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Anecdote: I stopped using OSX for primary development about 7 months ago and started using a Pixelbook + Crostini exclusively. Par - Hassle free desktop exp

Anecdote: I stopped using OSX for primary development about 7 months ago and started using a Pixelbook + Crostini exclusively. Par - Hassle free desktop experience on par with OSX - Password managers, music apps, etc available via Android appstore Advantages - Fast time to productivity because Crostini takes a few clicks, then apt-get everything - Native "File Manager" integration makes it painless to move files to and from VM - Desktop apps in the VM appear in ChromeOS apps menu without hassle of X11.app, SSH forwarding, etc - Android integration to unlock the laptop, etc works great - Hardware built-in FIDO U2F device Disadvantages - ChromeOS 70 still crashes once and awhile inexplicably (weekly) - Android apps can be janky to resize - Multi-display with Android apps sometimes doesn't work Overall I feel more productive on my Pixelbook vs OSX.

rkeene2 8y ago
It's real annoying when Chrome crashes (which it does once or twice a week on average) because it restarts all your Android apps as well !
- kibwen 8y ago
  Flashbacks to Internet Explorer crashes taking out your desktop.
  - moocowtruck 8y ago
    thats the irony here... so much of this thread just reminds of of windows XP
lgleason 8y ago
I've been using the Pixelbook i7 16gb/512 SSD as a travel machine for native Android development. Some other con's I've noticed. 1. Multi-monitor support can get a bit flaky when using more than one monitor. 2. While is is pretty speedy, you do run into performance limitations due to it only having a dual core processor. 3. Many Android apps are not as fully featured as their OS-X counterparts. Yes you could use them all in Crostini, but now your going through another virtualization layer, plus the integration is still not fully there. All of that being said, I used to be a crouton user and it is stable enough that I am not longer doing that....though the lack of USB device support is a bummer (and was supported in crouton).
- numbsafari 8y ago
  My understanding is that USB support is feature flagged in the dev channel, so it’s on its way.
  - lgleason 8y ago
    Fingers Crossed!
shams93 8y ago
I'd try using firefox instead of chrome for your development browser, I do a lot with webrtc and find myself in permissions hell with chrome so my main system is ubuntu with firefox rather than chrome these days. I use a mac for mobile development because its handy to be able to handle ios and android with the same system.
- philips 8y ago
  I installed Firefox on the ChromeOS Crostini VM for similar reasons and it works great. The app icon even shows up in ChromeOS and I clickable. I just used a release binary and copied the .desktop file to /usr/share/whatever as described on the Mozilla wiki.
  - skrowl 8y ago
    I found that Firefox via flatpak works very well on my i5 Pixelbook
  - dandv 8y ago
    You can also add to home screen/install Progressive Web Apps from Android Firefox, and they'll appear in the Chrome OS launcher. Should've demo-ed that during the talk :)
    - DennisAleynikov 8y ago
      PWA's used to be one of the few truly desktop feeling apps on Samsung DeX but as of today their beta of WSL for Android [1] has dropped an it makes every samsung flagship s8 and up a computer to develop apps on. its like crostini but a little worse since it fills your screen with a graphical ubuntu 16.04 with latest chrome, VSCode and other toys to get you started. Really awesome they are doing this and I look forward to the future of linux on galaxy devices. [1] https://linuxondex.com https://linuxondex.com
- kakarot 8y ago
  9/10 times when I experience a bug while doing front-end, it's only in Chrome. Because of this I had to switch to Chrome for my default dev browser purely to save time and catch bugs early. I hate it... My solution to permissions hell is to create a separate "unsafe" launcher for a version of Chrome that uses a profile with some security features disabled.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cztomsik 8y ago
More productive in what exactly? What are you developing? What problems you had with OSX? (not meant to be offensive, just curious)
- philips 8y ago
  More productive because I don't spend time fighting all of the little silly OSX to Linux incompatibilities in a dev environment. Things like: - sed / grep flags - path issues compiling some C module or node module - homebrew missing obscure package These aren't things that kill productivity on the regular but once a month I found myself going down some rabbit hole or another fixing things like that. I develop a range of stuff from the Kubernetes ecosystem, etcd, frontend software, and the occasional embedded side project. Also, I rarely use any OSX native applications outside of a browser, password manager, and music app anymore. So, none of these workflows changed and some improved since now I have identical apps on my phone and laptop thanks to Android.
  - cztomsik 8y ago
    fair point, I can't tell anything other than that I was so far lucky. I do a lot of web/node development and none of the issues was yet related to OSX (for the whole 4-5 years I'm on mac). you're 100% correct that apple has crippled version of some tools but it's possible to replace them from brew but I think I know where you're heading - it's probably just easier to use linux when you're doing these things - just like I was switching to mac when I wanted to do node. BTW: I was switching from windows, not from linux, I actually think linux is fine and I'm happily using it on other machines, just not on this one :-)
Yhippa 8y ago
I was given one of the recent MBPs with touchbar for work at a client and from my consulting company. I really don't like the new MBPs and didn't like the prospect of carrying around two laptops so I used my personal Pixelbook for as my consulting company's laptop. They use GSuite so isolating accounts was a breeze. I was able to install IntelliJ and do full-stack Java development with no problem. Window management was surprisingly nice. I agree with all of your points BTW.
neor 8y ago
I wish I could make the switch. New MacBooks are costing our company 4500+ each, but most of us don't want to go to Windows. This sounds like a good solution, but I'd probably miss out on a good alternative to Sketch or Zeplin which is an important part of our development workflow.
glenrivard 8y ago
Wow! Same. Replaced a Mac book pro with a Pixel book use for development and could not be happier. Also use Crostini. Ultimately the cloud is gnu/linux and OS x is close but not the same.

