WIth Apps and an OS-Agnostic Attitude, Chromebooks Can Challenge Microsoft

Slowly but surely, Google is chipping away at advantages that proprietary operating systems have over its still relatively young Chrome OS. Meanwhile, Chromebooks, portable computers based on Chrome OS, have become popular in the market. In fact, Acer's President recently told Bloomberg that its C7 Chromebook accounted for 5 percent to 10 percent of Acer’s U.S. shipments since being released in November.

Now, Google has apparently confirmed that it has ported QuickOffice, an iOS and Android app productivity suite that substitutes for Microsoft Office, to Chrome OS. And, Digital Trends is reporting that you can put versions of Linux, including Ubuntu and Mint, on Google's new Pixel Chromebook (shown here). Try that on a Windows 8 machine without having to jump through a bunch of Secure Boot hoops.

Bill Richardson, a Google software engineer, has posted a picture of the glitzy new Pixel Chromebook running Linux Mint.  We've heard from many OStatic readers who have confirmed their plans to buy either the low-cost Samsung or Acer Chromebook, and then put a Linux distro on the system. Now, we have confirmation that if you shell out $1,300 for a Pixel Chromebook, you can run Chrome OS and a good Linux distro in tandem.

It's yet another sign of the multiple OS future that is headed everyone's way.

QuickOffice is an interesting addition to Chrome OS. It lets users create documents that are at least largely compatible with documents created by Microsoft's Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

And get this: Computerworld points out that "there are no technical barriers that prevent the finished application from running within the Chrome browser on Windows, OS X and Linux."

If sophisticated laptops like the Pixel can come down in price and include useful productivity applications made compatible with Microsoft's--and you can run a good Linux distro in addition to Chrome OS--then Chromebooks look to have even more of a future.