dnschneid/croutonArchived
Crouton
Crouton is a tool that creates and manages full Linux distribution environments that run alongside Chrome OS using chroot technology, without requiring a reboot or dual-boot setup. It shares the host kernel to avoid virtualisation overhead while providing a complete Linux filesystem that operates concurrently with the Chromium OS desktop.
The project supports encrypting chroot environments with decryption keys that can be stored on a separate removable device, requiring physical possession to unlock the environment. It enables graphical Linux applications to display inside a Chrome OS window or tab through X11 forwarding over SSH, with synchronized clipboard content and URL data shared between the two environments via a custom bridge daemon. Multiple independent chroot environments can be created, named, deleted, and updated on the same device, each pinned to a specific Debian or Ubuntu release selected at creation time.
Software in the chroot is managed through named targets that map to apt package groups, and the entire chroot filesystem can be snapshotted into a compressed tarball for portable backup and restoration, including on a new or powerwashed machine. Bind mounts expose host directories into the chroot for file access between environments.