I recently wiped chromeos off of a Pixel Slate. For the brief time I spent
with it chromeos seemed to be exactly what I expected.

You log in to the OS using your Google account, however it does not appear
to implement "accounts" in the way you would expect a computer to since
things like wifi settings have a tendency to persist even after you "log
out".  Key things I noticed were:
- A guest account is available if internet access is not available.
- Local storage is provided for photos, but the default
settings will typically sync with the cloud so it's mostly a staging space
- App experience is complete garbage


Chrome app development has stalled in a big way. When looking through the
web store you will probably be shown more fake apps than legit ones. i.e. I
searched for "newegg" and the first hit was some bogus app from a nameless
developer that appeared to be skimming passwords. No moderation whatsoever
on the chrome web store.

The built in apps aren't even actual apps. There is no built-in app for
gmail or drive, instead what it does is provide a link that launches the
browser to gmail. As I recall only the photo/camera app ran as an actual
native application.
Simply put, add google chrome to your desktop's autostart and configure it
to open in fullscreen by default without any other applications.... you
will be running chromeOS.

Android app emulation is implemented, but doesn't work very well.

As a fun side story, while I was doing tech support for Costco's photo lab
some of their staff would trash talk chromebooks while we waited
for windows-based computers to reboot. Apparently their electronics
department saw a sizeable number of returns due to the fact that it can't
really do much without an active connection to the internet. It's just a
neutered linux distro.
-Ben

On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 8:54 PM Russell Senior <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I own a couple chromebooks, and have recommended them to others, but I
> don't actually use ChromeOS on the ones I have access to. We installed
> GalliumOS for a more normal Linux experience. So, I am actually fairly
> unfamiliar with ChromeOS. I am curious what the experience is like with a
> ChromeOS Chromebook if you don't have access to the Internet?
>
> Does anyone know, or can someone try for me?  Is it possible to do
> anything? That is, is there any functionality that's native to the device
> and doesn't live in the cloud somewhere?
>
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Russell Senior
> [email protected]
> _______________________________________________
> PLUG mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>
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