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The future being unevenly distributed, I've been doing that for a long time privately, not publicly, via Apache Guacamole (with LDAP integration for configuring

by VLM 8y ago

The future being unevenly distributed, I've been doing that for a long time privately, not publicly, via Apache Guacamole (with LDAP integration for configuring) as my front end to some virtual dev boxes. I've never run into the slightest issue between chromebook html5 browser and Apache Guacamole, which I suppose does not prove no problem could exist for anyone else. Its SSH is really a very nice terminal emulator, and of course there's rdesktop protocol and all that also. It helps to have an enormous vmware cluster holding the numerous servers such that I'm connecting to a machine that is too beastly powerful to ever consider in a laptop form factor... so my dev box has slightly higher latency but the CPU and memory are immense such that its not all that different than native, some things a little faster, some a little slower. The biggest problem I have is I can buy a chromebook with a decent screen for roughly the price of a decent windows laptop, but I can't buy a decent keyboard on a chromebook for any price. Model-M keyboard to USB to plug into the chromebook, I've never tried that? On the stereotypical hyper limited chromebook keyboard, emacs is ... difficult but possible, and android studio is OK, or at least as OK as java programming can be. Android studio emulator had some weirdness with it not being amused at attempting virtual machine hardware acceleration on a vmware image of a windows box; probably depends exactly which version of studio you install and when you installed it... Native chromebook VPN support is "ok" or at least somewhat usable. I don't have the infrastructure bare out on the internet for obvious reasons. An extremely beefy virtual dev box with 10 hour battery that weighs nothing using a state park as my office is pretty nice, when weather permits that kind of work. The only problem I've found is you can use a lot of mobile data very quickly this way, especially during a nice summer month. Also I can charge my tether phone off the chromebook but then the battery life seems much shorter; AC power is surprisingly not hard to find and picnic shelters are almost always empty during the week (full on weekends). Parks are also empty and quiet during the week. When it rains I'm stuck in the office, what a bummer. Do not be like me and hike out five miles to an observation tower right before a rainstorm begins, I was stuck under the tower for an entire day until it stopped raining.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
> emacs is ... difficult but possible Have you tried remapping the search key to something else? > Android studio emulator had some weirdness with it not being amused at attempting virtual machine hardware acceleration on a vmware image of a windows box; probably depends exactly which version of studio you install and when you installed it... Did you expose the CPU virtualization extensions to the outer VM? VMWare has an option per-VM, but it's off by default.
roryisok 8y ago
> The biggest problem I have is I can buy a chromebook with a decent screen for roughly the price of a decent windows laptop Why would anyone choose the former in that situation? I thought the whole argument for chromebooks was that they were going to be cheaper than regular laptops. If you need a decent keyboard, buy a ThinkPad. You're not limited to windows, you can run any flavour of Linux and quite a few of them make a decent hackintosh
- VLM 8y ago
  Its pretty much the anti smart TV argument, where I have access to much better systems so a halfway attempt merely gets in the way. Also I didn't mention it but its kinda implied that "standard windows laptop" has too little memory to actually work well, a two hour battery, an old fashioned slow spinning disk, and lots of crudware pre-installed and hard to remove, whereas chromebook implies "it just works" seconds out of the box, a ten hour battery and SSD means no moving parts. Also the windows box is inherently insecure. If all either will ever do is rdesktop / ssh into clustered machines, and I'll never do any local processing other than maybe play games on the windows laptop, its no contest that the chromebook experience is better.

by VLM 8y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago

> emacs is ... difficult but possible Have you tried remapping the search key to something else? > Android studio emulator had some weirdness with it not being amused at attempting virtual machine hardware acceleration on a vmware image of a windows box; probably depends exactly which version of studio you install and when you installed it... Did you expose the CPU virtualization extensions to the outer VM? VMWare has an option per-VM, but it's off by default.

roryisok 8y ago

> The biggest problem I have is I can buy a chromebook with a decent screen for roughly the price of a decent windows laptop Why would anyone choose the former in that situation? I thought the whole argument for chromebooks was that they were going to be cheaper than regular laptops. If you need a decent keyboard, buy a ThinkPad. You're not limited to windows, you can run any flavour of Linux and quite a few of them make a decent hackintosh

VLM 8y ago
Its pretty much the anti smart TV argument, where I have access to much better systems so a halfway attempt merely gets in the way. Also I didn't mention it but its kinda implied that "standard windows laptop" has too little memory to actually work well, a two hour battery, an old fashioned slow spinning disk, and lots of crudware pre-installed and hard to remove, whereas chromebook implies "it just works" seconds out of the box, a ten hour battery and SSD means no moving parts. Also the windows box is inherently insecure. If all either will ever do is rdesktop / ssh into clustered machines, and I'll never do any local processing other than maybe play games on the windows laptop, its no contest that the chromebook experience is better.