5 ms·

Data science on a chromebook

42 points by simplystats2 9y ago

grondilu 9y ago
Chromebooks are going to be awesome whenever Webassembly comes to maturity.
JoshMnem 9y ago
Instead of showing people what can be done with a restricted computer, why not encourage them to use non-restricted computers instead? Data science on a Chromebook that has Linux installed would be better.
- dws 9y ago
  A seatmate on a recent long flight had an Asus Chromebook with Linux side-loaded via Crouton, and was doing exploratory data analysis in Jupyter notebooks (mostly using R). Response seemed reasonably snappy. The trade-off for him was long- battery life and a laptop he wouldn't cry over if it didn't survive the trip, vs. being restricted to doing analysis on (relatively, for him) small data samples.
  - jethro_tell 9y ago
    I use mine full time for systems eng and devOps type tasks. All GUI tasks are handled by chrome with the exception of my password safe which is an android app. I use crouton for a shell and ssh to local host with the ssh extension. I love it, it's clean, lite, updated all the time. It's the reverse of my old workflow which was a browser on linux. Now I run linux on a browswer (same thing really) and google handles drivers, battery life, copy/paste, font rendering, graphics card management/ x11 configuration. . . . All the things that suck or take real work about using a linux laptop. Super fast setup too. I can wipe it when I'm going somewhere and have it up and fully ready to use in 10-15 minutes. (mostly I don't, but there are times when that seems like the best option.)
    - keenerd 9y ago
      The battery life on my Chromebook jumped from 10 hours to 15 hours when I replaced ChromeOS with Linux. Trading all of that Javascript for C makes a huge difference on battery life.
      - jethro_tell 9y ago
        May be the case, but 10 hours is plenty for me so not a real issue. The other advantages making up the full package are a big win for me. I still have an use full linux laptops and they are fine but they take a little more effort to set up and such.
    - exhilaration 9y ago
      Which model do you have?
      - jethro_tell 9y ago
        I started with an acer c720 2GBram. Everything was pretty good until you filled up the ram and it just force closed a bunch of tabs. Used that as my primary personal laptop for 1 year. It's not a little linux terminal for my daughter as it didn't get android apps, and OS support is about over. I moved to a Lenovo 13 Chromebook with 8GB ram and an i5 and 64 gb SSD, and the 1080 p screen. That's my primary laptop now. I also have a acer r11 which is pretty solid. I'd love to use that but it has a small screen. That gets used around the house by the rest of the family for various tasks and is in a stock state. I may look to move to acers next 11 in. They have been really solid but I need 1080 and usb C charging for anything else I buy. Not buying more chargers.
    - JoshMnem 9y ago
      Linux isn't that difficult to use any more. I didn't need to do any special configuration with my current laptop. Battery life is about 11-13 hours. ThinkPad t460. 24 Gb of RAM. USD $1,900 including tax, shipping, and a 4-year, next-day, at-home repair plan where they will drive to my home to fix it on the next business day, even if I spill coffee on it. I don't understand why people encourage the use of restricted technology. If consumers say that restricted technology is okay (by buying it and recommending it), eventually we won't have a choice any more.
- throwaway1232-4 9y ago
  Because it's useful to be able to access the same state from everywhere, and to not have to worry if the computer in front of you gets destroyed or stolen. Plus Chromebooks are more resistant to viruses and tampering. Thinking about a Chromebook as a restricted computer is kind of like thinking of a USB keyboard as a restricted computer. Yeah, you can't really use it as a general-purpose computer. But that's not the point. It's an ultra-reliable toaster that you use to access some other general-purpose computer in the cloud.
  - dang 9y ago
    Would you please not routinely create throwaway accounts here? It's fine if you have sensitive information, but not as a default. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - throwaway1232-4 9y ago
      Sadly, in our current world, it doesn't appear wise to create a long record of commentary under a single username here, no matter how innocuous the comments might seem at the time. Or, to put it another way, everything is sensitive now. In any case, I will simply stop posting to HN altogether.
blueblob 9y ago
At $20/mo in DigitalOcean services that are only required if you're running on a chromebook, why not just run on an inexpensive PC? It's seemingly long-term more expensive to do it this way.
- neuronexmachina 9y ago
  A few reasons come to mind: battery life, portability, and being able to easily upscale/downscale.
- neaden 9y ago
  From the article: "One of the best parts about the fully cloudy/Chrome OS requirement is this means that from the user perspective everything is always in sync. I log off the computer at home, come to work, log on and its like I’m on the same computer." So using a single computer wouldn't provide that, unless you took it with you which the author would apparently prefer not to do.
rjeli 9y ago
It's also very simple and quick to run a Jupyter notebook on your VPS, accessing it from your browser. It's how I do deep learning work from my Air. There are AMIs with tensorflow+ already installed.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Scarbutt 9y ago
I haven't tried it, but as developers, isn't using a small screen all day everyday becomes stressful after some time?
- jdietrich 9y ago
  It very much depends on your workflow and the tools you need. If you rely on a full-fat IDE, it'll probably be a disaster; if you're mainly a command-line user, you might be pleasantly surprised. A small screen can be quite relaxing, because it constrains the amount of visual clutter. If you've got a giant 4k display, there's a temptation to fill all those pixels with distracting and non-essential information. A little 11" screen forces you to focus on what's essential. I wouldn't want to read a book-sized newspaper, but I also wouldn't want to read a broadsheet-sized novel.
williamstein 9y ago
I wrote the first versions of CoCalc on a chromebook, for use in data science education (mostly my own classes initially)...

