Chrome OS 74 adds support for backing up the Linux container

Google has continued to work on the Linux support of Chrome OS lately. For those unaware, this has been known a “Crostini” by the internal dev team and it’s what they use to describe the feature when using the Chromium Gerrit for new commits. It’s unclear how far Google’s roadmap for Linux support will go when it comes to Chrome OS, but it has recently been discovered that version 74 of the operating system adds a new feature. This has been reported on in the past, but if you’re running this version then you can now back up and restore the Linux container it uses.

The Mountain View tech giant seems to be all over the place with new changes to Crostini. There have been over 500 mentions in the Chromium Gerrit as of late and one of those changes added audio support for Linux apps in version 74 of Chrome OS. This is on top of the previous new additions like the added support of installing Debian packages or searching for apps to install from the launcher. So while Google continues to add basic features and improved UX changes, they’re also working on some backend stuff as well.

The new back up and restore feature for the Linux container in Chrome OS version 74 needs to be activated by enabling this flag chrome://flags/#crostini-backup. Once done, go ahead and restart the browser and you should now be able to create and restore from new backups. This was tested by About Chromebooks and is demonstrated on a Google Pixel Slate in the screenshots shown below. The backup is initially saved to the Downloads folder but you can move or copy it to Google Drive or any other cloud storage service for safe keeping.

Just remember, this feature is only available in the developer channel of Chrome OS at this time so it isn’t something that you should rely on 100%. That isn’t to say that it is guaranteed to be buggy, but you could run into some special circumstances in certain situations.


Via: About Chromebooks



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