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I'm thinking of getting a Chromebook for dev work, with the view of just using it as a dumb client for terminals and browser to cloud servers. I'm worried I'll

• mav3rick 8y ago
  My suggestion would be to get a cheap one if you're on the fence. Make sure it supports all the features you want. If it doesn't work out it can be an excellent daily device for any non-dev relatives.
• turtlebits 8y ago
  Before linux support (crostini) yes. Now, for personal use, I've started using my pixelbook more than my Mac/Windows machines.
• overcast 8y ago
  My suggestion right now(from a Mac user), is a Windows 10 machine with the Linux subsystem installed. You'll have an entire Linux environment integrated into Windows, giving you the best of both worlds. Supported software, hardware, and your natural development environment. Honestly, I'm weary of moving anything to Google with their track record of just abandoning projects, and privacy concerns.
  • mav3rick 8y ago
    With all due respect WSL will always be behind Google's implementation. WSL implements a subset of linux syscalls to get compatibility. Crostini's guest OS is a Debian image so there are less compatibility challenges than WSL.
    • overcast 8y ago
      I haven't run into any compatibility problems, and was able to get my environment running identical to the production server. So how does what you said affect my experience? It works without jumping further into Google's uncertain ecosystem. And when I'm not working, I can fire up my Steam library, all on the same machine.
      • mav3rick 8y ago
        And that's great. But there will be edge cases when it won't behave like stock Linux. If you do give Crostini a try would love to hear your views :) cheers
        • jaxn 8y ago
          The only issues I have found that are inconsistent with stock Linux are on hardware and X11 support. For rails/node/Vue development, WSL is Linux through and through.
    • heartbreak 8y ago
      Let's compare apples to apples, then. I can run a full Debian guest in a VM on Windows, too. That's not new, but that appears to be the demonstrated capability of ChromeOS here. WSL is a step further in that it's _not_ virtualized.
      • mav3rick 8y ago
        apples to apples- WSL is the implementation that's integrated with Windows not a random VM running Linux. Chrome OS has a VM solution that's integrated with Chrome OS (files, apps in the same menus). The comparison is fair.
  • Lio 8y ago
    If you're unhappy with Google's surveillance surely you'd want to avoid swapping that with Microsoft's surveillance/telemetry? MS Security have the right to dip into you machine anytime they fancy it too.
    • overcast 8y ago
      Don't have a choice if I want to play games. Might as well make use of the machine when I'm not, otherwise I'm on my 10+ year old MacPro because Apple decided they are abandoning the developers that made them billions.
      • pjmlp 8y ago
        > ... developers that made them billions. Those are the developers creating macOS, iOS and watchOS applications in Objective-C and Swift, not the ones using macOS as pretty UNIX.
      • PascLeRasc 8y ago
        Have you given Steam Proton a chance? I don't play PC games but it seems pretty stable.
  • jjuel 8y ago
    Crostini isn't as mature yet as WSL is, but Crostini is better in my opinion.
    • celkam 8y ago
      If Crostini gets USB support before WSL, though... Once they add this and fix the lack of GPU support, I'll finally be down to one travel laptop.
  • spurgu 8y ago
    Remind me, what's best about the Windows world again? Games?
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • bduerst 8y ago
      Pretty much. Does Visual Studio run well on a Mac or is it hot garbage like Office?
    • pjmlp 8y ago
      Games, a 3D API that doesn't suck, an actual OO ABI, a kernel that isn't yet another UNIX clone, one of the best IDEs on the school from Xerox PARC workstations, a shell that uses structured data and integrates with OS APIs, user space drivers.
  • favadi 8y ago
    Is Windows 10's Linux subsystem capable of doing real development works yet?
• numbsafari 8y ago
  I'm currently doing it. Crostini, the linux VM layer, is very much still a work in progress. If you are doing your development in hosted VMs, then this isn't so much an issue. There are some minor nits around key mapping issues, but I'm looking to evaluate Android-based terminal apps to get around those (since they are mostly related to Chrome taking priority for certain key combinations when using an embedded shell). I love certain things about the keyboard, but absolutely miss little things from MacOS, like their support for easily entering accented characters by holding down a letter for a moment and then selecting the desired accent. Being able to powerwash your laptop, and then login to see everything basically the way you left it, is pretty powerful. As someone who has to also support the IT needs of a small team, the potential peace of mind this offers is huge. But it's not 100% just yet, so I haven't rolled it out to the rest of the team.