rkeene2 8y ago

It's real annoying when Chrome crashes (which it does once or twice a week on average) because it restarts all your Android apps as well !

kibwen 8y ago
Flashbacks to Internet Explorer crashes taking out your desktop.
- moocowtruck 8y ago
  thats the irony here... so much of this thread just reminds of of windows XP

lgleason 8y ago

I've been using the Pixelbook i7 16gb/512 SSD as a travel machine for native Android development. Some other con's I've noticed. 1. Multi-monitor support can get a bit flaky when using more than one monitor. 2. While is is pretty speedy, you do run into performance limitations due to it only having a dual core processor. 3. Many Android apps are not as fully featured as their OS-X counterparts. Yes you could use them all in Crostini, but now your going through another virtualization layer, plus the integration is still not fully there. All of that being said, I used to be a crouton user and it is stable enough that I am not longer doing that....though the lack of USB device support is a bummer (and was supported in crouton).

numbsafari 8y ago
My understanding is that USB support is feature flagged in the dev channel, so it’s on its way.
- lgleason 8y ago
  Fingers Crossed!

shams93 8y ago

I'd try using firefox instead of chrome for your development browser, I do a lot with webrtc and find myself in permissions hell with chrome so my main system is ubuntu with firefox rather than chrome these days. I use a mac for mobile development because its handy to be able to handle ios and android with the same system.

philips 8y ago
I installed Firefox on the ChromeOS Crostini VM for similar reasons and it works great. The app icon even shows up in ChromeOS and I clickable. I just used a release binary and copied the .desktop file to /usr/share/whatever as described on the Mozilla wiki.
- skrowl 8y ago
  I found that Firefox via flatpak works very well on my i5 Pixelbook
- dandv 8y ago
  You can also add to home screen/install Progressive Web Apps from Android Firefox, and they'll appear in the Chrome OS launcher. Should've demo-ed that during the talk :)
  - DennisAleynikov 8y ago
    PWA's used to be one of the few truly desktop feeling apps on Samsung DeX but as of today their beta of WSL for Android [1] has dropped an it makes every samsung flagship s8 and up a computer to develop apps on. its like crostini but a little worse since it fills your screen with a graphical ubuntu 16.04 with latest chrome, VSCode and other toys to get you started. Really awesome they are doing this and I look forward to the future of linux on galaxy devices. [1] https://linuxondex.com https://linuxondex.com
kakarot 8y ago
9/10 times when I experience a bug while doing front-end, it's only in Chrome. Because of this I had to switch to Chrome for my default dev browser purely to save time and catch bugs early. I hate it... My solution to permissions hell is to create a separate "unsafe" launcher for a version of Chrome that uses a profile with some security features disabled.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

cztomsik 8y ago

More productive in what exactly? What are you developing? What problems you had with OSX? (not meant to be offensive, just curious)

philips 8y ago
More productive because I don't spend time fighting all of the little silly OSX to Linux incompatibilities in a dev environment. Things like: - sed / grep flags - path issues compiling some C module or node module - homebrew missing obscure package These aren't things that kill productivity on the regular but once a month I found myself going down some rabbit hole or another fixing things like that. I develop a range of stuff from the Kubernetes ecosystem, etcd, frontend software, and the occasional embedded side project. Also, I rarely use any OSX native applications outside of a browser, password manager, and music app anymore. So, none of these workflows changed and some improved since now I have identical apps on my phone and laptop thanks to Android.
- cztomsik 8y ago
  fair point, I can't tell anything other than that I was so far lucky. I do a lot of web/node development and none of the issues was yet related to OSX (for the whole 4-5 years I'm on mac). you're 100% correct that apple has crippled version of some tools but it's possible to replace them from brew but I think I know where you're heading - it's probably just easier to use linux when you're doing these things - just like I was switching to mac when I wanted to do node. BTW: I was switching from windows, not from linux, I actually think linux is fine and I'm happily using it on other machines, just not on this one :-)

Yhippa 8y ago

I was given one of the recent MBPs with touchbar for work at a client and from my consulting company. I really don't like the new MBPs and didn't like the prospect of carrying around two laptops so I used my personal Pixelbook for as my consulting company's laptop. They use GSuite so isolating accounts was a breeze. I was able to install IntelliJ and do full-stack Java development with no problem. Window management was surprisingly nice. I agree with all of your points BTW.

neor 8y ago

I wish I could make the switch. New MacBooks are costing our company 4500+ each, but most of us don't want to go to Windows. This sounds like a good solution, but I'd probably miss out on a good alternative to Sketch or Zeplin which is an important part of our development workflow.

glenrivard 8y ago

Wow! Same. Replaced a Mac book pro with a Pixel book use for development and could not be happier. Also use Crostini. Ultimately the cloud is gnu/linux and OS x is close but not the same.