Android accessibility is so not ready for PC. Navigate with keyboard and TalkBack and you'll hear "selected" everywhere which is redundant, since if TalkBack is speaking a UI element, it is selecting it for action. Apps aren't ready for keyboard either. They really, really aren't ready for a launch next year. But I'm sure they will. And few blind people will care because (almost) every blind person uses windows or an iPhone as their main computer and so Google will think they're doing just fine.
If you, like me, were wondering why Google thinks it needs another operating system (ChromeOS, Android, Fuchsia - which is presumably dead (edit/turns out it's not/edit)) or where it fits in with the "stack":
> ChromeOS and Aluminium Operating System (ALOS) Commercial devices across all form factors (e.g. laptops, detachables, tablets, and boxes) and tiers (e.g., Chromebook, Chromebook Plus, AL Entry, AL Mass Premium, and AL Premium) that meets the needs of users and the business.
Sounds like ChromeOS is Android for entry/thin and similar PC's and Aluminum is more upmarket/premium.
Also, to be honest, this doesn't seem like "a new OS" to me, but rather a shift in Android's roadmap and an associated rebrand to try to push ChromeOS/Android upmarket to try and expand their "Devices with Gemini/Google AI as a first-class service/product" footprint beyond cell phones.
Given the push for arm in the consumer PC space, I can kinda see why google is renewing efforts here even if you set the AI stuff aside.
Windows is so bad, that I've lost any hope for it to recover.
MacOS is not that bad, but it's tied to Apple hardware and I don't like it. Also it's not getting better either, new releases bring more bloat and features I didn't ask for.
Linux is what I use, but I also lost hope for it to ever become polished experience. Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good. I can navigate Linux bugs and workarounds, but I'd prefer not to.
Expecting some new unknown operating system to appear and be ready is foolish, it won't happen.
So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future. Linux have good support for desktop hardware. Android have good polished stack for applications. Developers know how to write apps for android. Security story for Android is miles ahead that of desktop Linux. So I totally see that Android Desktop could actually be a good thing, with Google sponsoring its development. And if Google will put too much bloat in it, its open source nature would allow for volunteers to build better distributions of it.
My pessimism is that with their coming clamp-down on external sources for -installing- "sideloading" apps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736479 this os may be somewhere between macos and ipados in terms of freedom in the coming years. I have hope that Valve's operating systems and unified platforms will provide a way not only for macos/windows users to move on while retaining compatibility, but for the company to make the transition to arm (as they are with deckard) and retain total binary freedom.
It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase and their preferences,, why continue to use it instead of KDE or any of the other 10 DE environments?
The start menu cluster, incessant pushing of Edge and OneDrive are the reasons I installed Linux after about a decade of not using desktop Linux outside of work. I am genuinely shocked and impressed how clean and snappy the experience is (Arch + KDE Plasma). Thanks to Valve, Windows games run just fine, too. Not going back...
I’m on Linux too, but I still have a Windows 11 box…the reasons I still have it are just about gone but I’ve been too lazy to change it.
I never see nags about Edge. Basically you can avoid those by never opening Edge.
OneDrive can be fully uninstalled (this wasn’t always the case). It legit doesn’t even show up when I search for it anymore.
The start menu cluster, I mean, it’s not the best interface on the planet, but the annoying recommendations can be easily removed…or you can just replace it entirely.
I know this is a user choice and therefore way less egregious than being forced to endure it on the Microsoft side, but perhaps it’s even worth pointing out that running Steam on Linux as a respite from commercialization and ads of Windows is…not really accomplishing that goal. And you don’t really avoid the browser wars by switching to Linux either, as many of the top distributions have Firefox+Google Search as their default configuration.
How!? Mine is full of ads, and that's after buying a "Pro" copy of Windows, registry hacks, declining every ToS I can find, rejecting all the "free" trials, etc.
Do you have an enterprise install managed on a Windows domain where your admin has disabled all this stuff by any chance?
Aluminum and fuchsia are largely implementation details. The reasons these projects have value isn't necessary user facing, however they will have outcomes that enable products to be more useful with time. Maybe ai features are easier to ship, or it's less costly to maintain device support, or maybe they just save Google some money allowing for cheaper prices. Ultimately, they are closer to what's in the sausage than the sausage itself though and so most folks will not care. And that's okay.
