Future Chrome OS Devices Can Boot Ubuntu from USB?
Going through the code changes on Chromium OS today, I found something really interesting. The title itself was pretty surprising to me.
Support Ubuntu from USB, it said.
The ebuild files were changed so that it would manually include a bootorder file that would make the bios look at the ports first before booting from the harddrive. The file was created in the SeaBIOS build file and then it was retrieved in the boot-image build.
Chrome’s love for Ubuntu is not a secret. After the windows version, it didn’t take long before they launched it on Ubuntu along with OSX. Go ahead and do a search on Ubuntu on chromestory.com and you will see a lot about chrome+ubuntu.
Chromebook Ubuntu
I took a look around and brought in Pedram Jabbari for expert advice. We couldn’t find a lot about this new feature, but reached the conclusion that future Chrome OS devices will have the ability to boot Ubuntu, out of the box. Users will not have to tweak bios to get an additional OS booted.
Dual Boot Chrome OS and… ?
This change should give Chromebooks and Chromeboxes the ability to have multiple operating systems, not just Chrome OS. This in turn will give value addition to all Chrome OS device purchases.
This is still a work in progress, so we will have to wait for more information on this. But I know where this is going. I saw another code change today that gave a little more clarity on the whole idea.
Stay tuned to know what it is!
