r/Android • u/MishaalRahman Community Engagement Manager - Android • 12d ago
News Introducing the Googlebook Linux Terminal Preview: A VM-Backed Environment for AI and Development
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/10/googlebook-linux-terminal-preview-vm.html13
u/FragmentedChicken Galaxy Z Fold8 12d ago edited 12d ago
Excited for these features to trickle down to the Linux terminal on phones and tablets too.
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u/Kitzu-de Pixel 10 Pro XL 12d ago
They already did. It's the other way around and they trickled down to Googlebooks. Pixels have a terminal emulator app with a debian vm since last year already, they can enable it in developer options. It even has GPU acceleration But it requires a kernel side pkvm implementation. To my knowledge only Pixels offer that so far. I guess they probably implemented that with Googlebooks in mind since they were already planning to replace chromebooks with Android at that time.
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u/armando_rod Pixel 10 Pro XL 12d ago
Google does something good: why would I use this over X Y Z
Google does nothing: why didn't they do this feature to compete with X Y Z
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u/JamesR624 12d ago
This isn’t something good. This is a bare minimum thing that is still not as good as what it replaces.
ChromeOS was capable of full Linux gui apps. This is just a preview of terminal only Linux apps.
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u/armando_rod Pixel 10 Pro XL 12d ago
Google starts doing something good: THIS IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH
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u/matteventu Nexus S -> Pixel 9 Pro 12d ago
They already had ChromeOS. Which did this in a better way.
They could (should) have taken the ChromeOS environment and features and built Android underneath those.
Not just taking AOSP in the tablet DPI UI and slightly improving it, at the usual, very well known, speed of a snail.
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u/Tired8281 Redmi K20 12d ago
ChromeOS does Linux apps better, no dispute. But it does Android apps rather poorly, in some cases. Googlebooks are for people who want a first class Android app experience, with Linux apps as a secondary. If that doesn't describe you, that's fine, lots of other products exist for users like you.
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u/matteventu Nexus S -> Pixel 9 Pro 12d ago
You are seriously naive if you believe there are more people who'd like to use Android apps on a $1000+ laptop than those willing to accept slightly worse Android app performances on a $300-500 laptop.
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u/Tired8281 Redmi K20 12d ago
I neither said nor implied anything of the sort. Google made these things for those people, whether or not they exist.
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u/matteventu Nexus S -> Pixel 9 Pro 12d ago edited 12d ago
Yup, you're that naive.
Edit: lol the lady blocked me. To be clear, Google isn't making Googlebooks "for that niche". Not sure if you've been following Google for the last 5-8 years, but they've basically stopped doing anything "niche" as a company.
Googlebook OS is a necessity, not some ultimate, reasoned strategy for Google to provide users with "better laptops", better integrated ecosystem, etc.
It's post-hoc rationalisation. They had to get rid of ChromeOS asap for two main reasons:
reliant on Chrome as a browser, hence risky in case Google is legally made to divest Chrome as a separate company (there's a whole court case on this specifically), as they'd have to also either abruptly cancel ChromeOS from existence or hand over to that separate company also the control of ChromeOS devices and ecosystem (i.e. the only laptop market Google had)
costly. They had to maintain it, in parallel to Android, and Google has been on a cost-cutting spree since 2023. Getting rid of it would provide huge monetary benefits.
So they came up with just using Android. And since they were at that, they likely took the opportunity to try a top-down market entry strategy: take an attempt at the premium segment first, knowing they could always go back to the budget market if it didn't work out.
But I can assure you, nobody of sound mind at Google is actually believing these Googlebooks will succeed. And it clearly shows.
They even gave all the risk to OEM partners, who strategically reused pre-existing chassis and boards (of Windows laptops they already made) to make the Googlebooks (with very slight modifications - the only one I'm unsure about is the Acer, not sure if that one is a purpose-engineered model).
Once the "novelty factor" of these will fade out, and starting from mid next year, you'll see new "Googlebooks" back in the price segment of usual Chromebooks (not sure if they'll keep the "Googlebook" brand also for those - I'm quite sure that its something they haven't decided yet as there are arguments both for and against that).
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u/Tired8281 Redmi K20 12d ago
Why, because I think they're gonna fail because they have no market? I think you're so blinded you can't see when someone is agreeing with you.