Not only is it not dead it’s under HEAVY active development and has been for quite some time now.
They seem particularly focused on the Linux compatibility layer (starnix) as far as I can tell.
I’d say they are most likely going to end up becoming the thing that Android sits on top of. There is already public indications of some variant of it called “microfuchsia” coming to Android. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this is all part of the same launch that they are working towards here.
I can't wait to play Windows PC games on a Linux compatibility layer (Proton) on a Fuschia compatibility layer (Starnix) and still have them inexplicably run smoother than on the system they were originally developed for.
The entire basis of this article/rumor is a single job posting on Google's careers website... Unifying Android across all devices is Google's holy grail and they've been hiring for that for most than a decade. I don't think we have to read into this much.
Unifying the two has never been an internal goal until 2024. I'm not sure why you think otherwise. Everything before that has just been rumors and maybe one off projects by very small amounts of people. Rebasing ChromeOS on the lower half of Android is real and has been publicly announced. It is not necessarily the layers you will notice through. It's about unifying things like the kernel, display stack, power management, Bluetooth stack, etc. There are effectively divergent universes between ChromeOS and android (and the desktop Linux ecosystem) despite these things not necessarily requiring unique solutions.
Is there any Android app that is worth using on a PC? Not being snarky, I cant see anything on Android being good enough for a desktop app that is used regularly. Most of the Android apps I use are the 'best of the worse' and I have to use them because there is no other options.
I used to main Pixelbook (1st gen) for about a year. ChromeOS really is enough for the majority of day to day stuff. For development it allows you to run linux environment inside ChromeOS
I can only assume the Aluminium OS would aim to do the same
For myself there are not any android apps that I need on my desktop. However it's important to look at things from a global perspective, not just personal.
There is a robust mobile gaming market worth hundreds of billions in USA alone.
The name makes sense because Aluminium has an -ium suffix like Chromium. There's also no reason for the project name to agree with the US pronunciation of the element.
Well, it makes sense and it doesn't because it makes it sound like this is a 'lightweight' version of the Chromium-based products while the opposite seems to be true. Call it Osmium instead, that's got '-ium' and some weight to it just like this thing.
That is not how anyone uses that term. For starters, Linux is also GPL licensed, so if it was like that then we wouldn't bother calling it GNU/Linux, we could just call it GNU. More to the point though, being GPL-licensed doesn't make something part of the GNU project.
Except being able to buy GNU/Linux laptops from known brands, the same that sell Android and Chromebooks with 100% supported hardware, at FNAC, Worten, Saturn, MediaMarkt, Publico, Dixon, CoolBlue,....
It would be great, however it died alongside netbooks.
Only the first netbook came with Linux. The Asus EEEPC 701. This was mainly because it was so underpowered it couldn't run windows (and some nonresizable dialogue boxes didn't even fit on screen). But they dropped it with later models.
As owner of an Asus 1215B, that lasted from 2009 until last year, having gotten disk and memory upgrades during its lifetime, going through all Ubuntu LTS upgrades, bought with it pre-installed, that is certainly not true.
Weird that ChromeOS Flex is not mentioned, I wonder if we are just changing names with some added features. I don't think this is a OS, not based on Linux, like Fuchsia.
Cant wait till like Android on phones, OEMs are put in charge of delivering updates to laptops, and if your laptop is older than 3 years good luck.
Seems like a big downgrade compared to current ChromeOS where Google is in charge of all updates, or even Windows where Microsoft delivers the same updates to everyone.
I don't think a mega corp having full access to my phone while me not having that is very "secure". Sure it's pretty ok against third parties but in my threat model Google and Apple are also adversaries. Microsoft too by the way.
In my model my Linux pc is a lot more secure as there's no adversary having direct access and more control than me.
By this definition no operating system Google releases will be secure to you. I think it would be a more productive discussion if you could argue about security ignoring that you have to trust the person who wrote your operating system or designed your cpu.
It works well for you.. but for average person. No.
As a 20 year old linux user, I do often use ChromeOS or ChromeOSflex. Just works. Beautiful UI. No more pain with webcam or wifi drivers - Yes, these have improved by still one has the pain of dropped packets (realtek wifi) etc. guaranteed 10 hour battery life.
With ChromeOS I just get 4 or 5 second - update - immutable OS. Fedora Silverblue is coming up but still not there.
