It seems like most chromebooks today run on x86. I have a pixelbook I picked up on sale for around $650 (mid-grade model marked down from $1200). I've had it fo

It seems like most chromebooks today run on x86. I have a pixelbook I picked up on sale for around $650 (mid-grade model marked down from $1200). I've had it for around a year now and it's been a good experience. I think the big issue for most people and chromeOS is that $400 laptops suck no matter which OS they run. A 12" macbook with the same specs (256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, i5 Y-series processor) runs $1400, has no touchscreen/tablet mode, no pen capability, a bad keyboard, one less USB-C port (a big deal for me), and (surprisingly) a smaller, worse trackpad. Software has gotten radically better recently. I run chromeOS for my browser, Android for a few apps, and Crostini/Debian 9 for the rest and development. My big complaint is that Crostini isn't GPU accelerated at the moment (they have it working in nightly, so it's coming later this year). The best part is how seamless it is to run 3 different OS's in one computer at the same time. Android (and Debian) are full installs, so no emulation issues. Instead, chromeOS basically hands off a frame buffer for them to fill (along with relevant IO events they are allowed to see). An Android or Debian apps act just like any other native window on the system while still providing a high level of security. My big complaint is that some compute-intensive things like running a full test suite takes some time, but that's simply an artifact of the fanless, Y-series form factor (and I still have the option of SSHing into my desktop). I'm not a big fan of the new, unified settings and notifications (I preferred them separate), but it's not a huge issue. I'd like multiple desktops, but those are supposedly already in nightly too. Overall, I'm not sad to leave my Macbook Pro sitting on the shelf.