Google is no doubt a very powerful company, with many innovations, its, searching engine has completed changed the life of mankind. But its billion user ChromeOS, can never be a good OS.
Throughout history, Google has killed many services, some of the killed services are of very good quality, with great potential, or even with a large number of supporters. ChromeOS, released in 2011, has gather the support from many educators and students. Google promotes ChromeOS with three big highlights: Simplicity, Security and Speed.
We do have to appreciate Google has achieved some of the goal, it is likely to be safer than Windows or Mac. But for Speed and Simplicity, it might not be the case.
Maybe some people would argue that for ordinary user, ChromeOS is simple enough, we don’t need a lot of settings to make the system works.
Is that the case? If you solely use the notebook to browse the Internet, watch Youtube videos, it is the case. But if you want just a bit more, ChromeOS could become a hassle. A big hassle, sometimes without any tricks to solve an encountered problem.
Say if you want to watch some videos downloaded from the Internet, the built-in player simply does not work. It can only support some format or codec, for the others, you have to find a suitable player to play it.
At this point, you may be given various options: from Google Chrome’s extension store, from Google Play Store, from Linux virtual machine.
Many options, right? But Chrome’s extension store is very irritating, there are many dead extensions, and because of the updates of Google Chrome, some extensions failed to function.
And again, Google has killed the Chrome App. Some usable applications will disappear one day. Yes, Google is pushing hard on Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), but the list of these apps are still limited. I appreciate this concept, but far from mature.
Then, we can use Android Apps! Play Store has many many many apps, some of them are very powerful!
Yes, you do have a lot of choices, but again, there are at least two deadly problems.
Android apps are not designed for ChromeOS. Many apps will not and do not adjust to the ChromeOS, not to mention the interface, but even the functionality. You will then result in a severely discounted using experience.
Big companies are able to invest more to adjust their Android Apps for ChromeOS. But then, many big companies have already offered mature websites that provide the same function.
And the ways of Android app running on ChromeOS is also problematic. It requires a whole bunch of dependencies, though would be installed automatically, the running speed is far from being native.
In short, this is a double discount. Discounted user experience, discounted running speed.
Then we have a Linux virtual machine on ChromeOS. Ah… another disaster. The speed of the virtual machine was simply slow. Loading of the applications is slow, execution is slow, everything runs slow.
I originally thought that might be related to the specifications of my Chromebook. I am using a Samsung Chromebook Plus V2. But when I tried to use Crouton (again, this project is killed by Google). I realized my Chromebook can run Linux software in a native environment fast, and very fast. I tried to run some a javascript speed test named Chalkboard, surprisingly, the Firefox running crouton, is much faster than the Chrome in ChromeOS. (Not to mention the Firefox in the Crostini Linux virtual machine.)
And when I run a Debian in crouton, the speed of loading applications is very fast! I do have an even better user experience than ChromeOS itself. (What makes it sad is that I need to return to ChromeOS on my Samsung Chromebook Plus V2, the reason is Debian does not have the driver for the speaker. And as Google abandoned crouton, the support on Linux is very minimal. The general ChromeOS support is already minimal, you can see how struggling it can be for a user who wish to use crouton now.)
The Speed of ChromeOS is a myth when compared with a proper Linux.
Sometimes, we do need to spend a lot of time on Google searching for some workaround that only exists on ChromeOS.
I needed to use a lot of time to find the actual solution to use a built-in OpenVPN function without the need to enable the Android working environment. If I was using MacOS / Windows / Linux, using these functions can be just a few buttons. ChromeOS makes it very difficult to use.
Just a reminder, I just showed the hassle of playing different videos on ChromeOS. You might need to download an Android app with limited function, a Linux application with many settings needed.
To add on this point, by the way, I cannot find a native method to access my NAS through Webdav. Maybe the meaning of simplicity for Google is not to provide enough functions.
And I forgot to mention the files of ChromeOS, Android Apps and Linux Virtual Machines are located in three different file systems, accessing these documents are often a nightmare. You need to find their location.
Then, Simplicity? Really that simple?
Speed? What is your definition of speed?
As a user, ChromeOS is not comprimising enough and often end up in disappointment. So this is why ChromeOS can never be a good OS.
We do have hope, Google has another project, you may be able to choose your linux distro. But similar to the dark mode in ChromeOS, which spent a few years in experimental functions. Just stay hopeful, when Google finally release this function, my Chromebook is still functioning.