14 DAY TRIAL // Acer's recently announced Chromebook 13 and Chromebook Spin 13 appear to be the first Chromebooks to ship with support for Linux apps out-of-the-box at launch.
Google already announced that it worked on implementing support for Linux apps on Chrome OS during the Google I/O conference last month, and the first Chromebook to run Linux apps is Google's Pixelbook, as expected, and the functionality was later discovered to be available on the Samsung Chromebook Plus as well.
According to XDA-Developers, who spotted a new commit in Chromium Gerrit, an upcoming version of Google's Chrome OS operating systems for Chromebooks will explicitly turn on VM extensions for all Chromebooks under the Nami generation, enabling support for running Linux apps out-of-the-box.
The Nami family hasn't been officially announced, at the moment of writing, but it is believed that it will include a series of high-end Chromebooks, such as the Acer Chromebook 13 and Acer Chromebook Spin 13, as well as devices from Dell and HP that are yet to be unveiled.
Acer Chromebook 13 and Chromebook Spin 13 to run Linux app at launch
Similar to the Android apps support that it took Google quite a few years to implement to almost all supported Chromebooks, the upcoming support for Linux apps would follow the same path, which means that it could take a while until all Chromebooks available on the market will support the functionality, starting with the most powerful first.
And it looks like Acer's soon-to-be-released Chromebook 13 and Chromebook Spin 13 will be able to run Linux app on day one. However, Acer hasn’t provided any specific information on when it plans to launch these new Chromebooks, so until they're available to buy you might be able to enable support for Linux apps on your Chromebook using these instructions.
