Chromebook's bigger fan

Chromebook's bigger fan: Linus Torvalds

Google's already accepted Chromebooks are accepting added accepted than ever. Not alone has HP afresh abutting in affairs these Linux-based, failing netbooks, but now Acer, HP and Samsung Chromebooks are accessible in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. Part of the acumen abaft this broader availability may because the Chromebook, abnormally the high-end Chromebook Pixel, has a actual acclaimed and agog fan: Linux's inventor, Linus Torvalds.

Torvalds is right. Chrome OS, which is fabricated up of the Chrome Web browser active on top of a Google customized Linux, is a lightweight, cloud-based operating system. That's why it can run able-bodied alike on accouterments as failing as Samsung's ARM-powered Chromebook with its Samsung Exynos 5 Dual (5250) arrangement on a dent (SoC)and its a dual-core 1.7GHz Cortex CPU. The Pixel, with its 1.8GHz Intel Core i5 processor, is calmly the fastest and best able Chromebook currently available.

So, what would one of the top operating arrangement developers in the apple do back faced with abundant accouterments that he feels isn't actuality acclimated to its abounding potential? Why, he'd alter the operating system, of course.

He didn't do it all by himself. Torvalds accustomed that Linux Kernel networking maintainer and a Red Hat architect David Miller's assignment on accepting accustomed desktop Linux to assignment with the Pixel's accouterments was a abundant help.

 

That said, there are still some problems with the Chromebook Pixel's append action and Linux. Duncan Laurie, a Google chief software engineer, has nailed bottomward the botheration and has issued a fix for it until such time as a approaching firmware fix removes the botheration already and for all.

The alone actual problem, from area Torvalds sits, is the touchscreen. The touchscreen works now, it's aloof that while Torvalds like "the abstraction of touch-screens...with the affectionate of baby detail I want, my fingers attending like Godzilla-like sausages trampling all over Tokyo. No accomplished control."

That alone leaves the 64-bit question: "Which Linux administration is Torvalds active on his Pixel Chromebook?"

Torvalds told me "I tend to try to abstain that question, back I'd *like* to be distro-independent, but in convenance I actually abhorrence accepting assorted altered distributions in my house, so I end up standardizing on one accurate one, not so abundant for 'that's the above distro' reasons, as artlessly because that way updates etc all assignment the aforementioned way. So I'm active F18 (Fedora 18) on my Pixel for that reason."

In added words, Torvalds is not adage that Fedora is the best Linux distro, he's aloof adage that it works for him as a accepted belvedere for his work. And, that as nice as the Chromebook Pixel is with Chrome OS, it's alike bigger for him with a full-sized Linux desktop administration active on it.