- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/22174477
A source within Google has told Android Authority that Google plans to basically turn Chrome OS into Android.
Finally. ChromeOS has always been a dumb idea. Making an entire OS just to use sluggish web apps in Chrome. Who thought of that? As if Android could not do web apps. Then, years later, ChromeOS got “native” apps, in quotation marks because those were just Android apps. So a whole dedicated OS, just to launch Android apps in a compatibility layer. Some additional years later, ChromeOS got “native” games via Steam. Again, quotation marks, because those run in a Debian-based container.
Samsung DeX shows since many years that a Android with a desktop UI is a possibility.
DeX is infuriating. It’s forever almost good enough to fulfill its promise of being a truly mobile desktop but somehow it’s never gotten there. The biggest problem now is that most android apps don’t present correctly in desktop mode, don’t behave intuitively, and / or look like ass.
So like ChromeOS? I wouldn’t say DeX is the greatest thing ever but whenever I get home from a stressful work day, sit down at my desk, and then realize that I left my backpack with the notebook at the door, I just plug the next best thing into my USB C dock and sometimes that’s my phone. Heck, I even did image editing with Krita from F-Droid once (the Android port has not been updated in years and is alpha quality, so the experience was bad but that’s on the Krita port not Android/DeX itself).
The quality of Android apps in desktop mode isn’t really dependent on whether they run on ChromeOS or DeX. If anything, the division in OS strategy into three operating systems at Google (don’t forget Fuchsia), caused needless developer fragmentation from both 3rd parties but also within Google.