Yes, if someone sets a passcode and then forgets it, they will be locked out forever and lose all of their files. There is no way to prove physical ownership of the device, pretty mich the passcode proves who the owner is.
Android accessibility is so not ready for PC. Navigate with keyboard and TalkBack and you'll hear "selected" everywhere which is redundant, since if TalkBack is speaking a UI element, it is selecting it for action. Apps aren't ready for keyboard either. They really, really aren't ready for a launch next year. But I'm sure they will. And few blind people will care because (almost) every blind person uses windows or an iPhone as their main computer and so Google will think they're doing just fine.
If you, like me, were wondering why Google thinks it needs another operating system (ChromeOS, Android, Fuchsia - which is presumably dead (edit/turns out it's not/edit)) or where it fits in with the "stack":
> ChromeOS and Aluminium Operating System (ALOS) Commercial devices across all form factors (e.g. laptops, detachables, tablets, and boxes) and tiers (e.g., Chromebook, Chromebook Plus, AL Entry, AL Mass Premium, and AL Premium) that meets the needs of users and the business.
Sounds like ChromeOS is Android for entry/thin and similar PC's and Aluminum is more upmarket/premium.
Also, to be honest, this doesn't seem like "a new OS" to me, but rather a shift in Android's roadmap and an associated rebrand to try to push ChromeOS/Android upmarket to try and expand their "Devices with Gemini/Google AI as a first-class service/product" footprint beyond cell phones.
Given the push for arm in the consumer PC space, I can kinda see why google is renewing efforts here even if you set the AI stuff aside.
Let's be honest, nobody is asking for android based desktops, google just wants to normalize rent seeking 30% of all software sales.
I'm asking for Android-based desktop.
Windows is so bad, that I've lost any hope for it to recover.
MacOS is not that bad, but it's tied to Apple hardware and I don't like it. Also it's not getting better either, new releases bring more bloat and features I didn't ask for.
Linux is what I use, but I also lost hope for it to ever become polished experience. Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good. I can navigate Linux bugs and workarounds, but I'd prefer not to.
Expecting some new unknown operating system to appear and be ready is foolish, it won't happen.
So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future. Linux have good support for desktop hardware. Android have good polished stack for applications. Developers know how to write apps for android. Security story for Android is miles ahead that of desktop Linux. So I totally see that Android Desktop could actually be a good thing, with Google sponsoring its development. And if Google will put too much bloat in it, its open source nature would allow for volunteers to build better distributions of it.
My pessimism is that with their coming clamp-down on external sources for -installing- "sideloading" apps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736479 this os may be somewhere between macos and ipados in terms of freedom in the coming years. I have hope that Valve's operating systems and unified platforms will provide a way not only for macos/windows users to move on while retaining compatibility, but for the company to make the transition to arm (as they are with deckard) and retain total binary freedom.
It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase and their preferences,, why continue to use it instead of KDE or any of the other 10 DE environments?
For all the complaints against Windows, legit or not, I can't envision a world in which I want the world's largest advertiser to run my desktop OS.
Pixels and Chromebooks have never had any ads. Windows 11 is plastered with them.
That's hilarious. I never see ads on my Windows 11 PC.
Are you unaware that others do have issues with advertising in Windows 11?
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/windows-11/how-... https://windowsforum.com/threads/how-to-disable-annoying-ads... https://www.howtogeek.com/windows-11-wont-show-any-ads-if-yo...
The start menu cluster, incessant pushing of Edge and OneDrive are the reasons I installed Linux after about a decade of not using desktop Linux outside of work. I am genuinely shocked and impressed how clean and snappy the experience is (Arch + KDE Plasma). Thanks to Valve, Windows games run just fine, too. Not going back...
I’m on Linux too, but I still have a Windows 11 box…the reasons I still have it are just about gone but I’ve been too lazy to change it.
I never see nags about Edge. Basically you can avoid those by never opening Edge.
OneDrive can be fully uninstalled (this wasn’t always the case). It legit doesn’t even show up when I search for it anymore.
The start menu cluster, I mean, it’s not the best interface on the planet, but the annoying recommendations can be easily removed…or you can just replace it entirely.
