Virtualization – Tony's Take On Tech

Crostini, the heart of Chrome OS

Leave a Comment / ChromeOS, Tech, Virtualization / tony / 2022-02-14 / #chromeos, #crostini, #lxc, #ubernerd, #virtualization

Chromebooks seem simple but under the hood there’s quite a bit of code that makes it all work. https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/crostini_developer_guide.md has an excellent fairly high level diagram of Chrome OS (CrOS). The Termina VM (right, Terminal without the trailing L) is where your “standard” Linux container (known as “penguin”) is started which gives you your full blown Debian environment. But note that at its very heart is a Debian container which starts up everything else. The reference above talks about how to MAKE CrOS.

If you want to learn more about how to USE CrOS and maybe launch your own containers instead of or in addition to penguin, read https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/HEAD/containers_and_vms.md which talks about the mechanics of things

https://www.reddit.com/r/Crostini/comments/squfcz/trying_to_understand_what_chrome_oscrostini/ is the source article for this.

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Phoenix HyperSpace (re)launched

Engadget reports (here) that Phoenix Technologies is relaunching their instant-on OS as a downloadable subscription ($60 for 1 year, $150 for 3, in its most flexible form). I haven’t played with it at all but I’m not sure I’d buy it.

HyperSpace is a mini-OS that supposedly boots almost instantly and lets you surf the web and connect to WiFi hotspots (for use by HyperSpace). So, it’s a mini-OS that essentially give you only the web. Since the web is one of the main things I use my computer for it should be a slam-dunk but an awful lot depends on the browser and how flexible it is — what engine it’s based on, what plug-ins it has and so on. Plus, it could provide a nice layer of insulation between my “real” computer (files, apps, etc) andthe web-at-large. The expensive version lets you toggle between HyperSpace and your base operating system (XP, Vista, Linux, I suppose), and that may be the best way to run it, although I can’t see myself always using HyperSpace to surf.

So, again, I dunno. Is Woody a visionary?