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How can you seriously answer "SSH and VPS" as apps for development ON the Chrombook? They run on there, but you are not doing development on the machine. It's

How can you seriously answer "SSH and VPS" as apps for development ON the Chrombook? They run on there, but you are not doing development on the machine. It's like driving a little remote control car to the shops and claiming that you went. You didn't. I could walk into a library and use a terminal there to type code in, but I'm not doing development on that machine - it's just a dumb terminal. Now I understand the fact that you can remotely connect somewhere else to do work, but the advent of the microcomputer has meant that you shouldn't need to do that. Power usage for the earth will not be great if everyone runs a device that needs power locally, over a network system that needs powered routers, to a computer remotely that needs power just so you can type code in. That really doesn't make sense.

e12e 11y ago
I don't think the math works out the way you think it does. If 10 people share a 1000 watt server, that's better than each of them running a 300 watt pc. I agree that in the context of this (sub)thread, it's a bit odd to claim that chromebooks are decent developer workstations, when what's meant is that they're decent dumb terminals. I'd still like to run my code on my dumb terminal - but I think it makes perfect sense to work like that - have something dumb and wireless for human interaction, and data/processing on a dedicated piece of kit. Be that a low power intel cpu and ssd in a small box behind the tv, or something in a rack somewhere.
pconner 11y ago
You could install crouton without a DE and use the built-in shell to do whatever you wanted if you had a need to do development work and wanted to use ChromeOS without a full graphical Ubuntu install. You would have access to apt and vim.
geofft 11y ago
> Now I understand the fact that you can remotely connect somewhere else to do work, but the advent of the microcomputer has meant that you shouldn't need to do that. And the advent of dynamic libraries has meant we shouldn't need Docker, but, well, that's how it is. It's true that in an ideal world we shouldn't need such a mechanism, but in practice this system works very well for me, and the other ones have been frustrating. I need a working internet connection anyway to do work: I need everything from software updates to GitHub to IM with coworkers to Google and StackOverflow. And the remote machine shouldn't need any more power than my local one. So my added power consumption is just that of my Chromebook, which is about 10 W. I admit freely that I am not fulfilling the definition of "development on the Chromebook" in a strict sense, but it is certainly a serious answer for how I develop on my Chromebook.

e12e 11y ago

I don't think the math works out the way you think it does. If 10 people share a 1000 watt server, that's better than each of them running a 300 watt pc. I agree that in the context of this (sub)thread, it's a bit odd to claim that chromebooks are decent developer workstations, when what's meant is that they're decent dumb terminals. I'd still like to run my code on my dumb terminal - but I think it makes perfect sense to work like that - have something dumb and wireless for human interaction, and data/processing on a dedicated piece of kit. Be that a low power intel cpu and ssd in a small box behind the tv, or something in a rack somewhere.

pconner 11y ago

You could install crouton without a DE and use the built-in shell to do whatever you wanted if you had a need to do development work and wanted to use ChromeOS without a full graphical Ubuntu install. You would have access to apt and vim.

geofft 11y ago

> Now I understand the fact that you can remotely connect somewhere else to do work, but the advent of the microcomputer has meant that you shouldn't need to do that. And the advent of dynamic libraries has meant we shouldn't need Docker, but, well, that's how it is. It's true that in an ideal world we shouldn't need such a mechanism, but in practice this system works very well for me, and the other ones have been frustrating. I need a working internet connection anyway to do work: I need everything from software updates to GitHub to IM with coworkers to Google and StackOverflow. And the remote machine shouldn't need any more power than my local one. So my added power consumption is just that of my Chromebook, which is about 10 W. I admit freely that I am not fulfilling the definition of "development on the Chromebook" in a strict sense, but it is certainly a serious answer for how I develop on my Chromebook.