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For many users, it may come as a surprise to know that Chrome OS exists in multiple forms known as “channels.” The average consumer will blissfully live in the official Stable channel and with a little luck, won’t experience bugs, security flaws or heaven forbid, a device-bricking event that requires a full recovery.
If you are among the not-so-faint of heart, like us, you may have had some experience in exploring the less-than-stable Chrome OS channels that consist of Beta, Developer and the bleeding edge that is the Canary channel. (I stay in the Canary channel. I don’t recommend it for anyone. It’s volatile, quirky and you’re on your own if something breaks.)
The channels work much as you’d expect. Canary is where features and trials are tested before they are approved and pushed up the ladder to Developer, Beta and eventually Stable. Unfortunately, bugs can sneak through and occasionally, the Stable channel can fall victim to flaws that can materialize as crippling failures for some users.
Enterprise accounts are the ones that can suffer the most from these bugs. With hundreds or even thousands of devices managed from the Chrome Admin Console, policies and apps can be paralyzed by these types of issues. Admins need a way to quickly deploy fixes with waiting for a platform-wide OS update.
That ability may be coming very soon.
Spotted by Chrome Story, a new, Quick Fix channel is being added to Chrome OS that will exist for the purpose of pushing these critical updates to managed Chromebooks. Kyle Bradshaw of 9to5Google dug a little deeper and found the details on exactly what the new channel will entail.
Add quickfix channel in about page
– quickfix-channel is having the same behaviour as the stable-channel
The channel will live in between Stable and Beta and will only be available to Enterprise accounts with the policy enabled.
Issue 934920 introduces “Quick Fix Builds” to ship critical bug fixes to affected target Enterprise customers. This requires the admin to pin the quick fix build via CPanel. Since the fix is presumably critical, they will likely stayed pinned to the custom version until the fix has safely made its way to Stable after a few months.
CR Bug Tracker
As Chrome OS continues to dominate education and rapidly expands in the business sector, the Quick Fix channel should become a crucial part of administrator’s infrastructure. Downtime can be a death knell for corporations and having the ability to thwart total system failure could save millions.
We’ll be keeping an eye on the Admin Panel for Quick Fix and give you a full breakdown when it is live.
Source: Chrome Story via 9to5Google