• abeyer 8y ago
  I've used chromebooks as my primary laptops for dev stuff for ~7 years now. No regrets, but there are tradeoffs that are worth considering. Things in my situation that I think make this work well are: I have a "real" machine in a desktop (or a work laptop, if that's what an employer gives me), I don't consider any laptop my primary personal machine in any case. I'm happy running what I want in a linux CLI-only environment. (You _can_ do gui, but you start pushing the hardware limits of the lower end machines pretty hard.) I want a light, cheap, reasonably secure, and ultimately disposable machine that I'm not concerned about tossing around, throwing in my backpack, leaving out on a coffee shop table while i use the restroom, etc... Issues I've hit: Poor/no docker support. I've just remoted back to home for things that need it and that works, but isn't ideal if you want to work disconnected. Occasional linux apps that require an X server -- either don't offer a CLI or do something stupid where even the CLI tries to connect to X. Internal storage tends to be limited and non-upgradable, SD cards are the portable option, but slow, and lugging around an external HD is a pain. (Also, I haven't actually played with the new crostini stuff at all yet. I'm still on an older machine with crouton.)
  • espeed 8y ago
    Google announced in the talk that Docker is now working and said to reference this Reddit thread for details... Docker now working https://www.reddit.com/r/Crostini/comments/9jabhq/docker_now_working/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Crostini/comments/9jabhq/docker_now...
    • abeyer 8y ago
      AFAIK that's only true if you're using crostini. I think older machines that don't get crostini support also won't get docker support with the standard kernel, so not a solution if you want/need to stay with crouton.
      • bduerst 8y ago
        Isn't crouton support being deprecated in favor of crostini?
• jjuel 8y ago
  I will be honest. I bought my Pixelbook mostly due to the aesthetics and features(most of which I no longer use e.g. tablet mode and pen support). I loved it for a long time. My laptop was mostly a browsing machine anyway so ChromeOS was perfect. I did use it as a dumb terminal to remote into my main dev machine. Then Crostini came around and I do enjoy being able to just develop on my Pixelbook. However, for some reason I keep wishing I had bought a Macbook instead. While I do have a soft spot for Macbooks (had two previously) there are just certain things that are limited in Crostini, and it is far from a finished product yet. If I were making my choice today I would definitely get a Macbook even with crostini on Chromebooks.
  • sridca 8y ago
    > for some reason I keep wishing I had bought a Macbook instead Do you know what those reasons in fact are? Or is it just a gut feel?
• ChristianBundy 8y ago
  I don't mind my Chromebook, but I don't think I'll ever go back to Chrome OS. I purchased my Chromebook Pixel (2015, codename Samus) with the same idea, and it was great for the first few months: I slowly started using Google products for everything, so my development work usually meant using the SSH extension[0] and connecting to a Google Cloud machine I rented. It appealed to my "digital nomad" tendencies, and really made me feel like I could work from anywhere. Unfortunately, the "digital nomad" tendency is often expensive and unsustainable, and I found myself spending $50/mo for a VPS with sufficient resources and storage that I didn't even own. I was excited that Chrome OS and Android are open source, but when I looked into making changes I quickly realized that the core was open source while most of the actual applications were proprietary (from the clock to the calculator to the SMS app, everything). I started down the road to Chrome OS because I thought it would be a liberating exercise in minimalism, but it turns out that I was overpaying to rent a server so that I could use an often-proprietary OS from a gigantic corporation funded by adtech. Bad. It took some time, but I eventually figured out how to install another OS on my machine (Arch Linux) and I've seen a boost to both my productivity and my computer knowledge. A VPS is a great place to learn the basics of Linux, but I've learned a ton just managing my own device and understanding how all of the various pieces work together. Plus, now I can run applications on my computer (!) without the requirement that they're Android apps (!!) or Chrome extensions (!!!). Sure, the UX isn't quite as polished as Chrome OS, but who cares? Chrome OS aside, the Chromebook is fine. Sure, it was a massive pain in the ass to realize that Google doesn't run mainline Linux, so it took about a year or two to get Google's patches merged into mainline so I didn't have to use a fork[1], but for the most part the device itself is fine. I've had some weird impossible-to-debug issues (e.g. half of the screen going dim) and a handful of annoyances (e.g. you can never remove Google's "WARNING: THIS IS NOT CHROME OS" warning on boot), but I can live with them. In the future I'll never buy another Chromebook, and I'll likely never buy another Google product, but at the time it was what I wanted and I learned a lot from my experience. Good luck! [0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell-extension/iodihamcpbpeioajjeobimgagajmlibd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell-exten... [1]: https://github.com/raphael/linux-samus https://github.com/raphael/linux-samus
  • Wowfunhappy 8y ago
• sehugg 8y ago
  I've got a cheap (now $149) Samsung Chromebook 3 that I use daily for its long battery life and matte display (seriously, laptop makers! do more matte displays!) My stable channel just got Crostini support, but I found that it takes up 25% of my storage space and it's been flaky to install. Instead, I use Termux. I still have to visit my Mac/Linux boxen often for graphics editing, a proper editor/IDE like Atom, and certain other apps like pandoc. But as a daily browser and command-line runner, it's great. (Okay, some web sites are still really slow due to the underpowered CPU on this cheap model.)
  • dandv 8y ago
    Re. Atom, have you tried running it on Crostini? Or running VS Code?