ChromeOS Will No Longer Support Ext2/3/4 On External Drives/SD Cards 345
An anonymous reader writes Chrome OS is based on the Linux kernel and designed by Google to work with web applications and installed applications. Chromebook is one of the best selling laptops on Amazon. However, devs decided to drop support for ext2/3/4 on external drivers and SD card. It seems that ChromiumOS developers can't implement a script or feature to relabel EXT volumes in the left nav that is insertable and has RW privileges using Files.app. Given that this is the main filesystem in Linux, and is thereby automatically well supported by anything that leverages Linux, this choice makes absolutely no sense. Google may want to drop support for external storage and push the cloud storage on everyone. Overall Linux users and community members are not happy at all.
Are those Amazon sales legitimate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Whenever Chromebooks and ChromeOS comes up, somebody always points out those Amazon stats.
But are they actually legitimate sales?
By that, I'm asking if people actually bought these devices because they wanted to use them as Chromebooks running ChromeOS.
How many were technically-naive purchasers merely buying the cheapest laptops available, thinking they were typical Windows laptops, and not realizing that ChromeOS is actually so crippled?
How many were technically-savvy purchasers merely buying them so they could replace ChromeOS with a real Linux distro or some other OS?
Did anyone actually buy them intending to use ChromeOS?
Re:Are those Amazon sales legitimate? (Score:5, Insightful)
cheap, works, not too upset when 7 year old drops it, keeps him from attempting to use my good laptop, and avoids paying the windows tax.
Re:Are those Amazon sales legitimate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Somewhere, somehow those programmers must be paid.
Now it can either be by people buying the product, or it can be by moneytising your information for adverts.
Given that Apple, Microsoft, Google etc a re large contributors to open source they are not "gifting" their staff time, they see money in it.
So one way or another, you ARE paying for it.... call it a tax if you will,, but you ARE paying it.
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Pay attention, naive little brother: A machine with Windows on it costs the same as a machine without windows on it for the same model and specs . . . assuming you can even get a Windows-free version. This is because Microsoft have dictated that it be so. The difference, then, is that in one case you are paying for, and getting, Windows; in the other case you are paying for, but not getting, Windows. That, naive little brother, is the Windows tax.
Re: Are those Amazon sales legitimate? (Score:2, Informative)
Running Arch on an acer c720 for about a year. Bought for that purpose.
Re:Are those Amazon sales legitimate? (Score:5, Interesting)
It does everything that a normal person could want - I use it for email, browsing the web, uploading pictures from a camera SD card, streaming music, editing powerpoint (through google presentations). It even has a built in SSH client for remoting into other machines via terminal as well as a remote desktop app.
Re:Are those Amazon sales legitimate? (Score:4, Insightful)
It does everything that a normal person could want...
If they drop EXT2/3/4 it will cease doing everything a normal person could want. Hence the article.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Are those Amazon sales legitimate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm, no. Just because you can point to examples and say 'both sides are bad', that doesn't make them equally bad. Fox is biased and MSNBC is biased, but only one promotes disinformation along with their bias - and refuses to correct their mistakes (if they're even accidental at all). And yet, you will see it reported, oh, everywhere, that MSNBC is the 'liberal' Fox, and they're both the same. They're not.
If you think Google's business model is 'evil', you obviously don't want a Chromebook - if only because you don't want to support Google. But Chrome and Chromebooks are basically just a way to prevent Microsoft from re-monopolizing the web browser market. Chromebooks work by doing what the web does best, shake things up. They don't provide Google with any other benefits that they can't get by promoting the Chrome browser on Windows, OS/X or Linux.
The original browser wars started because Microsoft felt threatened by the web - and definitely didn't want to see the emergence of cross-platform software development. Their business model was based on tying all end-user software to Windows. Microsoft would like nothing more than to translate their (continues) desktop dominance into mobile dominance. Sure, Google wants to continue their search dominance - but Chromebooks don't really add much to that effort. They just attempt to make sure that Microsoft isn't able to claw back the web and lock them out.
