Google has announced the integration of certain portions of the Android operating system code into the ChromeOS operating system to reduce development redundancy and speed up ChromeOS feature development.
The first component that ChromeOS has adopted is Fluoride, a framework for managing Android’s Bluetooth devices, replacing the BlueZ Bluetooth framework for Linux that ChromeOS previously used.
The problem with BlueZ is the use of different APIs between desktop and mobile devices, making code maintenance more challenging. With Android’s Fluoride offering a simpler architecture and compatibility testing with a wide range of devices, it makes sense to incorporate Fluoride into ChromeOS.
The migration process of Google’s framework took a total of 2 and a half years (starting in 2021) under the code name Project Floss. The project has now been completed and is integrated into ChromeOS version 122. After the transition to Fluoride, Bluetooth device pairing on ChromeOS is faster than before, and it also supports new features like LE Audio and new audio codecs that Fluoride already uses.
Google also states that they will continue to develop Floss so that other Linux distributions can utilize Fluoride as well.
Source – Chromium Blog, ChromeOS Dev
TLDR: Google integrates parts of the Android code into ChromeOS to enhance feature development and improve Bluetooth device performance. The project, named Project Floss, took 2.5 years to complete and has resulted in faster pairing and support for new features on ChromeOS. Further development is planned to allow other Linux distributions to use Fluoride.
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