Ive seen a couple of threads about installing Xojo on Chromebooks by nefarious means.
But can a Linux build of a GUI app be deployed onto a Chromebook?
Anyone achieved it?
that seems like a lot of trouble - Installing windows on your chromebook is a hella lot easier imho.
Not for the kind of people who usually buy Chromebooks.
I want to sell an app, not land myself with support queries for years…
A “native” ChromeOS app is just a web app. So, in thesis, a Xojo Web app, running remotely (like a website), can become a “Chromebook app”, Chromebooks are made to run a “sophisticated browser” as your desktop, not Windows, not Linux. Any of those are hacks.
Sadly, Xojo Web isn’t up to the job for this app.
Nonetheless, Chromebooks must run Linux apps of some kind… the browser is one.
So in theory, Xojo Linux might be able to do something native??
To make a ChromeOs app is stupid simple, a folder with the name of your App, a PNG icon inside it, and a JSON manifest explaining few details, name, the icon, the url of the app…
There is an underlying “Linux” but not accessible without hacks. You don’t really get something to sell this way.
People can install Android Apps in SOME new models (Chrome OS version M53+) from Google Play Store. So, when Xojo for Android becomes a reality, they can have a ChromeOS Android target too. Android for ChromeOs targets don’t use touchcreen and have mouse/keyboard support.
If the chromebook supports Linux Beta, it would be possible to install linux apps.
check out Linux Beta for more info.
If something doesn’t “come ready” baked into the OS, to sell something for it is not a good option. And a Beta, even more. Currently the only real options are ChromeOS web Apps, and ChromeOS Android Apps.
You really do need to open the Linux underpinnings to enable this. I’ve done it on one of our units and its not pretty (and I’ve been coding Linux since 1993). Additionally, if you DO get things working, since the GUI manager is relatively basic you need to be very careful about control placement as any sort of overlap outside of TabPanels and ContainerControls will result in the controls flickering as the window manager tries to determine which control to draw.
Xojo - or any non-Web apps - are not a good idea for a Chromebook unless you’re installing a Linux distro instead of ChromeOS.
His interest is sales of apps, easy install and use. ChromeOS, right now, is designed to support Chrome Apps (browser like), and Android Apps designed for ChromeOS (basically touch disabled, mouse/keyboard enabled, windowed app). Anything else is in the realms of experiments, not sales, and not for making money.
That’s why I summarized the way that I did:
Still dont know why people buy them.
That’s simple - low cost, low maintenance. They get the job done for casual users and are quite inexpensive compared to a standard laptop. Imagine if you had to herd 500 elementary kids with normal Windows Laptops …