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This blog post details using a chromebook as a temporary device, such that you can travel with a blank machine, and provision at your destination with the data

This blog post details using a chromebook as a temporary device, such that you can travel with a blank machine, and provision at your destination with the data and apps you may need: > It's pretty neat to consider the possibility of pre-travel "power washing" (resetting everything clean to factory settings) on an inexpensive Chromebook and later securely restore over the air once at my destination. ... the engineering challenge here was to find something powerful enough to comfortably use exclusively for several days of coding, writing, and presenting, but also cheap enough that should it get lost/stolen/damaged, I wouldn't lose too much sleep. ... I could treat it as a burner and move on. Edit; I've been using a de-chromed chromebook for over a year as my primary dev machine and really like it. I developed and launched one side project with it. The model I have (Acer C720) is a dual core Centrino, 2GB of ram, and I upgraded the m2 sata to 120GB. For Python/PHP/Ruby, it's great. I would not do Java development on this set up though. Java IDEs eat battery life and I imagine jvm startup time is a burden on this, although I haven't even installed Java to find out. Edit 2: to clarify, this is not about removing chromeos, but to use chromeos for it's security features. The article goes over using Termux to get a basic development/work environment setup on chromeos. Plus a lot other helpful tips. I offered my experience de-chroming as an example, I really like the platform. Apologies if that was confusing.

igravious 9y ago
> Edit; I've been using a de-chromed chromebook for over a year […] Ok, but as the article states, they did not de-ChromeOS it because they wanted TPM and Verified Boot and FIDO-certified U2F security key so that they didn't defeat the whole purpose of buying a Chromebook. FTA: “As far as Debian/Ubuntu (and crouton), that's fine as far as it goes, but then you don't end up with a Chromebook, just a cheap mini-notebook with flaky drivers. The whole point of this exercise is to retain the hardened posture of the platform and have a flexible, safe development environment without depending on the crutch of privileged access.”
- danieldk 9y ago
  U2F keys also work on plain Linux with Chrome or Chromium. Though you may have to add some udev rules: https://github.com/Yubico/libu2f-host/blob/master/70-u2f.rules https://github.com/Yubico/libu2f-host/blob/master/70-u2f.rul...
  - kasey_junk 9y ago
    The article also states, in the first paragraph, that he wants to use the ChromeOS linux variant because he believes in the security model. > I've come to fully appreciate Google's Chrome OS design. The architecture benefited from a modern view of threat modeling and real-world attacks. This linked in the article explains what he means https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/security-overview https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/....
    - danieldk 9y ago
      I read the article. The comment of my parent poster seemed to imply that U2F will only work on Chromebooks and 'vanilla' Linux.
- madez 9y ago
  You can have verified boot, and use the TPM and the U2F security key without the chrome os on a chromebook.
  - igravious 9y ago
    Totally agreed, but given the engineering efforts that Google have gone through to make the hardware and software stack work in harmony and given Google employees use Chromebooks the author of the article wants to set up a working dev environment by adding to Chrome rather than nuking it and coming up with a semi-custom solution. My first comment was to point this out. We all know you can put Chromebooks into dev mode and load Ubuntu, in fact I thought it was necessary to get the most out of Chromebooks. If it turns out that Chromebooks can make decent dev environments without nuking and installing Ubuntu or whatever and if they can run Android apps then Chromebook suddenly become a very interesting value proposition.
  - sliken 9y ago
    I use U2F with chrome on ubuntu. How how do you get TPM+verified boot without chromeos?
deleted 9y ago
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igravious 9y ago

> Edit; I've been using a de-chromed chromebook for over a year […] Ok, but as the article states, they did not de-ChromeOS it because they wanted TPM and Verified Boot and FIDO-certified U2F security key so that they didn't defeat the whole purpose of buying a Chromebook. FTA: “As far as Debian/Ubuntu (and crouton), that's fine as far as it goes, but then you don't end up with a Chromebook, just a cheap mini-notebook with flaky drivers. The whole point of this exercise is to retain the hardened posture of the platform and have a flexible, safe development environment without depending on the crutch of privileged access.”

danieldk 9y ago
U2F keys also work on plain Linux with Chrome or Chromium. Though you may have to add some udev rules: https://github.com/Yubico/libu2f-host/blob/master/70-u2f.rules https://github.com/Yubico/libu2f-host/blob/master/70-u2f.rul...
- kasey_junk 9y ago
  The article also states, in the first paragraph, that he wants to use the ChromeOS linux variant because he believes in the security model. > I've come to fully appreciate Google's Chrome OS design. The architecture benefited from a modern view of threat modeling and real-world attacks. This linked in the article explains what he means https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/security-overview https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chromiumos-design-docs/....
  - danieldk 9y ago
    I read the article. The comment of my parent poster seemed to imply that U2F will only work on Chromebooks and 'vanilla' Linux.
madez 9y ago
You can have verified boot, and use the TPM and the U2F security key without the chrome os on a chromebook.
- igravious 9y ago
  Totally agreed, but given the engineering efforts that Google have gone through to make the hardware and software stack work in harmony and given Google employees use Chromebooks the author of the article wants to set up a working dev environment by adding to Chrome rather than nuking it and coming up with a semi-custom solution. My first comment was to point this out. We all know you can put Chromebooks into dev mode and load Ubuntu, in fact I thought it was necessary to get the most out of Chromebooks. If it turns out that Chromebooks can make decent dev environments without nuking and installing Ubuntu or whatever and if they can run Android apps then Chromebook suddenly become a very interesting value proposition.
- sliken 9y ago
  I use U2F with chrome on ubuntu. How how do you get TPM+verified boot without chromeos?

deleted 9y ago

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