TechSpot reports that “Every Chromebook launched in 2019 will run Linux ‘right out of the box’!”
Woody’s recommended Chromebooks heartily for a while, and this will make them that much better. They’ll keep their existing functionality, but will also gain access to the “real computer” Linux software library that works offline.
For those of us who use Linux already, it represents the possibility of greater acceptance of Linux, and along with it, more development for Linux software titles, which is the big hurdle a lot of people see in terms of escaping the Windows universe. With Linux (proper; they ran Linux under the hood already before this) coming to Chromebooks, advancements to WSL (Windows subsystem for Linux, which seems like it should be LSW instead), and Steam getting involved with Proton (their fork of WINE) to allow more and more Windows games to work in Linux, it seems like Linux has really got some momentum behind it.
While I won’t be so bold as to predict that the fabled “year of the Linux desktop” is finally at hand, this momentum could make it easier for software companies to justify producing Linux versions of their Windows programs. If a few key Windows-only programs are offered for Linux, that could break the dam and allow a lot of consumers and businesses to begin the move, and that would cause still more software companies to think that Linux is worthy of their attention, and it just snowballs. If my observation that Microsoft seems uninterested in continuing Windows as it has been is correct, they could even get on board themselves, offering key products for Linux rather than continuing to use them as lures to get people on Windows. If their future is in the cloud, it doesn’t much matter what OS people use to get there, and Linux users can be customers for MS cloud services too.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
