Why Breadstick?

People ask about the name more than almost anything else, so here is the story.

Blame Chromebooks

Blame Chromebooks, and my passion for ChromeOS. Anyone who has run Linux on a Chromebook knows the menu. First came Crouton, the Chromium OS Universal Chroot Environment, which put Ubuntu or Debian in a chroot on developer-mode Chromebooks. Then Google built Linux support into ChromeOS itself and called it Crostini. After that came Bruschetta, for running other Linux virtual machines, and now Baguette.

Croutons, crostini, bruschetta, baguettes. Whoever names these projects is apparently always hungry.

The theme runs deeper than the headline names. Inside Crostini, the piece that brings Linux windows onto the ChromeOS desktop is called Sommelier, and the helper that runs errands between Linux and ChromeOS is called Garcon. It is a whole restaurant.

The best idea in the bakery

What Crostini got right was not the container or the virtual machine. It was the windows. A Linux app on a Chromebook opens in its own window, with its own icon on the shelf, right beside your Chrome tabs. It does not live inside a remote desktop viewer. It behaves like it belongs there.

That is exactly what Samsung DeX was missing. Linux on DeX put a whole Ubuntu desktop in a single window, and once Samsung ended it, the alternatives were mostly that same idea assembled by hand. Breadstick takes Crostini’s approach and brings it to Android: in Floating mode, every Linux app is drawn as its own native DeX window, next to your Android apps, with its own icon and its own place in the taskbar.

So it needed a bread name

A project that borrows the best idea from the bakery could hardly be called anything else. A breadstick felt right: long, thin, and it fits in your pocket, just like the phone it runs on. We checked the rest of the bakery for something better and came back with crumbs.

The name is also a small thank-you. Crouton showed that people wanted real Linux on devices that were never designed for it, and Crostini showed how good it could feel when it was done properly. Breadstick is my attempt to bring that same feeling to Samsung DeX and Android.

What comes in the basket

Breadstick runs a real Debian system with apt and gives you three ways to use it: Floating mode, where each Linux app gets its own window; Desktop mode, a complete Linux desktop; and the Breadstick Terminal. It needs no root, installs from Google Play, and keeps itself up to date.

To see what it can do, start with the getting started guide, or get Breadstick on Google Play. 🥖

ChromeOS and Chromebook are trademarks of Google LLC, and Samsung and DeX are trademarks of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Breadstick is not affiliated with Google or Samsung. As an Amazon Associate, Breadstick earns from qualifying purchases.