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Like I said, one is more in line with your world view so confirmation bias blinds you to the shortcomings.
same here. Installed Linux, run Chrome OS (Score:5, Informative)
Same here. I had used Linix exclusively for fifteen years, so I installed a full-featured Linux distribution for dual boot. It's never been booted to the big Linux except that one day. ChromeOS does everything we've ever wanted to do on a small machine. Almost everything I do with my $2,500 big machine could be done within ChromeOS too, but for some things you want a 22 inch screen.
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Almost everything I do with my $2,500 big machine could be done within ChromeOS too, but for some things you want a 22 inch screen.
Why do you have an expensive big machine then? Why not a cheap one with an external screen?
I'm unusual, but most of what I do can't be done well on ChromeOS. For me, a netboo kcan do most of what I do anyway, just more slowly and on a smaller screen.
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but for some things you want a 22 inch screen.
Guess a chromebook isn't good for porn.
and? (Score:3)
> But Paint Shop Pro on Windows 3.1 had more features than that.
And? She can do what she wants to do. Chromebook has other features too, which she doesn't use. What matters is that it can do what she wants it to do. Things she's not interested in doing don't matter, except that bloat is generally a bad thing.
using -X? Try -Y (Score:3)
X forwarding is supposed to work via -Y. If you tried with -X, you might try again with -Y.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One huge customer - schools (Score:4, Informative)
Yet you don't cringe at all the snooping that Google is doing with student the information.
http://mashable.com/2014/03/19... [mashable.com]
>I know that kid's data is saved to their Google Drive - automatically.
Where it can be mined for showing ads.
Fantastic, indeed, but for Google, not for the students.
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Can you provide compelling evidence that Microsoft, Apple, or Yahoo, are any better?
Re:One huge customer - schools (Score:5, Insightful)
That is simply not true. Google does not sell your private information. And yet the notion that they do is repeated ad infinitum. I wonder why. Google's business model is pretty straightforward. They use your information in order to sell ads that are more effective (and less annoying) than other sellers of ad space can do. It can get a little creepy around the edges, I suppose, to see what ads they think you'll click on - and if you're seriously uncomfortable about that, then you should stay away from their services. But they definitely do not sell your information to anyone. Apparently some people would like you to believe they do. Believe it if you want - but it's not true.
Re:One huge customer - schools (Score:5, Insightful)
> Google does not sell your private information. And yet the notion that they do is repeated ad infinitum.
You are absolutely correct.
> I wonder why.
Two reasons:
(1) Lots of people believe it because they don't fully understand Google's business
(2) Because it is short-hand for they could sell it in the future.
Google apologists will deny (2), but Google is a business. It is easy to for them to stick to their guns when it doesn't hurt them - just look at how much they used to support net neutrality and how much less vocal they are about it now. [thestar.com] The point is that circumstances change. The day Google decides that selling access to the information it has collected would be more profitable is the day that their policies change and all your retroactively collected data now goes on sale.
Re: One huge customer - schools (Score:4, Insightful)
They COULD sell your data in the future, but they are unlikely to do so because what makes that data valuable is their exclusivity.
Actually selling them would make them worthless.
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This is precisely why I trust Google more than Facebook. Google will use my information to show me ads, but Facebook will sell that information to the highest bidder.
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Re:One huge customer - schools (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, the NSA will have a complete database of everything these kids did at school. What could possibly go wrong?
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Yeah, the NSA will have a complete database of everything these kids did at school. What could possibly go wrong?
They're going to have that no matter what OS the laptops run, at least for anything they are interested in actually capturing. Do you think that a PC running Windows or OSX is magically immune to NSA snooping?
What Google does with the data may be a differentiator, but if you're worried about the NSA you really need about 10 more layers of tinfoil. Of course, anybody wearing that much tinfoil will probably just be visited by ninjas in the middle of the night who have other ways of bypassing firewalls. :)
Re:One huge customer - schools (Score:5, Insightful)
My PC doesn't send everything I do to Google's servers, where the NSA can scoop it up.
And what planet are you living on, exactly, to have missed the news for the last few years? The tinfoil hat wearers were undestimating what the NSA has been doing... they weren't paranoid enough.
