Vivaldi on ChromeOS
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I've been using (and loving) Vivaldi on my work laptop for several months now, and I would love to use it on my personal devices as well. However, there's one thing holding me back: me personal laptop is a Chromebook (Asus C302). I've obviously tried using the Android app on the Chromebook, but it doesn't work for two reasons:
- Pages won't load. They load fine on my phone, but when I try to load them on the Chromebook, the progress bar makes it look like the page loads, but otherwise nothing changes.
- The mobile version of the browser is far too limited to function as a desktop browser. Even if we put aside the issue of the lack of extensions (which is a significant but understandable limitation), there are other limitations. For example, I've tried using the Brave browser (also based on Chromium) with the setting selected to load pages as desktop by default, but when I control-click to open the page in a new tab, it loads the mobile version of the page.
To say the least, I'd love to escape the Google ecosystem, but the boot speed and reliable performance of the Chromebook can't be surpassed right now (and since I'm not enthralled with MS Edge, I'm not optimistic that Windows 10X would help much, unless it becomes possible to install desktop Vivaldi from the MS store). So that leaves me in a variety of unappealing options:
- Continue using Chrome (if I'm using it on one personal device, I'd prefer to be using it on all my devices due to the synchronization features).
- Use Vivaldi across my devices and deal the limited functionality described above.
- Switch to a regular Windows device at a higher price for less performance to be able to use the full-fledged Windows 10 version of Vivaldi.
- Get a Windows 10X device and switch to using MS Edge.
I'd rank these options in terms of desirability as follows: 1, 4, 2, 3. Which makes what would otherwise be my favorite browser the least desirable option for desktop browsing on a personal device. I expect that most of the things that produces this result are out of the hands of the Vivaldi developers, but I thought I'd share the issues I've been having anyhow.
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@tlewis3348 , as far as I know, ChromeOS is based on the Linux kernel, so I see it possible to get a modification a little later. Let's see what our geniuses say on these issues.
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chromeos is based on gentoo linux as far as im aware..it is basically the chrome browser slapped on top of an existing distro and branded as chromeos.
i never saw the attraction of it as it is so restrictive.
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From my experience, it runs like a charm (which you would absolutely not expect from the specs on the devices that I have used) and there are ways to have any linux inside a chroot (or even with official support inside containers nowadays, I think). There are of course privacy issues involved, but I guess that using Win10 is not any better.
Whatever. I think this thread is less about whether people should consider chromebooks and more about problem that @tlewis3348 is facing with the android version.
It is just sadly the case that even though android apps are in principle supported by more modern ChromeOS devices, not everything is running the way that it's supposed to. But I would go further and argue that you should not really want to run vivaldi as the Android App, but rather use crouton (which probably requires removing some security constraints so you should just do it if you think that you know what you're doing) or directly use native Linux support (no idea if your device is supported, but you can find instructions for installing steam etc. on the internet and just install vivaldi [desktop version] the same way).tl;dr: don't use android apps when you can use desktop versions.
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Also, if you plan to use the hardware with another system (Linux, Windows, macOS), have a look at https://mrchromebox.tech/#alt_os
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@jumpsq , In Win 10 there is obviously a telemetry that questions privacy, but there are 2 differences from MS and Google, telemetry can be disabled in Windows (although not very simple) and MS does not make money selling user data to third parties, they make money promoting and selling their software, not exactly cheap.
Windows it also has another advantage, it is the OS with the most FOSS available, surpassing even Linux itself. -
@Catweazle I have to disagree here. While MS is not mainly making money with personal data and ads (unlike google), they of course use and collect the telemetry information for exactly that purpose (and to also improve their products, which I think is mostly a bogus statement). Just like google, they don't sell the data to third parties, but just collect and use the data for their own profit. This is just a wrong assumption.
Which telemetry functionality in ChromeOS you are talking about exactly that cannot be disabled? I believe that you can disable almost anything, even thoguh I have to admit that I tested this myself and there were still some connections towards google servers even after you disabled everything about sending data to them in your settings (not flags) when you were logging in. But this has been quite some time ago, and I'm not up to what's going on nowadays.
I'd not go so far to say people should use ChromeOS, but I'd certainly prefer using it over Win10 myself. I just don't see how it is worse than MS Win10. They are both opt-out shitters. I'd probably closely watch and eventually block my connections towards google.
The only company that builds in that league that shows a slight stance towards privacy is Apple...
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@jumpsq, I don't think Apple differs much from MS in this regard, in addition to an even more restrictive business model. Take for example the reasons why it is so difficult to create Vivaldi for iOS.
Of course I do not claim that Windows is a beacon in terms of privacy, but in any case better in this regard than Google.
As you say, use user data for their own purposes, as specified in the TOS, as Google also does, but the risk is different when this data is sold to third parties that you do not even know, nor how they handle or protect them against others. -