I know this is a user choice and therefore way less egregious than being forced to endure it on the Microsoft side, but perhaps it’s even worth pointing out that running Steam on Linux as a respite from commercialization and ads of Windows is…not really accomplishing that goal. And you don’t really avoid the browser wars by switching to Linux either, as many of the top distributions have Firefox+Google Search as their default configuration.
How!? Mine is full of ads, and that's after buying a "Pro" copy of Windows, registry hacks, declining every ToS I can find, rejecting all the "free" trials, etc.
Do you have an enterprise install managed on a Windows domain where your admin has disabled all this stuff by any chance?
You don’t get a choice on that unless you’re running Linux/BSD or a Mac.
Aluminum and fuchsia are largely implementation details. The reasons these projects have value isn't necessary user facing, however they will have outcomes that enable products to be more useful with time. Maybe ai features are easier to ship, or it's less costly to maintain device support, or maybe they just save Google some money allowing for cheaper prices. Ultimately, they are closer to what's in the sausage than the sausage itself though and so most folks will not care. And that's okay.
I don't trust Google anymore or what their business model has become over the years.
I won't be using Aluminum OS.
Don't think it is targeted at you. A lot of people like you say so - but will be shoved Win11 or Apple Intelligence. Enjoy.
Oh, Fuchsia isn't dead [0]. Apparently it's what the Nest Hub launched with and the latest update is pretty recent: from Oct 2025. Interesting.
(Replying to my own comment instead of editing it as this is tangential to the topic at hand)
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)
Not only is it not dead it’s under HEAVY active development and has been for quite some time now.
They seem particularly focused on the Linux compatibility layer (starnix) as far as I can tell.
I’d say they are most likely going to end up becoming the thing that Android sits on top of. There is already public indications of some variant of it called “microfuchsia” coming to Android. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that this is all part of the same launch that they are working towards here.
> Linux compatibility layer
I can't wait to play Windows PC games on a Linux compatibility layer (Proton) on a Fuschia compatibility layer (Starnix) and still have them inexplicably run smoother than on the system they were originally developed for.
One of those things that makes so much sense it’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.
Was anyone asking for this?
And I'm not just talking about the extra I...
The entire basis of this article/rumor is a single job posting on Google's careers website... Unifying Android across all devices is Google's holy grail and they've been hiring for that for most than a decade. I don't think we have to read into this much.
Unifying the two has never been an internal goal until 2024. I'm not sure why you think otherwise. Everything before that has just been rumors and maybe one off projects by very small amounts of people. Rebasing ChromeOS on the lower half of Android is real and has been publicly announced. It is not necessarily the layers you will notice through. It's about unifying things like the kernel, display stack, power management, Bluetooth stack, etc. There are effectively divergent universes between ChromeOS and android (and the desktop Linux ecosystem) despite these things not necessarily requiring unique solutions.
Is there any Android app that is worth using on a PC? Not being snarky, I cant see anything on Android being good enough for a desktop app that is used regularly. Most of the Android apps I use are the 'best of the worse' and I have to use them because there is no other options.
I used to main Pixelbook (1st gen) for about a year. ChromeOS really is enough for the majority of day to day stuff. For development it allows you to run linux environment inside ChromeOS
I can only assume the Aluminium OS would aim to do the same
For myself there are not any android apps that I need on my desktop. However it's important to look at things from a global perspective, not just personal.
There is a robust mobile gaming market worth hundreds of billions in USA alone.
https://www.pleco.com/
This is a great podcast about that: https://radiolab.org/podcast/wubi-effect
About what? Wubi is an input method, not a dictionary.
AluminIum you say?
Team started in Australia, they use British spellings.
Technically they use Australian spellings, it's just that they overlap.
The name makes sense because Aluminium has an -ium suffix like Chromium. There's also no reason for the project name to agree with the US pronunciation of the element.
Well, it makes sense and it doesn't because it makes it sound like this is a 'lightweight' version of the Chromium-based products while the opposite seems to be true. Call it Osmium instead, that's got '-ium' and some weight to it just like this thing.
It will win where Longhorn and Midori failed, due to politics.
Linux is better in every conceivable way
Both Chrome and Aluminium are Linux, so which are you trying to say is better?
Or are you saying more conventional Linux is superior? Gnu/Linux is a good term for that.
When someone says "Linux" in isolation, they mean a conventional Linux distribution. Only extreme pedants and Richard Stallman call it "GNU/Linux".