Re:One huge customer - schools (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in a school's IT department and we won't be touching Chromebooks with a 50-foot bargepole. We use a mixture of desktops and laptops running Windows 7 and Office 2013 - which costs far less than it would commercially. We also use SCCM to manage the 1,000 or so PCs and laptops (generic i3s and Core2 Duos from the likes of Lenovo and HP) we have in the school.
Data is kept locally and is backed up in various ways (ranging from blu-ray to SANs), with the data stored in various parts of the site. Nothing gets stored on the pupils PCs other than temporary data when they're using the PC - their work is all accessed from our network servers.
Cloud access is something we work against for pupils, as it's an excellent way of them wasting time with Flash games etc - kids are very inventive when it comes to playing games (I know, I was exactly the same at school in the 90s!) and it's easier to curtail games on our system than it would be with Chromebooks.That's leaving aside the privacy situation, which doesn't fill me with joy: on a personal level I won't put anything of importance in the cloud, as I simply don't know who'll have access to it. Whereas data on my own network here is much easier to keep tabs on...
Re:One huge customer - schools (Score:4, Informative)
There's a number of aspects of what you said that are inaccurate, and I believe the approach you're taking is deficient in a number of areas.
Let me cover a few of these off:
1. Cloud access does not lead to wasting time with flash games.
Firstly, I think you are confusing cloud computing with Internet access. Leverage a cloud service (e.g. Google Apps or some SaaS based learning service) is completely different to unfettered internet access to play flash games. If your school chose to use Google Apps or Office 365 it doesn't all of a sudden mean a deluge of flash games.
2. Chromebooks can be managed with Chrome Management Console
With the Chrome Management Console you can control a vast array of policies - such as URLs that can be visited, what can be installed etc. All reasonably similar to the level of control you may have now on your windows machines. However, Chromebooks go beyond this as it is much harder for a student to bypass the controls that Chromebooks have as they is so locked down and have TPM for verified boot etc. So your statement that it's easier to "curtail games on your system" is probably false. For a brief summary, look here: https://www.google.com/chrome/... [google.com] there's a whole lot more info on the detailed policies if you search for it.
3. The hidden cost and inefficient of managing your own onsite storage and backup.
You're almost spending more money than you need to managing your own infrastructure. Your cost of storage is certainly an order of magnitude higher than Google's due to their scale. You're doing backups - but it sounds like they're on site. Where's your geographic redundancy? Google will store your data across multiple geographically separate datacentres and manage all the infrastructure for you.
4. Your unjustified fear of losing control
You seem to still believe that Google is mining kid's information to serve them ads - yet Google Apps for education doesn't serve any ads. (http://www.google.com/edu/trust/)
You also seem to believe that using the cloud means you don't know who will access it. In fact Google, Amazon, Microsoft etc. all make it pretty clear the controls they put in place regarding security and privacy - and back these up with SLAs etc. I'd have a lot more confidence in their security and privacy controls than in your own IT team. This is probably most contenious area, but you could start by talking to other schools who have made the shift to see how they overcame these kind of concerns.
I get that change is scary - and there's a lot of cloud FUD out there. But I'd really suggest you take the time to understand as it is fundamentally shifting how the vast majority of IT systems are delivered. I also think that keeping on doing things how you've always done them isn't a sustainable strategy in the long run.
Re:Do what while sitting quietly after assignment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once a student has completed all of a teacher's assignments, what should the student be doing while sitting quietly between having completed the assignments and the bell other than games?
Perish the thought that they might--in a classroom, of all places--find a book to read.
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Google Apps, combined with Chromebooks is a very compelling platform for schools.
We are deploying tons of these. They are cheap to buy, easy to manage, and great for 90% of the work that students are asked to do. (We use Macs for the other 10%).
Would "introduction to programming" for high school juniors be among this 10%?
Yes, chromebooks are useful (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably most of them. The drivers don't exist for Windows, and installing a Linux distro is a little more complicated than you might hope for. Plus, there are some actual benefits to ChomeOS, mostly that it will back up your files for you, and that it boots in seconds (maybe a total of ten seconds from clicking reboot to having all the browser windows open again), but it's also more secure than Linux. Security is achieved at the cost of making it hard to change the system.
