Crouton (ChromiumOS Universal Chroot Environment) is a set of scripts which allows

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

, and

Kali Linux Kali Linux is a Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. It is maintained and funded by Offensive Security. The software is based on the Debian''Testing'' branch: most packages Kali uses are imported from the De ...

systems to run parallel to a

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes styled as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is an operating system designed and developed by Google. It is derived from the open-source operating system and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user ...

system. Crouton works by using a

chroot chroot is a shell (computer), shell command (computing), command and a system call on Unix and Unix-like operating systems that changes the apparent root directory for the current running process and its Child process, children. A program that i ...

instead of dual-booting to allow a user to run

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

s at the same time: ChromeOS and another environment of the user's choice. In

Google I/O Google I/O, or simply I/O, is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. The name "I/O" is taken from the number googol, with the "I" representing the first digit "1" in a googol and the "O" representing the s ...

2019, Google announced all Chromebooks shipped that year onward will be Linux compatible out of the box.

Usage

Crouton requires the user to switch their ChromeOS device to Developer Mode. This requires a full "Powerwash" of the device and enabled the use of special commands in the Crosh terminal. Despite having many

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s to choose from, none are officially supported by their developers. While Crostini has become an officially supported way to run

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

applications, many people still prefer Crouton due to the fact it allows the user to access a

End of life

In March 29, 2025 crouton went End Of Life. The reason is because of a lot of changes in

that are effecting Crouton.

References

External links

Crouton
on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

Crouton
on

reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

Crouton Central
o
Google forums

Crouton Users
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Google+ Communities
Linux software {{operating-system-stub