I prefer to call it systems/Linux these days. The amount of gnu bits in a desktop Linux distro is ever shrinking.
It’s not a great term, there is a small and shrinking proportion of GNU in most distros. Things like systemd or Wayland are far more important.
Systemd is Gnu licensed.
That is not how anyone uses that term. For starters, Linux is also GPL licensed, so if it was like that then we wouldn't bother calling it GNU/Linux, we could just call it GNU. More to the point though, being GPL-licensed doesn't make something part of the GNU project.
"GNU" in "GNU/Linux" isn't about the license but about the GNU OS, https://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html#why
This is the year of Linux on the desktop!
It sure is: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
Any decade now.
two more weeks
Except being able to buy GNU/Linux laptops from known brands, the same that sell Android and Chromebooks with 100% supported hardware, at FNAC, Worten, Saturn, MediaMarkt, Publico, Dixon, CoolBlue,....
It would be great, however it died alongside netbooks.
Only the first netbook came with Linux. The Asus EEEPC 701. This was mainly because it was so underpowered it couldn't run windows (and some nonresizable dialogue boxes didn't even fit on screen). But they dropped it with later models.
As owner of an Asus 1215B, that lasted from 2009 until last year, having gotten disk and memory upgrades during its lifetime, going through all Ubuntu LTS upgrades, bought with it pre-installed, that is certainly not true.
The 701 did run XP, even came pre installed with it on some models in later 2007!
Arguably not in security model.
Weird that ChromeOS Flex is not mentioned, I wonder if we are just changing names with some added features. I don't think this is a OS, not based on Linux, like Fuchsia.
Cant wait till like Android on phones, OEMs are put in charge of delivering updates to laptops, and if your laptop is older than 3 years good luck.
Seems like a big downgrade compared to current ChromeOS where Google is in charge of all updates, or even Windows where Microsoft delivers the same updates to everyone.
That's basically Microsoft's present strategy with W11. It seems to be going about as well as we'd hope
That article was almost impossible to read with how often the content shifted around, presumably due to crappy ad scripting.
A Pc that requires every dev register their blood type with Google? where do i sign up /s
edit: for all the iOS/MacOS whataboutists, i don't own any Apple devices for the same reasons, so not sure what point you are trying to make.
The last I heard, Windows for ARM also had enormous restrictions compared to x86.
Isnt that how it work on iOS as well?
But you don't run iOS on desktop computers. If MacOS went locked down like iOS people would throw fits.
That is what iPadOS Pro is for.
The sales prove there is enough happy people, even with the complaints regarding some of its limitations.
Hasn't it been heading in that direction for a while?
i don't know ,haven't seen an iOS pc and i don't own any of their other iOS devices or a MacOS device
edit: or an iPadOS Pro, for those who feel the need to highlight they spent the most.
It is called iPadOS Pro.
Are you referring to the iPad Pro or is there an actual iPadOS Pro I've never heard about?
Whataboutism?
I'm excited for this as it will allow desktops to get closer to the security of phones.
I don't think a mega corp having full access to my phone while me not having that is very "secure". Sure it's pretty ok against third parties but in my threat model Google and Apple are also adversaries. Microsoft too by the way.
In my model my Linux pc is a lot more secure as there's no adversary having direct access and more control than me.
By this definition no operating system Google releases will be secure to you. I think it would be a more productive discussion if you could argue about security ignoring that you have to trust the person who wrote your operating system or designed your cpu.
The point of open source is I don't have to trust the person who wrote it
It works well for you.. but for average person. No.
As a 20 year old linux user, I do often use ChromeOS or ChromeOSflex. Just works. Beautiful UI. No more pain with webcam or wifi drivers - Yes, these have improved by still one has the pain of dropped packets (realtek wifi) etc. guaranteed 10 hour battery life.
With ChromeOS I just get 4 or 5 second - update - immutable OS. Fedora Silverblue is coming up but still not there.
Privacy != Security
We shouldn't be happy with the state of security on Linux, while simultaneously enjoying its privacy benefits.
So secure it locks the owners out.
If I forget my LUKS passphrase no power on heaven or earth can recover my data
Yes, if someone sets a passcode and then forgets it, they will be locked out forever and lose all of their files. There is no way to prove physical ownership of the device, pretty mich the passcode proves who the owner is.