Also keep in mind, these things ship with a 16GB SSD. You can install a couple Linux distributions in that space, but it's pretty cramped for any sort of content: you're not going to be gaming or torrenting very much. Increasing the storage is possible, but if you're going to buy a $200 laptop and a $100 SSD, you may as well buy a real laptop.
Generally speaking, it's a nice, cheap, internet appliance, for those who want a keyboard instead of a touchscreen. It's really not that bad of a user experience. I have been leaving mine around the house for the roommates; they browse the web, listen to music, watch movies, and type their resumes. I don't know what other features you think it needs.
Re:Yes, chromebooks are useful. But also annoying. (Score:3)
I disagree with your "might as well buy a real laptop" statement. I see nothing wrong with buying a $200 Chromebook and attaching an external drive, whether a $100-$200 SSD or a $70 TB HD. My Chromebook has a usb 3 port. Very handy for attaching external HDs/SSDs. My chromebook is the higher model @ $250.
I agree Chromebooks are useful. One thing is certain. I will definitely be forking the Chrome OS on any future chromes I might buy, to add back in support for ext2/3/4. Or I may buy a second one which sti
Re:Yes, chromebooks are useful. But also annoying. (Score:5, Interesting)
From reading the linked proposal to drop ext2/3/4 support, there has been a lot of pushback from users, particularly developers and other power users. As far as I can gather, especially from comment #101, they are taking this feedback very seriously, and are looking into either making ext2/3/4 work with the feature that was supposedly the reason for dropping support, and/or finding an alternative way of supporting external drives with those file systems.
To me, this smells a lot like a couple of developers thinking they could pull a fast one and drop file systems they considered "unneeded", but now that feedback has been received, the overall feeling I get is "let's find a way to make this work". There may also have been a possible security risk with rogue disk images that needs to be handled.
Re: Are those Amazon sales legitimate? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would assume so. These devices are 200 to 400 dollars each. That is still a lot of money. People would have returned them or at least posted very negative reviews if they got something unexpected. But it seems even with 1000 reviews these devices have very good 4 to 5 star ratings. So I would say they are valid purchases.
Sales number artifact (Score:3)
It is easy to be the "top selling laptop" when there's about a couple ChromeOS models, pitted against 60+ PC laptops or more that sometimes differ by one component or memory amount.
iPod was simarly the top MP3 player, or even "sold more than all others combined" but the cheapie no-brand ones had more sales by the many millions, only they were a great many different products and weren't even accounted for - it's probably impossible to know how many there are.
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kinda reminds me of what happened when Lotus Smartsuite went magazine cover. My college dropped Microsoft like it was lava and switched EVERYTHING over to Smartsuite. Worst move they ever made, to be honest; at least the MS setup kinda worked, short the frequent reboots. The Lotus stuff was just so much junk. It wouldn't even play with the litho suite.
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I also like the fast boot up, fast shut down, and no need for AV.
I brought one with me on a recent trip to Mexico, and used it all the time.
I bought one of the Samsung chomebooks for $150. It has been quite a bargain.
Customer Service (Score:2, Interesting)
This is so that they don't have to deal with the customer service complaints when a disk works in a chromebook but then doesn't on a PC .... wait, customer service? Nevermind.
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I would worry about a 1TB fat32 file system or even soon-to-be low grade 128GB flash drives / memory cards.
Is there no commandline? (Score:3)
I have zero experience with Chrome OS. But if there is a commandline and if you can get root on that, you can mount whatever storage device the kernel sees and has the filesystem compiled into.
So while this might no be an example of how GUIs are limited compared to the commandline, it is an example how a GUI can be designed to artificially limit and control you. Of course, nobody should buy anything that is defective by design as this thing now seems to be.
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No, it's just an example of a relatively new mentality in software development. If the metrics say that few people use a certain troublesome feature, let's just ax it, nevermind the legitimate reasons that the few who do use it have. It reveals lazyness and narrow mindedness.
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Except the bulk of the development of this thing is done by SOMEONE ELSE. The corporate bugaboo of cost cutting simply doesn't apply.