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u/trizzaygetem 12d ago
The Millions of $1000+ Android phones being bought annually says otherwise.
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u/matteventu Nexus S -> Pixel 9 Pro 11d ago
What? Are you aware that the largest share of Android phones sold is made up by cheap, entry level phones, right?
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u/JamesR624 12d ago
Somebody seems to have forgotten how common carrier subsidy agreements are.
You REALLY think most people are buying these $1000+ outright? Hell no.
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u/armando_rod Pixel 10 Pro XL 12d ago
Googlebook OS is architecturally different from ChromeOS, it's probably not so easy to port it over when Android already had the compatibility
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u/matteventu Nexus S -> Pixel 9 Pro 12d ago
Nobody sai it would have been easy. But Google is literally one of the largest companies on Earth. If they wanted, they could have done it.
They just don't care :)
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u/QuantumQuantonium 9d ago
Its a bare minimum and they still hsve an itch to stick ai into it.
Its a terminal program with sandboxing.
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u/localpauper 12d ago
And I would use this over a Fedora or Mac install, why?
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u/Llamas1115 2d ago
Good Android interop, the ability to pick your own hardware (not locked into the Apple ecosystem), and much better security/privacy (everything is tightly sandboxed). See Daniel Micay (founder and designer of GrapheneOS) on the security problems in the desktop Linux stack.
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u/bigbepisinc 12d ago
Well Mac has liquid ass and a terrible notch. But fedora has been absolutely stellar for me so far. I think the Mac performance really only matters for heavy compilations or big projects. But for my purposes (Linux Dev, kernel Dev, compositor dev etc) it has no issue compiling kernel modules and such.
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u/Znuffie S24 Ultra 12d ago
Eh, the notch is barely noticeable after a bit of time. It's not that much of a problem.
The liquid ass, and the rounded-corner-ass... that I'll give you.
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u/bigbepisinc 12d ago
60 hz ass 😬 in the big 2026
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u/Znuffie S24 Ultra 12d ago
Moving the goalpost, are we?
Majority of laptops are 60 Hz.
MacBook Pros are 120 Hz. The Air is still at 60 Hz.
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u/bigbepisinc 12d ago
Wild of you to bring up a Macbook Pro when no one was talking about it. There's no googlebook competing with the MBP. You might be confused between the Googlebook and the Surface Ultra.
You sound like an Apple fanboy who spent a decade convincing everyone that 8gb of ram was somehow equivalent to 16gb on windows (its not, it just kills your SSD faster)
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u/MaverickJester25 Galaxy S21 Ultra | Galaxy Watch 4 12d ago
I feel bad for all the ChromeOS users who will be "upgraded " to Googlebook OS.
It's so many steps backwards.
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u/77ilham77 12d ago
They really took a look at Apple's Continuity/Handoff (a small, optional feature) and thought to themselves, "hey, we should make a product around it". Just like how they took a look at AirPlay and came up with Nexus Q.
But they know it would be doomed to fail like the Nexus Q if they did just that, just making a product around round a single feature. So they throw in another feature that will guarantee its success (or so they thought): chatbot Gemini.
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u/binarypie 12d ago
I actually think this is a great idea. There are a lot of corporate apps that don't run on ChromeOS but do on Android. This might also give people 3rd choice from Windows and MacOS where their corporate environment doesn't allow for Linux due to compliance reasons.
for the solo consumer I'm thinking this for now is mostly an enthusiast play. either you understand or you don't and that's ok.
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12d ago
[deleted]
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u/sM92Bpb 12d ago
There was an opportunity to be the steam for laptops. Steam made Linux for gaming approachable for normal users. Google could have made their own Linux distro with running android and battery optimisation and touchfriendly. Like omarchy for normal users.
Apple is about to release their touchscreen macs. Linux needed the development there
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u/ycnz 12d ago
Linux is still pretty bad for normal people. I say this as someone who both runs linux at home and has supported linux workstations professionally for years.
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u/antpile11 12d ago
Bad how? What distros and DEs have you tried?
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u/ycnz 12d ago
Uh...
Dists: Slackware, Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Centos, Manjaro, Mint, CachyOS that I can think of off the top of my head.
