Why chromiumOS ?

  1. Xorg + Desktop Environments on touch based devices are not mature enough, especially when paired with Nvidia hardware (greatly limited by bugs in their BSP).
  2. As ChromiumOS is based on Gentoo, this port has a base I can take advantage of, thanks to the previous work of bell07 and Gavin_Darkglider on their gentoo overlay for the switch.
  3. Google provides solid tools when it comes to creating an easy experience for the end user (akin to what Microsoft can do with Windows) a few examples are CROSVM (virtualization tool) , ARCVM (android container), Linux container.. etc.. etc..

Building the base

Starting from the gentoo overlay, adaptations need to be made to the base.
We’ll start from by creating a new profile called base which will reflect chromiumOS guidelines.

For this project I’ll start from ChromeOS kernel 5.15 and pick my mainline fork patches for the switch on top.

We’ll also need to use our own mesa package and to take advantage of nouveau OpenGL support and upcoming NVK (nouveau vulkan support).

Sources

ChromiumOS overlay
ChromiumOS kernel
Gentoo switch overlay