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Sooner than I honestly expected, it seems that the Crostini Project has made its way to the Developer channel on the Samsung Chromebook Plus.
As Robby reported in early May, the Crostini Reddit revealed a user who was already up and running with Crostini(sort of) on the ARM-powered Chromebook. Additionally, a number of commits in the Chromium repository gave us some pretty solid evidence that developers had shifted their efforts to making the container tech work outside of the Pixelbook.
Thanks to a recent update to the Developer channel, we are now seeing reports that ‘Kevin‘ a.k.a the Samsung Chromebook Plus can now run the Linux terminal app just like the Pixelbook does.
Redditor bdovpro has diagramed a quick how-to on getting Crostini installed and going on the Plus and other users have chimed with some great tutorials on building your first container.
Bringing Crostini to ARM-based devices lends a lot of hope to the project’s ability to expand across the Chrome ecosystem. As you can see from the OP1 website, the Google-backed ARM for Chromebook architecture is gaining steam. Once the lone device, the Samsung Chromebook Plus has been joined by the ASUS C101 and the Acer Chromebook Tab 10.
If project Crostini can find its way into lower-end Intel devices alongside devices like the Pixelbook and ARM devices like the Plus, Chrome OS’s potential as a true developer’s machine could come to full realization. From there, the possibilities will continue to grow.
*Note – Accessing Linux apps via Crostini on the Samsung requires moving your device to the Developer channel and is not recommended unless you are aware of the risks to your device. The Dev channel can be very buggy and even have broken elements. Moving back to Stable will powerwash your machine and delete any local data. If you choose to tinker, do so at your own risk and be sure to back up your files. It is also a good idea to create a recovery image before setting off on your expedition.
