@gjacobse said in ChromeOS vs Linux:
Have I managed to mislead myself in believing that the two - while different - are in a basic manner, the same
Basically, yes. In essence, the kernel provides basic compatibility and underlying behaviour (task switching, memory resource management) allowing you to gauge performance, security and application compatibility (that is for binaries.)
But NOTHING that people think of as a system is its kernel. If you put the GNU utils on top of Windows, literally no one can tell. Is it Linux? Nope, it's Windows!
Test this with the Ubuntu for Windows in the Windows 11 Store. It'll install Ubuntu for you to run on your Windows workstation. It will look and feel exactly like Ubuntu you are used to. It IS Ubuntu. What it is not, is Linux, at all. It's 100% Windows, just with the Ubuntu user interface on top, rather than the Windows Desktop interface.
There's no Linux, whatsoever. The Linux Subsystem for Windows is an API compatibility layer NOT an implementation of Linux.