how to work on hardware and its not going to change anytime soon.

    They should rather stick on software and ads.

    • amelius 6 hours ago |
      Huh, they made TPUs ...

      Also, making silicon is closer to making software than you might think.

      • close04 6 hours ago |
        Except when your mistakes stay etched in silicon forever. The software industry is by now very deep in the fail fast and fail often. Maybe the hardware industry is taking a page from that book too but they’re many, many chapters apart.
        • daghamm 6 hours ago |
          For Google scale companies the difference between hardware and software is less than you would think.
          • close04 6 hours ago |
            I’m thinking of a really big difference so “less than I think” is probably still a lot. I’m sure time will show it one way or another. So far their phones for example were plagued by hardware issues. Maybe they’re just finding their footing but the point stands, hardware mistakes are forever and Google is 90% a software company with the appropriate mentality.

            The only times I heard about Google being good at hardware were “trust me” anecdotal and unverifiable stories about DC equipment. At best this says Google cares about the HW they use not the HW they sell to an end user.

    • daghamm 6 hours ago |
      Sigh... you seem to have a very short memory

      When apple had antenngate, they first went on a big campaign of denying the issue, then claiming other companies were affected as well and finally claiming you are holding it wrong.

      Google has a lot of issues too, but let's not kid ourselves about Apple.

    • mateus1 6 hours ago |
      I don’t think lack of hardware expertise is the problem. The biggest issue is that Google leadership does not seem capable of thinking long or even medium term. Waymo, Glass, and the myriad of discontinued software products are a proof of it.
      • fragmede 6 hours ago |
        How is Waymo proof that they're incapable of thinking long term? They've been funding it since 2009, and are only now just getting to market in 2024. They are plenty of examples where Google's failed to think long term, but I have a hard time seeing Waymo as one of them. Waymo is operational in several cities in the US so it doesn't seem like Google's about to cancel it and they raised another 6.5 billion earlier this year.
  • xnx 4 hours ago |
    I hope this doesn't mean the end of running Chrome on unofficial hardware via ChromeOS Flex. I would have to think that would be affected since x86 is no longer supported by Android.