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Stating that you 'support' a feature is a commitment to fix a user's problems when it doesn't 'just work.' That costs real money in terms of staff, phone calls, returns, engineering, etc. - even when it is the user's fault. This is an actual product, not a 'no warranty at all' EULA. The Google EULA disclaims implied warranty, but Express Warranty remains. i.e. the list of supported features have to work or they are legally responsible. Also, as stated in their EULA, not all jurisdictions allow a EULA t
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No, I don't expect software corporations to care a fig about either what I want, or about good design. I don't expect software corporations to EXIST. Linux is community developed and free. There is no reason whatsoever that the niche filled by ChromeOS could not be much better served by community development as well. With the soulless bean counters out of the way, we could then get a decent design and stop making stupid decisions.
"No one" may come close to describing statistically the portion of ChromeOS us
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Then god save us from companies and the market. Companies were always parasitic, but were the only way to get anything, other than individually contracting at prohibitive expense. Now, thank you open source, that is no longer the case. Software companies are an obsolete concept, and we are getting strong hints of the obsolescence of all capitalism.
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Yes, and by that logic, you could just ship a brick instead of a computer.
Re:Is there no commandline? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Press ctrl-D to bypass the initial long boot.
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So basically, there is some little merit to the complaint. The take-away message for me is to never buy such a device, unless I am sure I can wipe the trash from its disk and install something sane. While developer-mode seems to be a valid work-around, even attempts to limit me that severely in "normal" mode are a severe defect IMO.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google has consistently refused (without actually refusing, just ignoring patches) to implement various things in Android, like ad-hoc wifi. Luckily there's Cyanogenmod. Hopefully they will take up USB OTG as a cause one day.
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Cloud storage is a real POS. You need a fast net, you surrender control, it is usually too expensive, and, on top of that, the NSA gets full access to everything in a conveniently searchable fashion.
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Open Source? (Score:4, Interesting)
If so, why can't members of the Linux community write the required code to support EXT2/3/4 properly, since Google's team can't?
Instead of bitching about losing the feature, zero in on the alleged problem, and provide a solution so it can be reinstated.
Problem solved.
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No. From reading the linked discussion (before people started having shitfits), a dev suggested removing extFS support as "an unnecessary feature" because of theoretical security issues and because it interfered with implementing file system renaming (which looks to be surprisingly tricky to do right). In no time at all, objections were posted, some of them rather aggressive in tone.
One of the last comments before disallowing further comments was that they were looking into keeping extFS support, but throwi
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> If so, why can't members of the Linux community write the required code to support EXT2/3/4 properly, since Google's team can't?
They already did. That's why Google's claims seem so assinine.
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They can, it's been in Linux since for ever.
OK, I'll just grab the source code. Hang on, it's not available.
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I posted the question honestly (Not sure what moran gave me a Troll mod for my question) - I know ChromiumOS is open sourced, I was not sure how available the source was for Chrome OS.
That said, if the issue is not an issue in ChromiumOS, Google has some serious questions to answer.
true. I would, if I cared enough / had time (Score:2)
That's true. I thought about digging into it, but given my schedule vs how much I care, I'll probably not spend the time on it.
Sergey Brin needs a reminder (Score:4, Insightful)
By the way, what a horrendous summary.
Sergey Brin needs to remind himself what country he escaped as a child and stop helping American versions of the FSB from growing their powers. Of-course he hasn't been through a TSA experience himself and I am sure his and his family privacy are safe from Google's data mining operation, but he should not kid himself, he is on a special list of persons of interest, USA powers that be are certainly paying close attention to high profile targets like Brin and other influential and wealthy individuals. Does he really want to increase their powers? It would be a grave error on his part because private property rights are quite transient in the United Socialist States of Republicans (and Democrats).
Keeping all private information on line, where it can be data mined by Google and the NSA is profitable for Google but it also grows the power of the state and people should think really hard about letting the state have all that power.
Re:Sergey Brin needs a reminder (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes.
Another adage seems appropriate.
If a for profit company is taking care of you for free, you aren't the customer.. you're the product.
You should feel like a pig on a farm....well fed and happy right until the end.
Google's business model has always been about analyzing your data and selling "you" to others.
They need your data.
