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We're seeing more reports of Steam for Chromebooks coming and Luke Short writing for Android Police thinks it will be soon. This would be a long time coming, after we've seen hints of it appearing for over a year now.

It won't be particularly helpful for a lot of the lower-end devices, but Chromebooks have been steadily getting bigger storage drives, with newer processors too that are much more capable. The new system that makes all this work is named Borealis, and it appears that as of November 29 it gained new "flags" regarding a Beta mode and a way to disabled "ChromeOS-specific integrations for the borealis client".

Not only that, there's also an earlier one from November 24 that mentions Borealis gained "support for Proton and SLR versions in Borealis game reports". Based on that wording, it appears they might have their own game compatibility database, which could end up looking something perhaps like Deck Verified for the Steam Deck.

Since Chrome OS is a Gentoo Linux-based operating system, it's another way that might help push up the Linux numbers on Steam. Although, it's possible Valve might tag it specifically as it's own thing since it's not really a "normal" Linux distribution, regardless, it will be running Linux native games and Windows games through Proton so it will still help Linux gaming as a whole.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Purple Library Guy Dec 3, 2021
Quoting: StalePopcornSide news; I turned our old Acer C720p Chromebook into a Linux laptop.
I've thought about trying that with my wife's old Chromebook, but it looks pretty tricky.
g000h Dec 3, 2021
Personally, I'm off Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Tesla and the various smaller companies with their excessive telemetry and profile building. I do (nearly) everything in my power to make it extremely difficult to profile me. Yes, blocking them 100% is difficult, but I can easily block more than 95% of the profiling, which means they have a very poor profile on me.

I wouldn't mind particularly, if telemetry was something that they permitted you to switch off - but they don't. They force it on you, and other than stop using their services or hardware, you are unable to prevent it.

- I'm using de-Googled, LineageOS (AOSP) mobile instead of Google Services Android. (No location tracking, etc)
- I don't have working Amazon Echo, Google Home devices running in my home.
- I've stopped using Google Search and instead use Startpage and Duckduckgo. (And they're working fine for my searches.)
- I own no Apple devices, so no issue with Apple spying on me.
- I do own a Chromebook, which I instantly overwrote with Linux.
- I use OpenWRT router with DNS-based Ad-Blocking (which stops Google Analytics on every site I visit, plus other trackers)
- I never link web registrations back to Google or Facebook accounts. (Usually I link to throwaway email address.)
- On my Firefox browser I run uBlock Origin as my primary advert/tracker blocker, as well as other privacy extensions.

I find it frankly disgusting that these companies sell you devices, i.e. You purchase something and you become the owner of that item, and they keep controlling the device and forcing their will upon you. If I buy a phone from Apple or Google (or Samsung or whomever) I expect full control of that device, i.e. The ability to fully switch off telemetry within the software.
Purple Library Guy Dec 3, 2021
Quoting: g000h- I'm using de-Googled, LineageOS (AOSP) mobile instead of Google Services Android. (No location tracking, etc)
I have you beat there. I don't own a cell phone. Mostly 'cause I'm cheap, secondarily because I like being alone when I'm alone, not so much because of privacy concerns.
g000h Dec 3, 2021
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: g000h- I'm using de-Googled, LineageOS (AOSP) mobile instead of Google Services Android. (No location tracking, etc)
I have you beat there. I don't own a cell phone. Mostly 'cause I'm cheap, secondarily because I like being alone when I'm alone, not so much because of privacy concerns.

I respectfully disagree with you - My compromise is that I have "Most of the tech" with nearly all my privacy intact. If I were to go with your solution I'd gain a tiny amount of privacy, but lose out on technological benefits.

To expand a little, a de-Googled phone has no services running which are able to track you - It is Open Source, just like Linux (all the source code available, you can review it and compile it yourself). Pretty much the only tracking which is going on is your cellular provider able to perform inaccurate cell-tower triangulation (typically 500m circle). And the cellular provider's location-tracking (of my mobile sim) isn't anywhere near as concerning to me as Google's AI-enhanced profiling.
elmapul Dec 3, 2021
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Mohandevir
Quoting: Purple Library GuySo who feels like they're only going ahead with this because Stadia is failing?

Maybe, but the Borealis project was started a while ago... Even before Stadia's official release, if my memory doesn't fail me... It might be a factor explaining why they are giving up that quickly on Stadia, though.
I just figure if Stadia had really taken off they would likely have let this wither on the vine. It's a fallback. One they knew they might need, so they made overtures and started plans, but if Stadia meant they didn't need this I suspect their first preference would have been to do a kind of Apple-but-in-the-cloud thing, controlling the whole experience end to end . . . and incidentally, not depending on the little Chromebooks' actual on-board capabilities as much.

wich make a hell lot of sense, chromebook main advantage is the price, but if you need an expensive hardware to game on, then this advantage go out of the window, the same goes for stadia.

if stadia were sucessfull valve could capitalize in an market of cheap devices that windows simply cant, nor with microsoft charging for their licences, it would be a win win situation for google.

people complain that stadia games dont run on desktop native, but if we think about it, if google paid to port to any* distro, then they would spend millions of dollars for the port of each game, and may make almost 0 on return of investment because people may purchase their games on steam etc instead, no one is paid to be impartial, what valve is doing is alost an miracle.
elmapul Dec 3, 2021
Quoting: mr-victoryHow much demand is there for Steam on ChromeOS/Chromebooks? I don’t think there is much (I expect it is way less than %1.16 linux market share on Steam) as the main purpose of these devices is browsing the web. And these devices are often managed by schools/organisations.

i dont know but they were selling a lot of games for the educational market, it was the first machine of a lot of people since it was dirty cheap and their parents could afford, the lack of games didndt shy the parents who purchased so their kids could study, if google could make those kids play on their chromebooks, their first machine could as well "be the last", but they cant.
elmapul Dec 4, 2021
omg i didnt read before it was an ARM device õ.O
i cant wait for the ARM future, but i'm still skeptical, especially when it comes to legacy and emulators.
elmapul Dec 4, 2021
speaking of arm, cloud gaming can help the transition to arm, as its irrelevant what the computer is running...
slaapliedje Dec 4, 2021
Ha, I would rather have Steam on my Atari VCS. Has every other streaming thing on there.

I don't like giving any money to google...
syxbit Dec 5, 2021
I bet Google is proud of themselves that they initially pressured hardware manufacturers to make devices with 32GB of storage..... That's going to let you install Tetris and Pacman :)
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