Often I find people making fun of things moving into the browser rather than just running as software but the fact is the browser increasingly works better than my regular OS. Like in my experience Linux works universally quite poorly at most GUI things I want to use it for, Android works a bit better than that, & Chrome works much better than *that*. Chromebooks would sound like a great idea to me if only I trusted Google (and if I didn't believe everyone developing ChromeOS is using a MacBook)
The idea solution of course would be if there were a FirefoxOS (*sobs quietly*)
I wonder if somewhere there's an open source version of Android that includes the system stack up to SurfaceFlinger, then just cuts off there. So that you get Android's improved driver support over Linux, but you don't have to touch Java or an OS stack that increasingly seems designed to make your life as hard as possible if you aren't using Google Play Services
"Android's improved driver support"?
AFAIK, Android own driver support is mostly limited to mobile devices, and only for a very limited time. Not very useful for a desktop.
@jgg Who said I was interested in desktops?
I assumed your "regular OS" was a desktop, and ChromeOS is a desktop OS. Sorry.
But for mobile, I agree, Android closed blobs are unavoidable.
@jgg Well, what I guess I mean is there are several different applications I'm looking at. If I'm thinking "Android + surfaceflinger" I'm closer to the "embedded device" usecase.