Each person needs to decide for themselves if what they're getting (free web email?) is worth what they're "selling" to google and others..
btw, I started using facebook's ads manager earlier this week for a project. If you haven't looked at it before, you should. The amount of data facebook thinks it knows about people and that it is willing to let advertisers target is pretty interesting.
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I have no idea what tree you are barking up, but I'm not in it.
Your mechanic doesn't advertise that he is providing a free service. It is entirely clear to both parties what is changing hands.
In the case of FB, google, and most other online services that are free-to-use, you are absolutely the product, because the revenue model depends on selling data about you to 3rd parties. These services also don't make it abundantly clear that this is their business model. In fact, facebook in 2011 advertised that i
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We I the summary it makes totally sense.
it makes perfect sense (Score:2)
it's to make it easier to migrate from Windows. just like MS allowed you to buy an upgrade version of MS Office in the 90's if you had a competing Office program
Is the really that much of an issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
The target market for the units isn't uber-geeks, it's home users. Those home users will virtually always be inserting memory cards from their camera and attaching external drives they picked up at the local electronics store. As long as the boxes can talk to those, Google is fine.
Why bother developing, testing, and supporting a feature that few in their target market will ever use?
Re:Is the really that much of an issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because Google has a vested interest in the next generation of SD card not having patented and royalty incurring filesystem such as exFAT as the mandated standard. The more they can support TF card hardware spec instead of the SD card "experience" spec the better it will be for all of us. Except for Google's main competition in the laptop market that is.
As it stands now every smartphone with an SD card has as part of its manufacturing cost about $2 going straight to Microsoft for the privilege of using exFAT, because the SD standards committee in their wisdom decided that SD cards can't be called SD cards without it.
Google's laptop, Google's rules (Score:2)
Embrace, extend and extinguish (Score:2)
It's a clear case.
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nothing was extinguished, those who are not lazy gits can mount any Linux supported filesystem. But more than 99% of people don't want nor need to do that.
No business has to waste time or money to support a weird niche market and a technically inferior and badly designed filesystem such as ext2 or 3. Filesystem design is not one of Linus' strong suits. Linux users should stop using the ext family, grub supports superior alternatives.
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Just because it isn't the best it's already there and we have to live with it. There are worse filesystems out there than the ext family of filesystems.
To name one: FAT.
Chromebook Acer c720 (Score:2)
I bought an Acer Chromebook c720. Wiped ChromeOS and installed Bodhi Linux.
Nothing wrong with ChromeOS that Linix can't fix.
They want a rental business model (Score:2)
Google appears to be jumping on the rental business model. If you have to store stuff in the cloud, chances are you'll have to store stuff in their cloud (hey hey you you get off of my cloud). Eventually, you won't be able to move your data off of their cloud and once they get a captive audience, they'll start charging for it somehow.
Some might say that Google has now become "The Man" so stick it to The Man and buy a real computer.
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How do you fsck NTFS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Last time I tried, linux couldn't fsck or chkdsk the NTFS file system. Need to boot into Windows.
So, with this Chrome thing you can use an external hard drive, but if it's become corrupt you need a Windows laptop or desktop to fix the drive's content.
But maybe file system checks are deemed too confusing and are inaccessible from the GUI regardless of the file system, I don't know.
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The developers of the NTFS support for Linux do have a fsck implemented. It does a pretty good job. However, since they've done a black-box re-implementation, they rightfully aren't willing to 100% guarantee they have everything correct. Hence, although it has been almost a decade since I've had trouble with Linux NTFS support causing a problem, the recommendation is still to run the native Windows chkdsk after the Linux one finds a problem, just in case.
So, it isn't that you can't use a pure Linux toolc
There is a real problem (Score:5, Informative)
There is a real problem (Score:2)
If Google had scripted
chgmod 777
everytime a device were plugged in, I suppose people would be complaining about how everyone had access to their files.
Reconsidering (Score:5, Informative)
If you read one of the last comments, they appear to have listened and are considering reconsidering this decision.
Which marks the difference between a professional development shop such as Google, and Lennart Poettering.