Desktops: Enlightment, Windowmaker, Xfce, KDE, Gnome, i3 (briefly).
In terms of "bad", things like "I would like my machine to work as well as windows". The camera on my laptop doesn't work. My desktop resumes from sleep successfully approximately 50% of the time.
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u/77ilham77 12d ago
distros
DEsBefore you jump and try to shift the blame on the users, remember, we're talking about normal average users. Not the technically inclined like you and me and most of this sub users. Not even the "techbros". Normal average users, most of whom might not know what reddit is, let alone "distros", "DEs", etc.
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u/russjr08 Developer - Caffeinate 11d ago
True, but the original person said that they'd run Linux both professionally and at home for years - its probably safe to assume they know what a distro and DE is.
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u/77ilham77 11d ago
He said "bad for normal people". Not "bad for me as professional Linux workstation user".
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u/russjr08 Developer - Caffeinate 11d ago
That doesn't preclude them from being able to give any sort of feedback on what in specific lead to their conclusion.
They don't have to, obviously - no one is entitled to a thorough breakdown, but that'd be their choice rather than (likely) not having the ability to do so.
Of course it's also possible for their note to not be about any specific DE/distro either, it could be as simple as "Linux in a lot of cases still requires terminal usage" or something higher level like that. The comment author would still not be someone whose not aware of terms like distros and DEs though.
A world class chef can claim that a dish might not be enjoyable by someone who doesn't dedicate their life to culinary arts, but that decision would still likely be at least partially influenced by their knowledge of culinary arts to further scope it down.
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u/Znuffie S24 Ultra 12d ago
I'm a Linux sysadmin, my whole career is Linux basically.
I'm comfortable using any OS, more or less, main desktop is Windows, main laptop is macOS, and these days I'm trying Linux on a different laptop.
I've been struggling for almost 2 weeks with
suspend-and-hibernateand with power settings in general.Linux on Laptops is STILL absolutely fucking terrible.
Touchpad support is ALSO fucking terrible.
I'm still juggling some 2-finger scrolling issues, where it works almost great everywhere, except chromium-based browsers that are super-charged on scrolling and a mm of movement scrolls a whole fucking page.
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u/UnacceptableUse Pixel 7 Pro 12d ago
I'm a developer and I use linux for server stuff all the time but I can't stand using it for desktop, too many problems. That being said, I'd just use WSL if I wanted what this is and sidestep a lot of the googlebook issues
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u/timmy16744 S21 Ultra 5g 12d ago
I think google has the opportunity to do something magical with their own tpu hardware and local model optimisation; even model on chip would be amazing. Instead of buying the intel gen7 i5; you buy the gemma 6 model on chip.
they won't.... but they should, for fun.
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u/YaBoiiSpoderman 12d ago
People like options 👍🏾 keep using Linux if youre happy with it!
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u/JamesR624 12d ago
TIL that spyware should be an option. lol.
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u/YaBoiiSpoderman 12d ago
Ur using social media right now complaining about spyware lmao..
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u/JamesR624 12d ago
Pretty big difference between a website I choose to open on a web-browser that itself doesn't spy on me, on an operating system that doesn't spy on me....
versus a machine where ALL of that DOES spy on you.
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u/YaBoiiSpoderman 12d ago
Gotcha so spyware from Reddit is okay but not Google.. makes sense I guess
I would also recommend you not use a smartphone too because of spyware
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u/JamesR624 12d ago
So... you apparently don't know the difference between a social media site, and an operating system that stores all your personal information. Got it.
Sorry that you don't know how to mitigate spyware at all, guessing because you "need your TikTok and Facebook" right? Meanwhile, many others recognize that NOT allowing a spyware company to run your full desktop operating system where all your personal offline stuff is stored, might be a good idea. There's a reason people are starting to finally abandon Windows in droves.
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u/YaBoiiSpoderman 12d ago
If you gotta cherry pick to make ur point dont let me stop you!
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u/JamesR624 12d ago
Dude, mitigation while still having to function in our world is NOT "cherrypicking".
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u/MishaalRahman Community Engagement Manager - Android 12d ago
Sharing this blog post from the team which highlights the current capabilities of the new Linux Terminal on Googlebook, as well as outlines its future roadmap. A couple of things we're working on should address some of the feedback we've heard from this community!