Varve on ChromeOS

Before you start

1. Enable Linux. Select the time at the bottom right, then Settings → About ChromeOS →Developers → next to "Linux development environment", select Set up. ChromeOS installs a sandboxed Debian environment and opens a Terminal; setup can take ten minutes or more.
2. Check the architecture. Open the Terminal and run uname -m. ARM Chromebooks print aarch64; Intel/AMD Chromebooks print x86_64. Download the matching build — do not mix them.
3. Check the container.cat /etc/os-release shows the Debian version. Varve needs glibc 2.35 or newer, which Debian 12 (bookworm) and Debian 13 (trixie) both satisfy.
4. Leave room. The ARM64 package is 49.0 MB download, plus installed application files and the WebKitGTK/GTK system dependencies (a few hundred MB) and any optional AI models you download later. Keep more than 2 GB free in Linux.

If the Linux option is missing or disabled, the device does not support it or a work or school administrator has turned it off. Contact the administrator; there is no supported bypass.

Download the right package

The Debian package is the recommended format on ChromeOS, because the Linux environment is Debian-based. The table below shows the current release (v0.2.1) directly from the published release manifest.

An AppImage also exists (Varve-0.2.1-linux-aarch64.AppImage), but on ChromeOS it needs FUSE2 and the host WebKitGTK libraries. Prefer the .deb on ChromeOS.

Published v0.2.1 AppImages omit the bundled native ONNX Runtime because of a packaging defect, so native AI features fall back there. Use the .deb on ChromeOS.

Download, verify, and install

Run these commands in the Linux Terminal. The checksum check proves the file matches the published release data; like every Linux artifact, it is not code-signed.

The expected result is Varve-0.2.1-linux-aarch64.deb: OK. The published SHA-256 is 04a52411bf0a2b3ab9cc368b3d17c554b88cb17d179b3ecc784d3eb5bfe9b890; the checksum file remains the preferred check because it covers the exact download. Then install — this is a system modification, so it asks for your password:

Use apt install ./file.deb, not dpkg -i: only apt resolves the WebKitGTK and GTK dependencies. Do not use forced installs if it fails; report the error instead.

First launch and where files live

Search for Varve in the Launcher, or run varve-desktop in the Terminal. Create a document, draw, save with Ctrl+S, close it, and reopen it to confirm the round trip.

Keep project documents in a shared My files or Drive folder, not only in the Linux container. Sharing is explicit and per-folder; Drive-backed files are not always available offline.

Updates and uninstall

There is no apt repository for Varve, so apt upgrade will not update it. To update, download the newer .deb from the release page, verify its checksum, and install it over the old version; documents and settings are preserved. Rolling back means installing an older .deb, which only works while the document format remains compatible — keep backups.

To remove the application without touching your documents:sudo apt remove varve. App settings and recovery records live under ~/.local/share/dev.varve.desktop and ~/.config/dev.varve.desktop; remove those only if you actually want them gone. Removing the Linux environment itself deletes everything held inside Linux, so back up first with ChromeOS's Linux backup (.tini) flow. Browser/PWA data is separate and unaffected.

Known ChromeOS limitations

• No hardware acceleration in the Linux environment (Google documents GPU and video decode as unsupported), so expect software rendering; the Mali GPU and the NPU are not used by Varve here.
• Printing depends on CUPS inside the container, which is often absent. Export a PDF from Varve and print from ChromeOS instead.
• Fonts are the container's fontconfig set, not the host's. Add fonts inside Linux if a project needs them.
• Pen and touch are forwarded as pointer events; the USI Pen 2 and detachable-keyboard behavior have not been verified on hardware.
• Lifecycle: Linux processes stop when you log out and the container is suspended when idle. Save before closing the lid; suspend/resume with an open document is unverified.

If the window is blank, confirm a WebKit web process is alive (pgrep -af WebKitWebProcess) and capture the Terminal output when launching varve-desktop. A reversible diagnostic for renderer problems is WEBKIT_DISABLE_DMABUF_RENDERER=1 varve-desktop; unset it after testing. Never disable system security features.