I guess from a school/teachers point of view
chromebooks are pretty much a dream come true if set up as strict thin client,
-no need to install anything
-no possability to install anything
-no need to do any updating
-no data lost if the machine is destroyed
-no personal data on the local machine
-> connect with any machine to the cloud and everything is there at all times from all places and devices.
and best:
-no need for nerdy, I mean knowledgeable of course, teachers
-hacker kids cannot destroy the local installation as it more or less doesn't exist (of course keep in mind that this simply shifts the responsibility for security away from the overworked teachers towards some trusted corporation such as the mighty knowallmypersonallsecrets google)
of course that means google does all the hard work
and thus decides the limits in which the chromebook may thrive
and thus has more or less
full controland all data is stored in some cloud out there beyond complete personall control.
The
Chrome OS running the chromebooks is actually a single job app that only runs a browser so indeed it favors supplying just an interface to software running elsewhere in the web (web applications). Nothing new as such but not the type of environment Minetest has explored yet although the Minetest client itself does have some similarity to a thin client if you dissallow local singleplayer worlds.
Back to the original question, two paths among others seem promising:The Chrome-OS does supply the
Google Native Client technology so if Quake, Doom and Battle for Wesnoth can do it why not Minetest; providing we have or find coders who care to do it.
The faster path at the moment may be the
Android Runtime for Chrome (ARC) as
Minetest has allready been ported to Android. The problem would now be that the non-touchscreen navigation must be added again, such as support for keyboard and mouse input.