I know why they do it: (Score:2)
ext2/3/4 has owners of files. It's a pain in the ass. eitehr you support it correctly (whihc is impossible if you dont manage the uid database for a single organization) or you make ugly patches which try to magically detect on which drives (removable) the os is supposed to drop uid infromation.
The first approach is useless, and i see big legal issues with the second approach (if somebody indeed would rely on protecting infromation by uid)
so better just stop it completely
EXT Devs not listening to people's requests (Score:3)
I searched 2 years ago for a means to mount ext4 filesystems with system assigned file ownership. I found many bug request asking for just such a feature, (and exactly for this reason, so the file system can be used on a device that is meant to be portable across different systems.)... but the devs handily found excuses to not do it. Maybe this will light a flame under the nether regions of the kernel devs in charge of the filesystem. EXT? is a great filesystem over all, and I wouldn't hesitate to use it for any system or permanent data drive, but what is really needed now, is a journaled filesystem that is designed with features for system protability.
I comple (Score:5, Funny)
Also every post that (Score:3)
rewrites the subject line just to grab attention.
Subject should summarize the comment (Score:2)
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Firefox is quite nice and quite usable, and the problems with their old versions of sync, which is why I delved into Chrome for a little while, are gone. I like Firefox so much now days I even use it on my Android phone.
ChromeOS on the other hand is friggin great overall. So much so I think Mozilla should answer it on PCish devices (I actually had this idea years ago before ChromeOS when I was a Mozilla holdout refusing to go Firefox).
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It's very reasonable to use Firefox, because it allows you to install the most essential privacy extensions.
Honestly, you can only browse the net nowadays with strong ad blockers, cache cleaners, automated cookie deletion and a whole bunch of web-tracker killer add-ons. Or, pay for a good VPN service.
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They're apparently dropping support on a single SD card? (it should be "external drives and SD memory cards." Then this:
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I'm not an editor by trade, but my father (sports copy editor) was during my childhood 60 years ago. The original phrase and your proposed rephrasing both suffer from ambiguity. Does it mean (external disk drives) and (external SD cards), or does it mean (external disk drives) and (all SD cards)? Technically, the clued-in reader will conclude that it means any removable storage device, but he doesn't know that from context. He arrives at that from his knowledge of technical issues.
The way to concisely remov
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until the Systemd fiasco blows over.
Not going to happen.
If only there were sane and well-designed OS the developers of which actually think about the consequences of what they're doing.
Oh, wait. [netbsd.org] there [freebsd.org] are. [openbsd.org]
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Very true. But also, most people involved with linux development are not brainwashed sycophants of Red Hat Inc., Lennart Poettering, and systemd. The problem is with corporate interests fucking with the basic architecture of linux.
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Google don't give a shit what you can afford, all they care about is how much you want it.
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First, I've never owned a PC which decreased in functionality over time, like my CB. Advertised features are pulled without warning.
Written on my Chromebook (Score:2)
It's a cheap internet appliance with a keyboard as opposed to a touchscreen. Is anyone using tablets?
Or did you mean anyone using ChromeOS not on a Chromebook? Probably that animal doesn't exist, Google is trying to keep a "unified experience", i.e. Apple-like control over their platform. A large concern here is security; you can put it into "Developer Mode" and do whatever you want to the system, but otherwise it's pretty locked-down. I don't really mind this; people who want to screw with Linux can, and p
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My father uses an chromebox by Asus. Requires a monitor, keyboard and mouse.
great for my wife, I might get one (Score:2)
My wife loves hers, which she uses for web browsing, email, YouTube, etc. The instant boot in a small laptop form factor is nice.
I'm a long-time Linux developer, and as long as I have a terminal I'm good to go. I would probably choose a Chromebook over a tablet. As it is, my employer bought me a maxed out MacBook Pro, so that covers me for an instant- on device with keyboard and terminal. If I didn't have that I'd probably get a Chromebook like my wife's for every day use around the house like reading
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That's one FS I think the linux world could, at the moment, do without. It's got some cool features, but is not ready for primetime.
still supports a few filesystems (Score:2)
It's not like they are removing local storage. The gui just won't automatically mount ext3-formatted SD cards. You can still use ntfs or vfat cards, along with the built-in storage.