Chromebooks with Intel Apollo Lake chips get support for Linux apps

Google has enabled support for running Linux applications for Chromebooks that include Apollo Lake socs. In total, this concerns eighteen Chromebooks from Acer, Asus, Lenovo and Dell.

XDA found that the Chrome OS developers have activated Linux support for Chromebooks based on Intel’s Apollo Lake and the site lists the models that qualify as a result. These include Lenovo’s 100th, 500e, and Thinkpad 11e, Acer’s Chromebook 11, 15, and Spin, Asus’ Chromebook Flip, and Dell’s Chromebook 11 models.

The models are next to Google’s own Pixelbook and Samsung’s Chromebook Plus, which can already run Linux applications. The change is not coming directly to users yet. It comes first to the Canary and Developer versions of Chrome OS 69, followed by the beta and stable releases.

Some of the eighteen Chromebooks concerned can also run Android apps through the integrated Play Store. The Linux programs run in a virtual machine on Chrome OS. The Android apps run as containers on the Android Framework, which in turn runs in a sandbox.