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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 (most

by 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.
  - rixed 9y ago
    Did you manage to buy this machine without paying the Microsoft levy? One of the few things I like with Chromebooks is that you don't pay a license for software that's bundled with it.
    - JoshMnem 9y ago
      I don't know how the price is calculated behind the scenes. I paid a total of $1,900 and am happy with what I got for that price. I completely deleted Windows 10 when it arrived and installed GNU/Linux. You do pay for Chromebook software with your data.
  - jethro_tell 9y ago
    To get a basic set up not to hard. I've used linux exclusively, with the 'exception' of chromebooks in the last year. I put that in quotes because it's a linux box. There are a couple purpose built boxes out there designed to run linux. That is boxes that mostly cost $1500+ and chromebooks. You just won't get a better linux experience for $300 than a chromebook. Even when you get a purpose built box, like the xps, they end up having wifi driver issues for years or whatever. Claiming you don't own a chromebook is strange to me. If you put crouton on it, you root it as your first step. I root mine anyways as part of setup since they have a bash shell. The code is open and you have root on the box so what is it that you don't own? It's great if you can pay 2k for a laptop and own the whole thing, but there are a lot of people who might want a box that is 300 and they can own the whole thing and I think a chromebook gives them that option.

by dws 9y ago

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.
- rixed 9y ago
  Did you manage to buy this machine without paying the Microsoft levy? One of the few things I like with Chromebooks is that you don't pay a license for software that's bundled with it.
  - JoshMnem 9y ago
    I don't know how the price is calculated behind the scenes. I paid a total of $1,900 and am happy with what I got for that price. I completely deleted Windows 10 when it arrived and installed GNU/Linux. You do pay for Chromebook software with your data.
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  To get a basic set up not to hard. I've used linux exclusively, with the 'exception' of chromebooks in the last year. I put that in quotes because it's a linux box. There are a couple purpose built boxes out there designed to run linux. That is boxes that mostly cost $1500+ and chromebooks. You just won't get a better linux experience for $300 than a chromebook. Even when you get a purpose built box, like the xps, they end up having wifi driver issues for years or whatever. Claiming you don't own a chromebook is strange to me. If you put crouton on it, you root it as your first step. I root mine anyways as part of setup since they have a bash shell. The code is open and you have root on the box so what is it that you don't own? It's great if you can pay 2k for a laptop and own the whole thing, but there are a lot of people who might want a box that is 300 and they can own the whole thing and I think a chromebook gives them that option.