A few days ago, after Google announced its partnership with Parallels to bring Windows apps to Chrome OS, I did a little digging in the repositories to see if I could find any more details about it — oh, the benefits of open source!
Obviously, I know that this is targeted to enterprise users only at the moment, but I found that the feature might land with Chrome OS 85, is codenamed “Plugin VM,” and was running on a dev’s Pixelbook Go. Funnily enough, the devs also made all the bug reports I used private in less than 24 hours of publishing the post. At any rate, today, I discovered some more small details.
Chromium devs recently updated the Plugin VM installer illustration from the left image to the right image:
I guess the new graphic sort of looks like Windows? They also changed the Plugin VM icon from the one of the left to the one on the right:
Also updated were a bunch of string references. Basically, the devs changed a bunch of the “Plugin VM” UI text to say “Parallels” and “Windows” anywhere it’s referenced. Below are some of the raw strings:
<ph name="PARALLELS_NAME">Parallels Desktop</ph> allows you to run Windows® apps on your Chromebook. <ph name="MINIMUM_SPACE">$1<ex>20GB</ex></ph> of free space is recommended for installation.
Please launch Parallels Desktop to install Windows.
Uninstalling Parallels Desktop will delete your Windows image. This includes its applications, settings, and data. Are you sure you wish to continue?
To share, right-click on a folder in Files app, then select "Share with Parallels Desktop".
desc="Parallels local directory label.">
Windows files
Give Parallels Desktop permission to modify files in the <ph name="FOLDER_NAME">$1<ex>Downloads</ex></ph> folder
Give Parallels Desktop permission to modify files in your Google Drive. Changes will sync to your other devices.
Based on the strings, it seems that Parallels will need a minimum of 20 GB of free space to install. You’ll also be able to right-click on a folder in the Chrome OS Files app and share it to the Parallels VM so it can access its contents, much like you can do with Linux (Beta) right now. You can even share access to your Google Drive.
Other than that, devs have been working on adding a UI for microphone and camera permissions for the VM and cleaning up the installation process.
Source:Â Chromium Gerrit (1) (2) (3)
Featured-Image: 9to5Google
