I’m not a big Crostini user, but Crostini pro users can tell you that accessing the terminal app on Linux in Chrome OS (I like how it sounds!) isn’t an easy task.

Looks like Google is going to make this easier soon. A code commit that I noticed today talks about making the container available on chrome://terminal.

This feature will be tested behind a new flag named “Terminal System App” The description of the flag says:

Enables the Terminal System App at chrome://terminal which is used for the Chrome OS Linux terminal.

The bug associated with this change makes its intention clear. “Issue 846546: Make crostini terminal app use a system webui app”

The Crostini Terminal is current running crosh (a v1 app) with some hacks to make it not get picked up in the shelf as crosh. We should try and avoid these hacks, for example moving crosh off the legacy app system and making separate PWAs for crosh and the terminal.

Soon enough, you will have an easy method to access Linux terminal inside Chrome OS.

If you are a Crostini user or a Linux expert, please drop in a comment with your thoughts. I could use some expert opinion here!