42 points by simplystats2 9y ago

Chromebooks are going to be awesome whenever Webassembly comes to maturity.

Instead of showing people what can be done with a restricted computer, why not encourage them to use non-restricted computers instead? Data science on a Chromebook that has Linux installed would be better.

dws 9y ago
A seatmate on a recent long flight had an Asus Chromebook with Linux side-loaded via Crouton, and was doing exploratory data analysis in Jupyter notebooks (mostly using R). Response seemed reasonably snappy. The trade-off for him was long- battery life and a laptop he wouldn't cry over if it didn't survive the trip, vs. being restricted to doing analysis on (relatively, for him) small data samples.
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  I use mine full time for systems eng and devOps type tasks. All GUI tasks are handled by chrome with the exception of my password safe which is an android app. I use crouton for a shell and ssh to local host with the ssh extension. I love it, it's clean, lite, updated all the time. It's the reverse of my old workflow which was a browser on linux. Now I run linux on a browswer (same thing really) and google handles drivers, battery life, copy/paste, font rendering, graphics card management/ x11 configuration. . . . All the things that suck or take real work about using a linux laptop. Super fast setup too. I can wipe it when I'm going somewhere and have it up and fully ready to use in 10-15 minutes. (mostly I don't, but there are times when that seems like the best option.)
  - keenerd 9y ago
    The battery life on my Chromebook jumped from 10 hours to 15 hours when I replaced ChromeOS with Linux. Trading all of that Javascript for C makes a huge difference on battery life.
    - jethro_tell 9y ago
      May be the case, but 10 hours is plenty for me so not a real issue. The other advantages making up the full package are a big win for me. I still have an use full linux laptops and they are fine but they take a little more effort to set up and such.
  - exhilaration 9y ago
    Which model do you have?
    - jethro_tell 9y ago
      I started with an acer c720 2GBram. Everything was pretty good until you filled up the ram and it just force closed a bunch of tabs. Used that as my primary personal laptop for 1 year. It's not a little linux terminal for my daughter as it didn't get android apps, and OS support is about over. I moved to a Lenovo 13 Chromebook with 8GB ram and an i5 and 64 gb SSD, and the 1080 p screen. That's my primary laptop now. I also have a acer r11 which is pretty solid. I'd love to use that but it has a small screen. That gets used around the house by the rest of the family for various tasks and is in a stock state. I may look to move to acers next 11 in. They have been really solid but I need 1080 and usb C charging for anything else I buy. Not buying more chargers.
  - JoshMnem 9y ago
    Linux isn't that difficult to use any more. I didn't need to do any special configuration with my current laptop. Battery life is about 11-13 hours. ThinkPad t460. 24 Gb of RAM. USD $1,900 including tax, shipping, and a 4-year, next-day, at-home repair plan where they will drive to my home to fix it on the next business day, even if I spill coffee on it. I don't understand why people encourage the use of restricted technology. If consumers say that restricted technology is okay (by buying it and recommending it), eventually we won't have a choice any more.
throwaway1232-4 9y ago
Because it's useful to be able to access the same state from everywhere, and to not have to worry if the computer in front of you gets destroyed or stolen. Plus Chromebooks are more resistant to viruses and tampering. Thinking about a Chromebook as a restricted computer is kind of like thinking of a USB keyboard as a restricted computer. Yeah, you can't really use it as a general-purpose computer. But that's not the point. It's an ultra-reliable toaster that you use to access some other general-purpose computer in the cloud.
- dang 9y ago
  Would you please not routinely create throwaway accounts here? It's fine if you have sensitive information, but not as a default. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - throwaway1232-4 9y ago
    Sadly, in our current world, it doesn't appear wise to create a long record of commentary under a single username here, no matter how innocuous the comments might seem at the time. Or, to put it another way, everything is sensitive now. In any case, I will simply stop posting to HN altogether.

blueblob 9y ago

At $20/mo in DigitalOcean services that are only required if you're running on a chromebook, why not just run on an inexpensive PC? It's seemingly long-term more expensive to do it this way.

neuronexmachina 9y ago
A few reasons come to mind: battery life, portability, and being able to easily upscale/downscale.
neaden 9y ago
From the article: "One of the best parts about the fully cloudy/Chrome OS requirement is this means that from the user perspective everything is always in sync. I log off the computer at home, come to work, log on and its like I’m on the same computer." So using a single computer wouldn't provide that, unless you took it with you which the author would apparently prefer not to do.

rjeli 9y ago

It's also very simple and quick to run a Jupyter notebook on your VPS, accessing it from your browser. It's how I do deep learning work from my Air. There are AMIs with tensorflow+ already installed.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Scarbutt 9y ago

I haven't tried it, but as developers, isn't using a small screen all day everyday becomes stressful after some time?

jdietrich 9y ago
It very much depends on your workflow and the tools you need. If you rely on a full-fat IDE, it'll probably be a disaster; if you're mainly a command-line user, you might be pleasantly surprised. A small screen can be quite relaxing, because it constrains the amount of visual clutter. If you've got a giant 4k display, there's a temptation to fill all those pixels with distracting and non-essential information. A little 11" screen forces you to focus on what's essential. I wouldn't want to read a book-sized newspaper, but I also wouldn't want to read a broadsheet-sized novel.

williamstein 9y ago

I wrote the first versions of CoCalc on a chromebook, for use in data science education (mostly my own classes initially)...